Ayon S5 VS Aurender W20

Aurender W20 is the best digital source I have heard so far. It sounded great in pair with Vitus RD-100 DAC. But W20 achieves the best results with MSB and dCS DACs because you can use a single clock (internal in case of MSB and external in case of dCS) for W20 and a connected DAC.
If you are looking for the best streamer you should try Linn Klimax. I heard Klimax DS and Lumin A1 face to face. The latter sounded thin and uninvolving in comparison with DS. And I doubt A1 can compete even with Linn Akurate DS. Linn streamers sound warm and extremely transparent, especially versions with internal preamps (DSM).

Linn is quite poor in streamers. They use old and even cheap
parts in their topmodels. The used dac's are cheap parts and
not that special.

You have to compare the S1 with the Linn and also other
topmodels.

The focus on a drive like the W20 and expensive dac's need to
be on the colour pallet of the mid freq. This is the weakest
part. When you use classical music it is quite easy to hear
and understand what is missing.

I am often surprised how F. deaf many people are at shows when
this part is missing. When I look at them I see that they are
not even aware of it.

This is for me a very important part what I tell and demo to
all my clients. It is important that people understand how
music need to be and what these differences do to music and
emotion.

Last week I had this discussion also with Desmond of Pass
Labs. There needs to be more focus on realism and quality!

Aurender W20 is an excellent source and it's sound quality completely depends on the DAC quality. But if your DAC has internal clock and has no clock input, then there is no sense in using W20, S10 will sound equal to W20 in this case.

Linn Klimax DS is the best digital streamer I have heard so far. I think the situation will change as soon as MSB release their Network Renderer which will turn their DAC IV plus into digital streamer. It would be very interesting to compare Klimax DS with fully loaded Platinum DAC IV plus.

By the way, Lumin use the same "cheap" and "old" parts in all their models as well, because their streamers in general are copies of Linn's. But Linn streamers have high quality firmware, which Lumin streamers lack of.
Yes, it is logical to compare Klimax DS with Lumin S1. But the difference between Klimax DS and and Lumin A1 is more significant than between Klimax and Akurate DS, so S1 should sound much much better than A1 to compete with Klimax.

"By the way, Lumin use the same "cheap" and
"old" parts in all their models as well, because
their streamers in general are copies of Linn's."

If you are saying these things you are F. blind.

Lumin S1:

http://www.luminmusic.com/lumin-s1.html

http://www.vassagohifi.dk/cms/typo3temp/pics/e7e74c5148.jpg

Linn Klimax DS:

http://av.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20071005/ina1_04.jpg

Audio is always about facts and not about nonsense what a F.
idiot is saying.

The S1 owns a superior powersuppy and dac compared to the
cheaper powersupply and dac of the Linn.

The Linn Klimax DS is using the Wolfson WM8741 dac and works
till 192 khz and cannot play DSD128.

The S1 is using 4 ESS SABRE32 Reference DAC chips to deliver a
total of 16 DACs per channel. This dac is far superior to the
Wolfson dac above.

Lumin bought the Linn Klimax DS a few years ago to create a
superior streamer. They achieved this with the S1.

There is nothing special about Lumin power supply. If they wanted to create high-quality power supply they would make something like MSB top Power Bases.

Linn could easily create such type of power supply. It is not more expensive that their own SMPS.

"The Linn Klimax DS is using the Wolfson WM8741 dac and works
till 192 khz and cannot play DSD128."
Anyway, the ability to play DSD does not influence the soundquality of Lumin.

"This dac is far superior to the Wolfson dac above."
I see no reason to claim that. Some people say that Wolfson is more musical DAC with more analog-like sound, while Sabre is more "digital". I am sure that is the main reason, why Linn use Wolfson in their players.

Lumin wanted to attract some attention to their top player (S1), that is why they replaced Wolfson with Sabre. If you just change the DAC model it is not an upgrade - you need to change and tune a lot of other things in audio device to make it sound better. I doubt Lumin did it.

P.S. There are a lot of fake Chinese Iphones, but the original one is still superior...
Adn Linn just let Lumin make the copy (if Linn did not want it, Lumin would never be able to do it). This means that they are sure that Lumin can not compete with their players.