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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. 

essrand

Showing 1 response by mesonto

mesonto
73 posts
 

In the same light I had an Innous player come in for an audition. It was played through USB. My normal player is an Intel nuc i3 with 8gb ram, using Audirvana 3.5 and out a Matrix USB card all attached to a LPS. 

The Innous was bested by a bit but both were fairly close.

Later I brought in a Bryston BDP-3 player and went through the same audition. This time the Bryston player won out. But again the difference was minimal. As a side note, the software although seemingly old school, is extremely quick, and bug free.

I would now like to bring in an Aurender  to try again, but I think due to their software issues I read about online, I really don't want to deal with those problems.

p.s. Introducing Roon never helps the sound quality, and it is why I will never buy it even though the interface seems to be second to none.

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