Solo streamer

Regarding critical listening on the Aurender, I don’t know why, but it seems to constrict the sound. With it off the sound opens up very appealingly. Again I don’t know why that happens, Theoretically, it should sound better with it on, but after much back and forth comparison it doesn’t sound as transparent.
Maybe it’s just my ears.

@rvpiano I’m between DACs now and have one en route for a Tuesday/Wednesday delivery. I’ll compare when everything is hooked up and running again. Will let you know. Been spinning CDs on my $49 15 year old DVD player the last few days. Any music is better than no music! Miss streaming big time!

You know something I thought of…is it possible that the N200 has lower noise in CLM and sounds cleaner vs a bit more jitter going to your DAC in regular mode, which causes the DAC to sound slightly brighter when it’s dealing with a bit more jitter, resulting in you perceiving it as more open sound? Because I don’t recall CLM reducing sound quality…if anything it darkens the background a bit making everything sound slightly clearer. I know benchmark states their dacs are immune to jitter. They also state that USB cables and power cords won’t affect their dacs, which I found to not be true when I owned DAC 3 HGC…just speculating…

My condolences for your lack of a streamer.  It must be tough.

I just tried an experiment. I played critical mode using coax instead of USB and the sound improved. I’m going to keep in on this setting for a while.

Once you start to listen for sound, you really screw up your perception of reality. Every little thing is scrutinized and you lose track of the big picture, the music.  
i’m happiest with my original settings and sticking with them.  I also like seeing the display.