Aurender comparison question


Thanks in advance for your thoughts. I’ve been reading all relevant posts I could find over the last few days and it’s been very helpful.

My question is which of the following combination would you recommend given my other equipment and usage? I have what was a pretty high-end home theater/audiophile set up almost 20 years ago (Proceed, Levinson, Revel)... Now that I’m an empty nester, I’m shifting back to a pure 2-channel audio set-up and simplifying to a sound bar system for the television.

I will keep the Revel Studio >> Levinson 532 >> Proceed AVP2 (has a nice analog preamp function) signal chain. I also have an Oppo105 that I picked up a few years ago that I can use as a transport. I’m in progress on ripping 500+ CDs to FLAC and have another 100ish SACD’s that I’ll keep or rip. Maybe another 50 direct downloads of hi-rez FLAC and DSD recordings. I also enjoy Tidal but tend to purchase recordings once I hear something I like via streaming. I could probably get by with 2TB of storage, 4 might be nice. Staying somewhere around $5K would make explaining to my non-audiophile wife easier. Full MQA would be great but isn’t a deal killer.

I’m looking for a music server & DAC pair to send the signal to the AVP2. I’ve been focused on Aurender but am open minded:

1) A10 - simple and straight forward
2) N100h with the Mytek Brooklyn - similar in functionality to #1 but higher rez DSD and maybe more future flexibility?
3) N100h with Mytek Manhattan - outside the price range but might be able to swing it by getting the N100h now and running it through the Oppo105 DAC while saving the extra $$
4) N100 with PS Audio Direct Stream - same as #3 above
5) Something else I’m not thinking of?

I understand I could use a NAS/computer/software option and save money but I like the simplicity of a purpose-built server and the Conductor curation software looks very usable.

Thanks!

Thomas






brownheron