750$ Intel NUC vs $6000 Aurender N200: I don't hear the difference

@audphile1 

Thank you my friend.  I love this hobby, and I know you do too.  

oh my land!  Please forgive me, but spending alot of money on a power cord for an expensive streamer is nuts, imho, just pissing money away.  As I’ve posted  on this thread previously, I suspect most people with high quality DACs have already wasted some money on an expensive streamer, but don’t throw good money after bad!  While not immune, digital is far less susceptible to noise than analog.  And the Auralic with its stock power cord measures at really low levels of noise; see HiFi News measurements of the Aries 2.1 below.  The place where power cords really matter is downstream in the analog domain, so that’s the DAC, preamp, and amp.

the place to worry most about a power cord is in the analog domain

@steakster 

you gotta be kidding me!  Find one credible authority for your view.  Just one.  

@mclinnguy 

Nope.  You were unfair to the op because you unfairly criticized his process for evaluating his system.  In this case, I responded to a post about spending alot of $ on cables.  I said “maybe a bad idea.”. Very different fact patterns.  Sorry.  Nice try though.

@audphile1 

Have you been drinking?  Maybe you should take a break. And then respond to the substance of my posts.

@audphile1 

“To learn. Challenge yourself and your perception you have built up over the years by saying it’s all sciences.”

Dude, your words.  But when somebody challenges you, you accuse him (or her) of being “a beginner to this hobby.” Who made you the audiophile police anyway?  I’ve had a system since 1977(ish).  And check out my 4 systems on audiogon - I think I have a right to exist. Sorry.

@audphile1 

good lord! 

“you are most likely a beginner in this hobby or someone who’s been around for a while but dismissed listening as a critical, viable and valid means of evaluating audio components and cables.”

there, the full context, not a word of which is true.  Happy?

”It’s none of your business the cables I decide to buy after hearing them bring so much to the table”

Wow!  Then why post? Why ask us questions as to what we should do?  Sorry man, but just cuz I disagree with you doesn’t mean I have less right to respond to a post. 

One other point: Of course measurements (and science) matter.  Here’s an example.  I live in a temperate region where weather hasn’t materially changed.  My experience tells me weather is not changing, ergo, no climate change.  I mean, I know what I’m experiencing, therefore I must be right.  Or maybe my local weather patterns have changed, but I haven’t bothered to monitor the data closely, so I pronounce “no climate change.”  Either way I’m wrong, even though I’m convinced of my rightness.  So let’s welcome the world of science and measurements, where the phenomena we experience /or don’t - are well explained and understood.  I don’t criticize Newton for ruining my experience of the falling apple.  I thank him for enhancing my understanding of it.  

So yes, I think you’re missing a bunch.  

@audphile1 

btw, once again you misrepresent my position.  Your interconnect example is actually consistent with my post - I specifically said that power cables really matter in the analog realm - DACs, amps, preamps.  Do what is your point exactly?

@audphile1 

A little projection perhaps?  After acknowledging that you hadn’t read the whole thread, you went ahead and posted this:  

“didn’t read the entire thread but I saw this post and it didn’t stop me from trying the N200. The test conducted by the OP is flawed in several ways. 
1. As already mentioned above the N200 is optimized for USB. The spdif out sounds fine but it’s very audible how much better the USB is. (see the posts above talking about the N200 clock)

2. Tidal sound significantly worse than Qobuz with the N200, and I think with Aurender in general.

So for the comparison the N200 was set up in a worst possible way. But even in this configuration I would expect it to beat the nuc. I tried streaming with my mac mini and it doesn’t hold a candle yo the n200. “

Two years ago the op had followed up on his first attempt - one day prior - but in your haste to defend your own decisions/biases, you criticized the op’s test - which had already been corrected - as “flawed”.  In civilized society, this is where we say “I’m sorry.”  But hey, I’m a snowflake.

oops, meant “not seen out there”

and here’s the Aurender you actually tried, right?  The much more expensive Aurender’s measurements are marginally better played thru the Mytec - a cheap DAC compared to yours! - but likely inaudible.  And the N200 thru the Mytec measures exactly the same as the Vokumio. Just sayin….

oops, hers the link:

@mclinnguy  I see, thanks for the clarification.  I would just note that you may have been a little harsh towards the op here.  He was very clear with respect to his processes for evaluation, much more so than the average poster here in my experience.  And it was he who raised the burn-in question in an attempt to be as fair as possible.  (And of course as you know, burn-in is a highly controversial topic itself, particularly as it relates to electronic devices that are “only” carrying a digital stream to the DAC - I mean, wouldn’t the argument have to be that noise decreases with burn in?  Perhaps a can of worms best left unopened, lol!) So the fact that he didn’t go through an additional, time-consuming process, borrowing an expensive piece of gear from his dealer yet again, doesn’t seem to derserve our disapprobation, imho.

yes, not sure a couple recent posters (@mclinnguy ​​@audphile1 ) read your follow-up post from 12/5, wherein you said:

So, me and an audiophile friend got together to sort this out.

