Connecting a streamer to the SGCD via USB

Audio Components DACs
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@Craig_Burgess

Cool. Was your initial goal to have the itunes library serve as a NAS for the Aurender? By outputting from iTunes to the Aurender isn’t that going over AirPlay which can’t do high res and is somehow funky even with CD quality? I forget what the story is, something about how AirPlay compresses the files.

I too quizzed Aurender about the external hard drive and was told the same, that it’s easy to change and the warranty would be voided. I then asked that if I reinstalled the original hard drive prior to service if they had anyway of knowing that I changed the hard drive to begin with. They ignored that question :grinning:

Fair enough, I’ll give it 2 years before messing around inside.

What sort of sound quality improvement have you experienced over the Node?

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Yes, my initial hope was to have the iMac act as a NAS, with the files stored on its external drive. As far as the quality issue is concerned, I’m not entirely sure if Airplay is involved or not. It was with the Node, for sure, since the only way I could play the iTunes library through the Node was for the phone to retrieve the files via Wifi, and then push them to the Node via Airplay. With the Aurender, I’m not sure. It’s largely academic, though, because either way, anything stored by iTunes is going to be limited to 16/44.1 even if it’s been ripped as AIFF or just a straight-up copy of the disc’s WAV files. Consequently, I don’t usually listen that way unless it’s for those relatively few albums I bought from the iTunes store. They come with copy protection that limits you to 4 or 5 copies (I think), and I have some that have been copied or burned to disc often enough, the only way they still play is through iTunes. So in those cases, I’ll send content to the Aurender from that library and just live the with sound I get.

I’ve heard definite improvements as the system has evolved, but i’s tough to attribute specific changes to the use of the Aurender. For starters, well before I got the Aurender, I switched from the Node’s internal DAC to the one in my Stellar Gain Cell, which was an eye-popping, night-and-day improvement in clarity, contrast and dynamics. So what I hear now, with the Aurender, is surely at least in part due to the better DAC (though I’ve also since moved on to a used DSD Jr that I picked up from The Music Room). Plus, considering that 99% of what I listened to through the Node was content pushed to it through Airplay, it’s not a real apples-to-apples comparison to the current setup.

The best I can do is tell you that right now I’m extremely happy with my sound, and in my current setup (Aurender and Perfectwave SACD transport as digital sources, the DSD Jr DAC, the Stellar Gain Cell preamp, M700 amps, Maggie .7s with a pair of REL T/7x subs), When I compare the Aurender to the PSA transport, I hear only the subtlest improvements in transparency with the transport. And that holds whether I’m comparing CDs to their rips, or comparing DSD discs with their copied files. But I have to stress that those differences are about as tiny as can be and still be discernable, to the point that most people would probably say they’re identical. How much of that apparent closeness in quality is due to objectively comparable performance, or how much might be the result of the resolving limits of my system (or of my ears) masking bigger differences, I can’t say.

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Interesting. It’s almost assuredly going over Airplay to the Aurender, for better or worse. Of course, CD’s ripped to iTunes can only be 16/44.1 but iTunes is very capable of handling high res PCM. I have several TB of high res files in iTunes to which Roon connects.

I also once had the SGCD, then the DSJ, then a Border Patrol, and now settled on Marantz which I find does a great job with both high res and redbook, even if it’s not an A+ recording. And I have the LRS with Magna Riser stands. In between is a Decware ZRock2 (amazing), Decware CSP3 preamp, and a Marantz Model 30 run as a power amp.

Just hoping the Aurender can match the Marantz SACD 30n as a transport in terms of sound quality. If so, I’ll cut Roon loose entirely. I have gone through so many hoops to make a Mac Mini be a good enough server, just hasn’t worked out.

Aurender’s low power, customized mother board philosophy is very appealing.

Thanks for the feedback.

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FWIW, the new Aurender line with the Intel CPU (the old line has AMD) will become Roon Ready. They weren’t able to do it with the AMD. The Intel is lower power, yet more powerful than AMD. Though Aurender insists Conductor will still sound better than Roon.

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Have had the N100H for 10 days. It’s a wonderful device. I find it to be a noticeable sonic improvement over Roon on a Mac Mini (a variety of iterations). The Aurender comes very close to my beloved Marantz SACD 30n, which has a slightly silkier top end. The N100H a touch more detailed.

The Aurender is putting an end to my computer audio days.

Conductor is another matter. It’s rather mediocre. Is stable, sounds great, but is clunky and counterintuitive.

But overall, the Aurender is very impressive with great customer service. I wanted to know if my dac could handle native DSD from the Aurender (no DoP). I left the Dac and N100H on overnight and a tech in South Korea remotely checked the usb backend and determined that yes, native DSD would work. Ticked a box in Conductor and it works perfectly.

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But in the end, decided to return the Aurender. The Conductor app proved too dated and wonky.

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I only had BluOS to compare it to, and other than its appearance onscreen, I didn’t find a lot of difference in capabilities, at least not enough to want to go back to using the Node as my streamer. I like the Aurender a lot better.

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Unfortunately after 4 years of Roon, Conductor was like a trip to a quaint medieval village. It’s at least 10 years behind.

But sound quality is great. Though for streaming, I’m getting nearly same from an iFi ZenStream with Elite power supply and a Curious Evolved USB cable.