Aurender N100 or X100?

I own two Aurender streamers (W20SE and N100). While I copied my library onto them… I haven’t used those files or those on my network for two years… Qobuz has almost every one of them and frequently in higher resolution. 
 

I cannot recommend Aurender too highly. But I seldom listen to the same music that I own any more (or if I do I listen to the Qobuz version). They have half a million high Rez albums. I would buy one with as little storage… over time you’ll likely let owning files fall into history… like 78rpm records.

@artemus_5 , I plugged one of my USB SSDs into one of the available USB ports and could access the files with Conductor. However, after scanning for new files the metadata for these USB located files does not show up in the normal metadata categories like the internal files do. This means those files will not be found by going the the “albums” or “artists” tabs nor by searching. But you can access them through the “folder” tab, just like any file on a computer. 
 

Interesting discussion.  I don’t own Aurender so I can’t really opine here.  Unlike @ghdprentice i prefer the sound of my physical files to the Qobuz alternatives.  I use Melco and I need more than 2 TB.  I am wondering if there is a third party app that groups all the files in one place, a la Roon?

@mahler123 

I have looked at the Melco which got the S'phile A+ rating and have wondered why it does not seem to be as popular as the aurender despite its lower price (I think). Can you or  @ghdprentice give an opinion why that is? Is the software as easily navigated as the aurender conductor?  Does it too play from the cache memory like the aurender? FWIW I have a streamer Dac now that sounds pretty good. but trying to listen to it is a total nightmare. One glitch after another mostly because of too many different pieces trying to communicate IMO. I've used computers since 1991 but I'm getting too old to troubleshoot  so often. I'm thinking that the built in HDD will be a big part of simplifying the process

@rockrider  Thanks for the info. Extra credit for going the extra mile also. Thanks again