Aurender Music Server and CD Transport comparison

Just a follow up to my original post. Those who say upgrade the DAC have no clue what the NAD M2 amplifier is. It is a DAC on steroids. It is purely digital built in collaboration with Diodes Zetex. Since it only sold for one year, I doubt anybody here has actually heard it.

For @2psyop  the Audiogon detective go to my Instagram and look at the photos of my two systems. Satisfied? I had the Herron/Tetra in my condo but took it to my cabin where there is more room and sounds a lot better. The smaller system is now in my condo. I did try the transport in my cabin system but I already have an Audiolab CD player and my Rega RP7 turntable.

In the end I purchased a Primare DD35. I am still on the fence if I like it. The build quality is top notch but the sound is different than my Aurender. It is a little bass heavy that I am not fond of. A/B testing between the CD and a FLAC file is quite noticeable. In hindsight I think I needed to put more money into a transport to better the Aurender. Live and learn.

A lot of you seem to be using products that have Oppo transports. Is it the same drive as used in the Oppo 103/5 203/5 blu-ray players?

If so I highly suggest checking out Oppomod.com as they sell a stabilizer plate mod kit for those drives. The improvement was pretty incredible with disc playback.

It’s a fully cnc machined kit that just bolts onto the top frame of the drive, which usually is easily accessible in most transports.

My experience is that a pretty decent CD player used as a transport only or a CD transport into a really nice DAC outperforms the servers into the same DAC.

I use the Aurender with my music burned onto the internal hard drive, listen to the same music streamed via the Aurender.  not much change at all.  But streamed via Qobuz sounds better.  However, when I use my CD transport into my DAC with the same music, it definitely sounds better.  match levels, play the same music and listen.  There are definitely differences.

Don't get me wrong.  The Aurender streamed into my DAC, sounds great.  The Aurender playing from the hard drive into my DAC ounds great.  The CD transport into my DAC sounds better. Depends on how lazy I am.  However, if I'm really not lazy, turntable into the phono stage sound best.

enjoy

wwe are an nad dealer the m2 was decent but nowhere as good as the newer models like the m33

as per a transport I would look at an Atoll dr 200 transport which uses a superbly built cd transport from Teac so parts are easily sourced

Digital signal isolation with a specific 1:1 transformer dedicated to S/PDIF and AES/EBU outputs.

• Linear power supply for digital stages with a specific 30 VA transformer.
• made in France.

Dave and Troy

audio intellect NJ

NAD and atoll dealers