“All the caveats were resolved. Both NUC and Aurender used USB, both were fed by Tidal. Now the surprise was that NUC beat Aurender by a nice margin.

The Aurender sounded cleaner and more audiophile but more analytical and lacking lower end bass (hence cleaner we felt).

Roon ROCK on NUC had better bass and was more natural sounding. 

Go figure.

Hmmmm...now if I add a fanless chasis and LPS to my NUC it might sound even cleaner and beat Aurender in every which way.

The N200 is going back.

Anyone talking about noisy network or noisy USB etc are missing the point. This is a shootout under identical conditions. Roon + NUC vs Aurender N200 running Aurender software.”

I’d be interested what about this test is not an appropriate a/b.  Only thing I can think of is that Roon wasn’t running on Aurender, but you’re still getting a test of streamer/software combos, so that seems credible to me.  And if I’m not mistaken, Aurender is not roon-ready, right, so that makes it impossible to just test hardware anyway?

@mclinnguy 

Hah!  Sorry about that, just seemed like the right word for the occasion.  Re the opened can of worms, as you can probably tell, I’m highly skeptical, though truth be told, I recently paid a few bucks more on a cable purchase for burn-in. It’s kind of like deciding to pray if I’m on a plane that’s going down.  But I digress.  We hear so much about components and/or processes that “lower the noise floor” or create “blacker blacks”, etc.  Some I believe, some I don’t.  But removing noise strikes me as one of the easier things to measure.  So, for example, if a manufacturer claims a streamer experiences less noise - which could in turn help us hear some of the subtle cues noted in the literature you quoted - the a simple signal-to-noise ratio measurement (or its ilk) , would prove the point beyond a shadow of a doubt.  And that’s something I’ve seen out there in manufacturers’ literature.  Manufacturers say a lot of things, but sometimes they’re just not true.  btw, love your system!

@mclinnguy 

one last point.  had to look up MPS-6 🥴.  That piece includes a dac, right?  Which means there’s alot going on there in the analog realm, which is where I’m more inclined to believe the potential effects of burn-in could be non-trivial.

I don’t know man, hard to understand how after having proven that a $6000 streamer didn’t do anything for you, now you wanna buy an $11,000 one.  But hey, knock yourself out!

I get it.  I just think you found your answer over a year and a half ago when you posted this:

“The lesson I have gotten is that the effect of the server mainly depends on how competent your DAC is with input signal. Mine (Nagra Tube DAC) seems to be very competent because of various design reasons and has taken particular efforts to negate the bad effects of USB input. So I don't need to waste time with music servers just like Jay with his MSB Select 2 DAC. YMMV.”

Your conclusion there is consistent with actual data from reports done by Paul Miller of Hifi News whenever they review streamers.  He shows the amount of jitter and noise as inferred at the receiving DAC, and the quality of jitter rejection and noise filtering is highly variable across DACs.  But in certain cases, no matter how great the measurements are for a streamer, it’s largely irrelevant because of the DAC.  I think you just need to declare victory and enjoy the music.  Another less costly approach would be to try one of the much less costly streamers out there that measure magnificently - e.g. Volumio Rivo - and see what you get.  Here’s the review/measurements of an Aurender, btw:

and here it is for a Volunio

@audphile1 

I’m sure it was unintentional but you misrepresented my position.  I absolutely agree that different DACs sound different, and that the oft-cited measurements of DACs (e.g., by ASR) are woefully inadequate to accurately representing the complexity of the differences in sound.  But the process involving streamers - right up to where a data stream is introduced to the DAC - strikes me as fundamentally different.  There’s digital data, there’s jitter, and other sources of noise, and for these, there are rather straightforward measures.  I base this on my review of a significant number of what I believe to be credible sources - engineers, designers, etc. - who are infinitely smarter than me on the topic.  

I don’t think saying “everything matters” is a rigorous first principle.  A/B comparisons are really, really hard; aural memory sucks; confirmation bias is real.  I don’t fault people who think they hear differences where I doubt they exist.  I believe they are earnest and well-meaning.  We make these same mistakes in all walks of life - our views of people, politics, sports.  But I’m a big believer in starting from a shared set of facts - truths if you will - and I see an opportunity for one here.  So while our failure to come to agreement on this one isn’t a threat to democracy, I do thing it’s a lost opportunity.  

So let’s just agree to disagree, and agree not to move towards tribalism.  (Not saying you were, btw.)  And thanks for your engagement with me, and more importantly, the op. 

@essrand 

One other slightly off topic observation (please forgive me in advance as I know you didn’t ask for this input):  I love your system.  It has a simple, classic elegance to it that i imagine must be very satisfying.  (As in the opposite of fussy.) I’ve never heard the Accuphase, though I’ve heard much positive about it.  At the same time, with the efficiency of those Devores, have you played at all with any lower power alternatives, including perhaps tubes?  Would love to hear your experiences if you have.

@essrand 

oh, nice!   To me, Shindo is like climbing the mountain to meet buddha.  my other buddha is a Koetsu on a Garrard, which I have.  Please keep us apprised.

@audphile1 

I was being polite.