Personally I would keep the Aurender because of the hard drive capability. In my Aurender N150 I have a few hundred albums on the SSD drive, my entire CD collection ripped in WAV format. I use the streaming with Qobuz a fair amount but mainly play my CD collection that’s inside the unit on the hard drive and that sound quality blows away anything streaming can offer.
Why I Sold My Aurender N200
People seemed more interested in why I sold my N200 than wanted to answer my questions in my last post on streaming quality, so here ya go:
I recently sat down with my wife (who has a much better ear for sound quality than I) and we A/B tested back and forth between listening to the N200 and the Bricasti M1 SE II’s network card and heard no difference.
Just before selling the N200 I contacted a very well-known and reputable dealer for his opinion on this. If anyone would know about the sound quality of streaming, he would and I asked what streamer he would recommend. He sells Bricasti, Playback Design, Lumin and Grimm streamers. his response to me was:
"In my humble opinion, there is no need to get a dedicated streamer if you have the network board in the Bricasti"
Most member’s comments are very positive on their N200, maybe you guys have much better ears than us, so please enjoy, but in my case, I sold it and gave the much-needed funds to my daughter who is just about to start her last semester at law school.
End of story.
Hope you all had wonderful Christmas and here’s wishing you all a Happy New Year!
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Try adding a Baaske MI2005 or MI1005 to the ethernet cable to clean up the signal before going into the Bricasti. |
Congratulations on raising a high functioning daughter. When we are older and needy our well-raised children pay dividends. After buying, borrowing, trying a lot of digital front end pieces my conclusion is this: My ear keeps changing. What sounded like butter 5 years ago sounds like silverware being dropped in the commode today. I guess it’s age related however my hearing tests show no loss. My conclusion is this: play what makes me smile- or tear up. This is a luxury hobby and I’ll never achieve “value” in trading gear- just the thrill of the next thing that aids me in discovering the music.
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Now just sit back and enjoy a good glass of wine and listen to music with your wife. It’s hard to put a price tag on a level of improved sound quality. Like you, if I’m going to upgrade a component and spend several thousand dollars more, I expect to hear a significant difference. A percentage that I always keep in mind is 30-40 percent. Is 10-20 percent improvement in sound quality worth $3, 5 or 7K more, probably not. This is where your ears and gut kick in. Don’t look back, enjoy your system and life. |
- 61 posts total