A/B Comparison On A Pair Of Moderately Priced Streamers

I have owned/own Aurender, Innuos ZenMini, and Nucleus+.  Aurender sounds very good for the money "out of the box".  ZenMini and Nucleus both must have external Linear Power Supplies added but then both of them sound excellent.  All 3 in this configuration offer excellent sound and value for the money.  

My issue with the Aurender are the limits of the Conductor app.  Backup and editing of Meta data are challenging at best as well as integration with external NAS.  The Aurender Sense App is similar in functionality to the Conductor app but backup and Meta data editing are a breeze as is integration with external NAS or additional hardrives.  

I find Roon to be exceptional and best setup uses a Nucleus(or Nucleus +) as the "core" with an internal SSD hard-drive feeding Innuos as a Roon endpoint.  In fact Innuos has released a line of streamers (Pulse) setup for this specific configuration and though I have not yet auditioned the Pulse, I expect that it will excel as the rest of the Innuos line.

I have not yet updated my network switch but others I respect have found this is critical to getting the best out of any of these systems.  

Solely because of the integration with Roon, external play, editing and backup considerations, I would highly recommend ZenMini. It is a bonus that you can add the LPSU separately to break up the cost.

Good luck! 

The Innuos Sense App is fantastic. 

When I heard that, I stopped watching.  I don't have an easy or elegant way to feed an Ethernet cable into my listening room, so a solid wireless connection is paramount to me.

@cwatters0 ​​​​@moonwatcher A way to both get around the Wi-Fi issues with the Zen Stream and having to run a long Ethernet cable is to use a Wi-Fi extender, and an added bonus is you’ll get better sound than using Wi-Fi.  FYI I bought this one but there are many others available…

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MR90E3A/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Just plug this into an outlet and run an Ethernet cable from it to the Zen Stream and you’re done.  I haven’t been able to set mine up yet, but I’ve heard from several people that this solves the Wi-Fi issues.  Hope this helps. 

@soix Thanks. I might consider that Wi-Fi extender (especially one that can do 2600 Mbps). Appreciate it. I hope it works well for you and eliminates aggravation.

Would be best though if iFi would update their devices to work better on Wi-Fi in the first place, since that functionality is part of their marketing to consumers. 

I have posted this before and will do it again. I a/b’d the Bluesound Node2 against an Aurender N100 through the same DAC (at the time the Hegel 190).. I wanted to like the Aurender better because I could get a great deal. After two hours of patient listening I could detect NO difference. And the cheaper Node has a far better user interface that you don’t have to pay for. Of course I still wonder because we are all searching for the holy grail of sound, but so far all I hear is conflicting gobbledegook about which four figure streamer sounds better. I have since upgraded my DAC and that did make a difference as did the upgraded LPS. Adjusting the time clock on the Node was a nice tweak. All of this being said my perception is that higher end streamers do not seem to make any difference. Folks need to do an apples to apples a/b and send out their results