I'm sticking with my Grace Digital Link...$179...doubt there is THAT much difference between it and any of these hi-end streamers. Certainly not a difference large enough to justify spending literally thousands more!
750$ Intel NUC vs $6000 Aurender N200: I don't hear the difference
I finally plunged into the source is as important as the DAC belief that is quite prevalent here and decided to test out Aurender N200. And given I have a very highend DAC, thought if the N200 pans out I would go for the N20 or N30.
I was expecting the N200 to blow away my Intel NUC which is 10th gen, core i7, 8GB and running Roon Rock BUT I am switching back and forth between USB playing the Roon Rock, and Co-axial playing Aurender N200, and I don't hear much of a difference maybe a hair, or not even that.
A few caveats: 1) Roon Rock is playing Quboz, N200 is playing Tidal (I am unable to get Qobuz login to the N200 for reason I don't understand).
2) I am comparing Coaxial on N200, USB on Roon Rock.
Caveat #2 can be ignored because I don't hear a difference between Coaxial and USB output of N200.
So either this is an "Emperor has no clothes" moment or I am missing something big. Any thoughts on what I might be missing before I send this N200 back to the dealer on Monday.
Rest of my system: Nagra TUBE DAC -> Accuphase E-650 -> Devore O96 and all Acoustic Revive wiring.
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@essrand Good on getting together with your friend to sort it out. One caution: you have a conclusion...but it is from a 'single' data point. Hold on to the openness you've demonstrated. |
I would not expect a difference between the two servers.
That said, i would expect a difference between USB and COAX, although, i guess the Aurender has a very good clock (if its master). I would also guess you can get an improvement by having ROCK --> bridge (e.g.: RPI or other with very good LPS and isolated USB output (isolate both signal and ground, separate power).
I do this, and have been for a couple of years.
Its often useful to also isolate the SMPS brick of the NUC from the rest of your AC with a decent passive filter. |
On some other comments, i know ROON makes a big deal about plenty of CPU etc. But it comes down to two questions: 1) do you employ DSP? and 2) do you simultaneously stream and synch multiple stream? If no, it runs on about anything (e.g.: i ran it for a while on a 2009 macbook pro laptop with Core 2 Duo chip and also running plenty of other apps - ancient!).
Now that i employ a little DSP and sometimes synch 3 zones, i need more power. I have a quad core i5 NUC, a bunch of RAM (32? 16? forget) and two SSDs - one for Roon and one for music. Truth is that 99% of my listening is Tidal. |
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