Aurender N20 Streamer & Holo May DAC vs Analog

@lordmelton 

I am within my 60 days at Music Direct, so will return Delta NR power cable.  I’ll look for used Sigma v2 NR cable. 

What do you hear with the Aurender that you don't hear with a BlueSound Node 2i?  If you can hear a significant difference, what would I hear that is different?  I might consider upgrading if there is a significant difference in sound quality.  Would I benefit more if I added a DAC to my BlueSound?   

Would it be blasphemy to say that if you de-couple the streamer's true purpose of delivering a file un-altered to the DAC on the back end that the front end is what matters?  For my money ROON does the front-end the best.

Now if you can find a streamer with a ROON core, do a blind test where the only thing you change is the streamer, your expensive Aurender streamer or any PC with a ROON client installed, can you actually tell the difference?

Theoretically if the streamer is not altering the file's contents the answer should be obvious.

So, what do your ears tell you (no cheating on the blind testing)?

In the final analysis the source file is what matters the most of all.  Try some 384 Khz 32 Bit Floating Point (see DXD specification for details) files out to see what they sound like.  On every single system they will improve the sound; better sonics make better sound not streamers.

Cheers

“if you can find a streamer with a ROON core”

There lies your rub @recherche ….so many variables with finding a one box ROON solution without the complexities of a science project or paying top dollars.

Streamers from Aurender, Innuos, Lumin and Auralic offers elegant one box solution….those who says they can do it cheaper and make it sound as good as the offerings from aforementioned brands, more power to them. I am not going to get in the way of their double, triple blind test escapades :-)

It’s worth to develop and upgrade both sources. I have to admit that some albums  are sounds much, much better from analog branch of my system, however some other albums are amazingly better from two of my digital branches. Depends on lots of factors.