750$ Intel NUC vs $6000 Aurender N200: I don't hear the difference

yes, not sure a couple recent posters (@mclinnguy ​​@audphile1 ) read your follow-up post from 12/5, wherein you said:

So, me and an audiophile friend got together to sort this out.

“All the caveats were resolved. Both NUC and Aurender used USB, both were fed by Tidal. Now the surprise was that NUC beat Aurender by a nice margin.

The Aurender sounded cleaner and more audiophile but more analytical and lacking lower end bass (hence cleaner we felt).

Roon ROCK on NUC had better bass and was more natural sounding. 

Go figure.

Hmmmm...now if I add a fanless chasis and LPS to my NUC it might sound even cleaner and beat Aurender in every which way.

The N200 is going back.

Anyone talking about noisy network or noisy USB etc are missing the point. This is a shootout under identical conditions. Roon + NUC vs Aurender N200 running Aurender software.”

I’d be interested what about this test is not an appropriate a/b.  Only thing I can think of is that Roon wasn’t running on Aurender, but you’re still getting a test of streamer/software combos, so that seems credible to me.  And if I’m not mistaken, Aurender is not roon-ready, right, so that makes it impossible to just test hardware anyway?

@essrand @mdalton

I did read the whole thread, I was referring to this:

"I again spoke to the dealer. Asked him if he was sure if the unit was burned in. He got back to me yesterday saying it has only 60 hours on it.

Aurender says the N200 needs 150 hours to sound its best. Maybe that is the issue.

The unit is going back and I might demo it again in a few weeks after its 100% fully burnt in."

Therefore no, not ALL caveats were resolved. Look I don’t have a horse in this race, I am not an Aurender owner, I don’t own shares in streaming companies, I am just researching a future streaming purchase and I want opinions/reviews as genuine as possible. I simply asked if the OP ever tried the same N200 again, as suggested here by the OP Apparently not; if he is happy with his Roon Rock, fine!

But I guarantee 99.9% of the people who are reading this thread are scratching their heads, and not just because of the streamer choice, but the choices the OP has made with the other components listed. Maybe he could save more money?

edit: or, maybe he could spend more :) after reading the positive results from @metaldetektor using the Playback streamer with the Nagra it would be curious if you could try one and see if it "beats" the Rock? You must be curious too, no? 😉

@mclinnguy  I see, thanks for the clarification.  I would just note that you may have been a little harsh towards the op here.  He was very clear with respect to his processes for evaluation, much more so than the average poster here in my experience.  And it was he who raised the burn-in question in an attempt to be as fair as possible.  (And of course as you know, burn-in is a highly controversial topic itself, particularly as it relates to electronic devices that are “only” carrying a digital stream to the DAC - I mean, wouldn’t the argument have to be that noise decreases with burn in?  Perhaps a can of worms best left unopened, lol!) So the fact that he didn’t go through an additional, time-consuming process, borrowing an expensive piece of gear from his dealer yet again, doesn’t seem to derserve our disapprobation, imho.

@mdalton 

Just FYI…noise does decrease with burn in when it comes to cd players, transports and streamers. I have experienced this several times myself. 
My N200 took over 200hrs to settle. I wonder if that’s where the N200 designation originated…like Jimmy Two Times…anyway I digress…

The noise floor with the N200 dropped after about 130-140hr mark. A cd transport I was trying out recently exhibited similar behavior. 

As an aside, no one was harsh to anyone here. Some facts, and may be some occasional sarcasm, including the OP’s last post referring to most here being technologically challenged unable to put together a NUC. I kind of find that ironic given the tests that were conducted but hey…. 

So let’s not play the snowflake, “I’m offended” card here. Not warranted in this particular case. 

@audphile1 

A little projection perhaps?  After acknowledging that you hadn’t read the whole thread, you went ahead and posted this:  

“didn’t read the entire thread but I saw this post and it didn’t stop me from trying the N200. The test conducted by the OP is flawed in several ways. 
1. As already mentioned above the N200 is optimized for USB. The spdif out sounds fine but it’s very audible how much better the USB is. (see the posts above talking about the N200 clock)

2. Tidal sound significantly worse than Qobuz with the N200, and I think with Aurender in general.

So for the comparison the N200 was set up in a worst possible way. But even in this configuration I would expect it to beat the nuc. I tried streaming with my mac mini and it doesn’t hold a candle yo the n200. “

Two years ago the op had followed up on his first attempt - one day prior - but in your haste to defend your own decisions/biases, you criticized the op’s test - which had already been corrected - as “flawed”.  In civilized society, this is where we say “I’m sorry.”  But hey, I’m a snowflake.