Solo streamer

Getting back to the Aurender N200, the only problem I have with it, as mentioned before, is the extreme dynamic range. It’s very disconcerting to be immensely enjoying a track and then be blown up by an ear splitting, unnatural uptake in volume. Lowering the overall volume can make the rest of it unenjoyable because the music becomes almost inaudible. Thank goodness this does not happen with the majority of tracks.

Oh well, i guess one must take the extremely good with the bad. Otherwise, I love it.

“It’s very disconcerting to be immensely enjoying a track and then be blown up by an ear splitting, unnatural uptake in volume.”
@rvpiano

10 plus years with Aurender, I never experienced this in my system. A streamer job is to faithfully transmit digital bits to your DAC. Could it be the subpar sound quality on some of those tracks that leading to unnatural sound?

A recording with poor or low Dynamic Range would sound hot and unnatural. This is one of reason that I always verify the DR of a digital recording or file before buying.

Your DAC is known to be unforgiving so with N200 high resolution, you’re hearing everything…the good and the bad of original data stream. 

@lalitk 

Probably the best explanation.

@rvpiano I haven’t experienced what you’re describing with volume variance being this dramatic. I agree with @lalitk as to the reasons why - it is the recording. However there are many other factors that can contribute to this such as DAC, preamp and amp, where the components cannot reproduce the dynamic range of the recording correctly and you end up with higher than necessary volume settings on a quiet passages and get your eardrums pierced when the DR is in the norm for the electronics

May be you can post the album and track you were listening to when this happened?