Music Server Advice

@fastfreight

Comparisons between the Grimm and Aurender in my system were Roon for Grimm and Conductor for the Aurrender. I doubt that has a significant sound effect. My experience is that it is the hardware that matters. Also, I used to own an Aurlic Aries G2… I concur both the Aurrender and Grimm are much better sounding streamers.
 

I use the AES output on my Aurender W20SE and the USB output on my N100. Switching between the two on my main system… when using my Audio Research CD9se DAC and a Berkeley Alpha Reference DAC showed little difference in sound quality but the determinate will be the quality of the DAC / streamer… in some combos USB may sound better… but typically AES will sound better. .

Lucas Audio Music Server.  Give Lucas a call on What's App.  Phenomenal server and customer service.  It elevated the sound in my system immensely and that is with a Lampi Horizon DAC.

“with the N30SA having a 10MHz Rubidium clock,”

@blisshifi

I don’t think this is true. N30SA uses a high quality OCXO internal clock.

To answer your question about oversampling, I am not a fan. I prefer my digital bits in their native resolution. To my ears, oversampled files sounds artificial and adds unnecessary distortion. Each time I tried over sampling, the results have been inconsistent. My DAC allows me to stream upto DSD256 over Ethernet and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

There are always going to be those who prefer upsampling based on their setup and personal preferences. I rather pay for a native high resolution file then fiddle with on the fly upsampling 😊

@lalitk You're totally right -- I'm mixing up the N30SA and the MC20 (facepalming myself). Thank you for the correcting my mistake.

@blisshifi

No worries. Now, it wouldn’t have been nice to get an upgraded clock module in N30SA then just the aforementioned upgrades with two chassis. From what I can tell, you get the same PCB board & clock as in N20. I wish I didn’t have to choose between N30SA and W20SE. My ultimate setup, W20SE for DK and Norah and N30SA for Stevie Ray Vaughan 🤣