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  3. 142057-4481

Music Server for feeding Theta Gen VIII DAC

I've been away from audio for a number of years after putting together a system* that I was mostly satisfied with.  I took the system apart for a couple years for a living room remodel, then shortly after I set it up, my SOny ES CD player I was using as a transport died.  I now realize that I no longer know how to play music.  I would like to use some sort of computer server rather than a disc spinner for the convenience, but am overwhelmed by the choices available.  I want something simple with excellent sound quality.  Right now, I mainly want to rip my CDs to a hard drive.  I recognize that at some point in the future, I may want to use some sort of streaming, but right now, I'm not interested.  Having been to a few shops, candidates include the Cambridge CXN V2, Aurender N100C, and Naim Uniti Core.  The Aurender seems hobbled by a new change that sacrifices sound quality of non-MQA files, the Naim seems like it can't accept files downloaded from the internet.  The Cambridge seems to not have any identified problems, but I wonder if it's possible for a machine that is so affordable to provide sound quality on par with the others (although if it can, that would be great).  I have no idea what to do.
*Theta Gen VIII s3 DAC/Pre, AtmaSphere MA1 amps, Ascendo ZF3 speakers, Kubala-Sosna EMotion interconnects, Entec LF-20 subwoofers.
honest1
audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,778 posts
 
Honest we can understand your pain and confusion.

We sell all the servers you have enquired about and each has its weakness.

We are very big on computer audio and we sell five different server lines:

1:Innous
2:Baetis
3:Naim
4:Aurender
5:NAD

The product we are selling the most of is the Innuous Zen and Zenith.

Why?

1: These devices are designed to Roon Roon as a Roon core, (Roon’s music management software is fantastic and it integrates Tidal and Internet radio into one easy to use compreshensive interface, therefore the box will output MQA as well.

2: Built for music reproduction, Innous builds their onw motherboard, and propreitary USB soundcard. add in an ethernet filter shock mounted hard drives and custom designed operating system you have a box designed specifically to derive a clean data stream to your dac.

3: Excellent reliablity and customer support

4: Burns CD

5: Reasonable pricing from $1,250-$4,200.00 for their most popular models.

Cons:

1: Requires an ethernet connection which can be overcome with a $69 wireless bridge

2: Higher end models only USB again overcome by a usb to spdif adapter if required.

The Naim doesn’t do Tidal or add any other streaming services
The NAD 50.2 is very good as a hard drive server with Raid but sound quality is not as good as the Innous.
Baetis is very good but expensive.
Aurender doesn’t do Roon and does not have a CD ripper.

Computer audio is are speciality along with a great selection of Dacs, Lumin, Mytek, Naim, Nad, Nuprime, LH Labs, Aqua Hifi, and a few others, we are a shop that although we love vinyl we really roll with high end digital.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
grey9hound
1,112 posts
 
If you are pretty computer literate , you can build a Music Sever running JRiver media center .It is hard to beat . The software is like under $50.You can rip your cds to the drive in the PC.
Get a Server type of pc ,like the Dell Precsion T5400 or higher. You can use the internal drives as well as a Nice big USB harddrive hooked to the PC. Personally i would rip into .wav format from your Cds. people will tell you that they hear no difference in lossless vs The Full original "whats on the cd format" That original format on the cd is .wav. I have tried it . You can hear a difference. It really depends on how resolute and detailed your audio equipment is. I also use the ROKU Ultra Device . I can get Pandora from there and Netflix as well as a lot of other stuff. Pandora Plus sound really good.
https://jriver.com/
Good Luck in which ever direction you go.
Oh BTW .There is a lot of streaming available through JRiver these days and you can use the pc like a normal PC ..to do anything you can do with a normal PC or get from the internet.These other servers from the guy above are running proprietary software that i am pretty sure does not let you use the server as a Pc .All of this for like $400-900 bucks depending on the PC that you buy

audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,778 posts
 
Grayhound 

A regular PC makes a poor server. 

Bad usb out, noisy internal clocks, cheap smps. If you want sound quality and ease of use you buy a server.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
honest1 OP
586 posts
 
Thanks for the inputs.  I do not feel computer literate enough to put together a server on my own.  
The Innuos sounds interesting, and looks cool as a bonus, but I'm concerned about the lack of SPDIF outputs.  Does it make sense to take something so highly specialized and refined and hang some random adapter off of it?  How good are such adapters?
Regarding Aurender, what's going on with it's implementation of MQA?  The Stereophile review indicated it was applying MQA filters to non-MQA data, which would reduce the SQ of such files.  If you have anold one, you can revert to the non-MQA software, but not so new production Aurenders.  Have they changed this, or is this still an issue?
I'm not really interested in ROON at this point.  From what I've seen of it, it is very computer-y, something I don't want in my music system.  No constant upgrades that may or may not work.  No changes to the GUI where they just shuffle everything around for no good reason, making you re-earn how to use it.  No wondering when they might make my favorite music inaccessible.  No constant slow trickle out of my bank account for a monthly subscription.  I could go on.  I really just want something like a regular HiFi component that I can plug in and use for many years without the use of it becoming a hobby in itself.
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