A Somewhat, Affordable Aurender

@oddiofyl so what do hear better coming from your N200 over that of the Vault, using the same Lab 12 DAC?

@swede58 I compared the N200 against the Lumin U2 earlier this summer as I had a client who traded in the U2 to move back to Aurender. 

In short, I strongly preferred the N200. It is far more resolving and presents such that it has a much lower noise floor. Resolution and detail retrieval is much greater, whereas the U2 sounded congested. As the N200 is $1,300, I expected it to be better, but not that much better. Its performance surprised me as to how much audibly better it was.

I wish I could say that the Lumin U2 was more “musical”, but I didn’t find it that engaging, either. At the same time, I had an Innuos Zen Mini MK2 with the LPS, and honestly, despite its lower price point, I enjoyed it more than the U2. The Innuos was warm and engaging, even if it, too, was not able to deliver the resolution, imaging, and soundstaging of the N200. But for less critical listeners, the Innuos can go a long way.

In full transparency, I am an Aurender dealer, but these are my own personal experiences with these products. 

@blisshifi ​@oddiofyl 

👍🙏

Big open sound with great low end. As Blisshifi said, great detail and resolution. It’s not cheap but the build , sound , and support is top notch. If I didn’t leverage a trade toward mine I would probably not have purchased it outright and that would have been a shame because it’s that good.

I was listening to Pink Floyd The Final Cut tonight and there is a lot of low level detail throughout that lesser transports whether optical or rendering miss. These mumblings are crystal clear and intelligible with the N200

The Vault is in a second system and I still use it everyday but when time allows and I really want to get lost in the music I fire up the main system.

I just picked up the excellent sounding Teac 701t so if I own the physical disc I will play that but due to convenience and overall great quality I find myself using the Aurender.a lot

I just installed the LHY SW-6 Ethernet switch and am using a media converter between the modem and SW-6 SFP port. The switch’s isolated ether jack feeds the Aurender.

I think I am at the point where my digital front end amazes me and I’m afraid to further mess with it.

@oddiofyl OK,thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, have a great weekend!