Computer Audio..Stream or download?

Fsmithjack,

Thank you again for making some great and thought provoking recommendations. I never dared myself into experimenting with tube mods. I bought Raysonic CD-128 with class A triode vacuum tube (4x6922 triodes tubes - Russian) few years back. And left it as is cause it sounded pretty good out of the box. As of last year, I added components that are bit more revealing. I have been trying to build a system that is musical, tonally accurate and dynamic.

I added M600's earlier this year to my 803s, nice upgrade from CA-2200. The CA-2200 was more than adequate for 803s; M600 was purchased in anticipation of next big thing. Adding 800D2's was a huge step and quantum leap. To my surprise, despite of its good virtues M600 tapped out in the bottom end with 800D's.

I looked at Krell, Pass Labs, Simaudio and Ayre before settling down with Modwrights. Like M600, KWA150 SE treble is open, detailed and natural. The sound is consistent across a vast array of frequencies. What separated KWA from M600 is its deep bass, that is just tuneful, agile and full in level.

Like you suggested, I am going to spend some time with Elyse and venture into the exciting world tube mods in near future.

Let the fun begin!

Hey Fsmithjack,

My Aurender dealer tells me that I need to slave a PC or Mac to rip music and download hi res files? I prefer to stay away from PC or MAC in my HT setup but it looks like I don't have a choice if I want to rip music.

Aurender N100 is capable of streaming DSD files, so why do I need to download DSD files?

Just to recap, I am putting together following digital setup -

Aurender N100H - equipped with 2TB SSD drive
Modwright Elyse DAC

I also own a Olive 4HD that have about 1TB of music. At some point I would like to transfer music to Aurender internal drive and dispose off Olive. I don't see any point keeping Olive with subpar audio.

Do you have any suggestions on how to transfer off music from Olive? I have all the music backed up in a portable USB drive (FAT32 format). Not sure if Aurender is capable of reading music from USB drive. I guess I will find out once I have the Aurender in-house.

Don't worry your computer won't be in the signal path at all you just need to keep it on your network preferable via Ethernet to manage your music and to keep running sever software in the background.

There are work arounds but this is the easiest way I know but are many others I am sure. I run my files via a solid state hard drive that is hard wired right to my aries via the aries usb out for hard drive hook up but it is all still driven by my JRiver dlna server. I have jriver set up via dlna and the solid state hard drive is what jriver is pointing at but its playing through the Auralic lightning app. The lighting app plays everything and nothing goes through my computer but the jriver manages it all nice and easy.

There are plenty of other server software solutions out there and jriver maybe overkill for how I use or how you will use it but it is simple and works great.

Yours will be the same except you have a built in hard drive so you don't have to worry about the usb solid state drive like I do but you will still need server softwhere to drive the aurender app. Too much money for them to create their own when 3rd party solutions like jriver will be perfect and it cost $25.00 and does tons.

One of the great things about jriver is the robust network server software. It will be a breeze to grab all the music on your olive and drop it onto your aurender via the jriver music dnla server software running your computer and then dump the olive.

You can copy all the music on the olive and dump it on the aurender and dump the olive. You see with jriver you can get at any and all music on your network on any storage device and move it to where ever you want. You could even play the music that's on your olive from your arender just by pointing at it via jriver. If you are not familiar with jriver you should get it and work at learning it.

There is a learning curve but its the best and allows so much. Its kinda like iTunes but works with everything not just apple stuff and sounds a zillion times better and does so much more and its a great server software.

There are plenty of others out there but its the one I know and use so its the only one I can speak to. If this sounds complicated its really not its actually real easy and they have tons of resources to help and they have a super active forum to support it. You always want a computer to manage any network but thats what you will be doing is managing your music via dnla server softwhere. You will want it to buy and download music and many other reasons to have a computer on any network but its just not playing the music it is doing other good work behind the scenes so you music server can do what it does and that's sound great playing music. It's why I like them better than say CAPs servers because they are not there to really do anything but a focused job and thats the best audio it can. The less a music player can do the better. My Aries is the same way. Does tons but lets the computers do the dirty work in the background out of the signal path. Hope this helps a bit and clears some things up for you.

Let me know I'm glad to help.

Hello again,

What a relief to know that I can capture all the music off my olive and transfer it to Aurender.

After reading your feedback, it's given that you cannot eliminate pc or Mac from a typical setup if you want to manage your music library. I am sure it will all make sense once I have all the hardware together.

I am leaning towards Mac-mini solution for its small size and aesthetics. I love the apple look. Mac mini and USB drive will look cool with rest of my 'silver' components.

I found this article at ps audio - http://www.psaudio.com/ps_how/how-to-build-a-music-server/

Check out the JCAT USB cable.

Thanks again for taking the time to demystify the complexities of digital world.

Latlik- In case no one else mentioned it, you might also want to try spending some time at computeraudiophile.com.