@essrand, I'm extremely jealous of your Nagra Tube DAC sir. If I were you, I’d have as few powered boxes between my router and your DAC as possible.
750$ Intel NUC vs $6000 Aurender N200: I don't hear the difference
I finally plunged into the source is as important as the DAC belief that is quite prevalent here and decided to test out Aurender N200. And given I have a very highend DAC, thought if the N200 pans out I would go for the N20 or N30.
I was expecting the N200 to blow away my Intel NUC which is 10th gen, core i7, 8GB and running Roon Rock BUT I am switching back and forth between USB playing the Roon Rock, and Co-axial playing Aurender N200, and I don't hear much of a difference maybe a hair, or not even that.
A few caveats: 1) Roon Rock is playing Quboz, N200 is playing Tidal (I am unable to get Qobuz login to the N200 for reason I don't understand).
2) I am comparing Coaxial on N200, USB on Roon Rock.
Caveat #2 can be ignored because I don't hear a difference between Coaxial and USB output of N200.
So either this is an "Emperor has no clothes" moment or I am missing something big. Any thoughts on what I might be missing before I send this N200 back to the dealer on Monday.
Rest of my system: Nagra TUBE DAC -> Accuphase E-650 -> Devore O96 and all Acoustic Revive wiring.
Showing 3 responses by adasdad
@essrand, you’re very welcome sir. I stream almost 100% of the time now because of the convenience factor. At 67yrs old I no longer wish to spend my free time going through my thousands of old scratched up LPs and CDs to find one particular album or song. I built my system specifically for the sound signature of my Chord Hugo TT2 DAC and Chord m scaler upsampler. Most of my cables, interconnects, power supplies, the network switches, and passive RFI/EMI filters like my ENO System Ag, were chosen not because they’re the most expensive, but because they sounded the best to my ears. I was searching the interweb the other day looking for more information about the Nagra Tube DAC and how others implemented it into their audio setups, and I came across a similar discussion on The What’s Best Forum from you I believe. Let me just say that the level of decorum and deference there was quite in opposition to the expletive flavored rants posted here on Audiogon. |
@mclinnguy, you needn’t go all crazy reclocking the signal from your router to your music server if you don’t need to. I put two relatively inexpensive network switches between my CAT6 router and my server, and it really took away any trace of digital glare and harshness that makes streaming music sound less analog than when listening to records or music on tape. |