Aurender music servers: higher priced ones sonically better?

@tomstruck you will love the Pandora. I am 7 years in with no real urge to change, except maybe Eclipse…..maybe…

tomic601 
Hope all is well with you and yours 
I have never looked back on any decision on Aesthetix or Vandersteen just moving up the lines

Enjoy the Music 
Tom

I don’t know much about the aurender, but i have streamed from itunes/bitperfect and (i cant recall the name) on my Macbook pro, and for years i have used Roon on a dedicated server. All three outperformed the CD player to the same DAC(s).

I will point out that Roon offers a number of advantages; since i have rarely used anything else in the last tow years, i can say how much they impact the sound - but the content difference is startling ( I have a love/hate relationship with Roon)

But here’s are the two things:

One -- there will be differences, based on implementation (hardware, powering, grounding, ...)

Two: on the other hand, if the software plays the music back bit perfect, you can get identical results.

Why? two critical factors in digital are magnitude and timing. Timing is the harder of the two since it is quasi analog. (read my blog on SonogyResearch if you want more). And timing is determined by the receiving DAC, but compromised by the player’s signal from which it must be derived. I admit there are some details deep down that i cannot explain. yet :-)

Roon is an interface has nothing to do with sound quality 

Roon is an interface has nothing to do with sound quality

totally incorrect. Roon is a 1) server, 2) streamer, 3) multi-room and network streamer with its own protocol, 4) upsampling DSP, 5) MQA first unfold algorithm, 6) timing and bit depth adjustment device, .....

How far do i need to continue. Totally, completely, off base.

Sorry to be blunt to the point of rude, but this is really misinformation. And Roon provides a lot of options to minimize network impacts, optimize timing, tune for rooms, etc.

I shoudl add i have no commercial affiliation with Roon expect that i was an early adopter, and often feel like a beat tester. Its a work-in-progress.

Nice system though Tom. Thumbs up on your choices, from what i can see.


2nd edit: if interested, i was asked, and wrote, a long post on how to get the best sound out of Roon in a digital audio thread not long ago.  It extended beyond Roon proper to bridge and USB interfacing (e.g.: lots of ground and power supply isolation) to get the best sound.  Remember that Pulse Amplitude Modulation is in effect a cartesian coordinate mapping of analog sound and the X (time) domain is just as important  as the Y (volume/bits) domain.