New DAC or New Streamer?

@fthompson251 I am an Aurender dealer, but audiophile first, so take this with a grain of salt. I used to own a Modwright-modded CXN V2, the one with a tube stage, in a second system. While the upgraded DAC section was quite good, the streamer was quite lackluster. I once put it into my primary system a few years back, where I had a NAD M50.2 dedicated server/streamer going into the the CXN. The NAD did a good job of cleaning up the sound. I've since become an Aurender dealer and moved away from the NAD. In September, I had a customer come by with his Modwright CXN V2, and he asked me to connect an Aurender N200 into it. I did so, and the difference was outstanding - much higher than the older M50.2 I had hooked up a year or so prior. It only took about 10-20 seconds of listening for the customer to tell me he was sold on the N200.

I was in a similar dilemma as you when I had the NAD M50.2 hooked up to a PS Audio DirectStream DAC. Both were good components, but I was missing something, so I went on a DAC hunt. I moved through a number of DACs, including a Lampizator Baltic 3 with over $1K of tubes, but ended up returning it. When I decided down the other path and added an Aurender to the chain, it made a much bigger difference than continuing to upgrade my DAC.

The CXN is absolutely the weak link of the two. Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like to talk about the N200 or any other products Aurender has to offer.

@blisshifi

I was in a similar dilemma as you when I had the NAD M50.2 hooked up to a PS Audio DirectStream DAC. Both were good components, but I was missing something, so I went on a DAC hunt. I moved through a number of DACs, including a Lampizator Baltic 3 with over $1K of tubes, but ended up returning it. When I decided down the other path and added an Aurender to the chain, it made a much bigger difference than continuing to upgrade

A clear example of a lower quality streamer mitigating the performance of a good quality DAC. This is why placing over emphasis on the DAC and relegating the streamer/source component to 2nd class status is a bad idea. A compelling case could be presented that in a good/high resolving audio system the source and DAC have equal sonic influence. Lower resolution systems will very likely obscure the impact. 

Charles

“Curious if that bottleneck would become even more pronounced with a better DAC? ”

@toro3
A better DAC will be more revealing of any shortcomings of components (source) upstream. Since OP owns a very good DAC and already optimized the Ethernet connection by adding ENO, the next logical step to take is; upgrade the streamer.

@jeffseight

No doubt Innuos is good but another most important thing to consider when choosing a streamer is the control app you will be using to manage your music library and browsing music from cloud based streaming services. The Aurender’s conductor app is by far the best app in terms of simplicity, robustness and SQ. This is a critical part of the experience with streamers and usually the difference maker once you get past the hardware implementation. Yes, you pay a bit more upfront with Aurender but you’re getting a lot more in return. The outstanding build quality, excellent customer support and an app interface that’s easy to navigate without impacting the sound quality unlike ROON which we all know, not the best sounding software.
PS: Have you compared ROON with Sense App, what do you think?

Latik,

I tried Innuos Sense briefly when first out and I had issues with functionality

so I went back to Roon where my libraries reside.

I have heard respected makers state the reason they do not incorporate

Roon is the SQ degradation they found. What they do not say is how they

must expose everything and change formats to accommodate Roon.

And likely pay Roon something. So it is not an exciting prospect to some.

Recently I heard Linn folks say they worked out "an accomodation" with

Roon that they could live with hence are now Roon Ready.

So there is a question of bias by makers and using SQ as their defense.

Is there any result of blind testing of Sense vs Roon ? Love to hear it.

I believe both Innuos and Aurender are well-established high-quality products. Aurender is a complete music server component. Innuos  "ZEN" series are complete music servers. Innuos "Pulse" series are streamer/network players. If one does not need or want full music server then a network player is fine and generally speaking less expensive. Both companies have their happy and loyal supporters.

Charles