Aurender N200

Don’t you just love it when people make completely unfounded statements. They are replete in audio.

Thanks for your responses.

 

@budburma @jmlm 

To add to Lalit’s comments, there are a few other differences and improvements. 

The N10 has the advantage of an AES output and slightly better clock, but the benefits gained from that are not as strong as those gained in the newer N200. 

The power supply in the N200 allows for a lower noise floor and improved dynamics that Lalit mentions. Many will agree the N200 sounds better as a result, and for less money. Even the Aurender team is surprised with the performance for the cost, considering the N200’s retail is $2K less than the Aurender. 

The N200 has an uninterruptible power supply, which means that during power outages, the N200 safely shuts down. Previous generation units are not guaranteed to have this, and I have had plenty of customers with legacy units that have experienced corruption due to improper shut downs. 

Roon support is also likely coming to Aurender in the next quarter or two. Older Aurender units including the N10 will not be supported as the architecture is completely different. 

I am an authorized Aurender dealer and would be happy to discuss any other questions if you have them. Feel free to PM or call me to chat. 

@budburma @jmlm

The older generation models, N100, N10 has a laid back, less dynamic and not as lively sound as newer generation models, N200, N20, N30SA. I have transitioned through few Aurender’s over the years and while N10 is a pretty darn good streamer, it’s now dated. I would get N200 even if it cost bit more money. The newer generation models are clearly an improvement especially in the areas of low frequency extension and slam. I recently transitioned from N20 to N30SA and I’m done for a while. 

I just want to bump budburma’s question regarding specific differences in performance between the N10 and N200. Would anyone be able to elaborate on this? Thanks.

@fthompson251 Nice! Your gunna love it. Coincidentally I was spinning vinyl all afternoon today,something I do less and less of. I was thinking man vinyl sounds so  much better than streaming, got lazy a little later and switched over to my N200 feeding a Pontus two, Wow, instantly I was blown away, wait, does it sound better? Played a half dozen of the same songs I had just listened to on vinyl on the N200, wow its a toss up, sure they sounded a little different but for  overall sound quality I really feel like I could go either way now and be happy, enjoy!

Well yesterday I received my N200 from Juan @ Blisshifi and the transaction went smooth as silk. It's been running non stop since April 10 at noon. Listened to it today and it is sounding really good already vs my old CXN V2. I have a Wireworld Silver Electra 7 PC on it and Illuminations D-60 to my DDC unit. More spacious soundstage, a lot more clarity on the top end with delineation and definition right out of the box. Good stuff.

Enjoy !  Great machine 

Hooked up the new N200 today.  Sounds great right out of the box.  Can’t wait to get some hours on it hear it open up!  Running it into a Qutest dac and primaluna integrated.

Shout out to Juan at blisshifi!  Thanks for hooking me up!  Great buying experience!

I bought an N200 and put it in place of my A10, which I was using only to stream.  The SQ is excellent and a step above the very fine A10.  I was able to snag an open box unit at a good discount and am pleased with my purchase.  I thought about putting the A10 in my second system but think I have decided to keep using the Rose 250 there.  Thus, I need to pass the A10 on to a new home.  

Nice.   I'm sure you will love it.   There will be a new version of Conductor, not sure if it is an enhancement of "3" but I got the impression it will be a full upgrade 

It's  great machine.   Enjoy

Oddiofyl, I pulled the trigger on the N200 late last week.  I should have have it in my system by Thursday evening.  Looking forward to giving her a listen.  

Thanks for your input oddiofyl.  It seems to check all the boxes for me.  

I am listening to it right now actually.....  It has been great .  I bought a new turntable a few weeks ago so it took a little nap for awhile.   

I had a few issues with the way the menu was rendered with my Android but they took care of it remotely.   Aurender support is really good.  They respond quickly and you can allow them remote access to roll back firmware, add firmware , tweak,  etc.

Sound quality is excellent.    My Vault 2i sounded good , the N200 is much better as a "transport" for all things digital.  

I can rip songs with the Vault and pull them across the network to the 4tb SSD  I installed.   The built in Radio functions are OK,   I had the opportunity to use the Beta of  "V Radio" and it was much better.   I guess its not ready for prime time but it is supposed to return in Conductor 4 software.  

One thing that I can not stress enough with streamers , especially ones costing this much is the support.   It is crucial to the enjoyment of these devices.   Aurender Support is the best support I have encountered in a device that is software driven. 

Ranks up there with the best service in general I have received from a company 

 

Oddiofyl,

 

came across this thread recently and am wondering how the N200 is serving you.  It is on my short list for a new streamer.

Aurender just had an update for the N200…. Not sure if it is also for other machines but it’s worth  checking 

I will tell you how good Aurender support is.   Last week I tried checking for updates and got an “Error “ message.   I clicked on the support tab and the next morning I got an email saying that they are working on new firmware.   Last night I got an email from Kelly letting me know the latest firmware is ready..   They are on point over there ! 

Aurender made some updates to Conductor 3. It seems completely stable now with Andriod . It looks as if the problem with it losing connection has been solved. Much better.

I copied some songs on HDD to  the 4 TB SSD I installed and it was easy.  I scanned the drive and it got most of the artwork and titles .  It actually did a pretty good job considering there were several formats.    I am loving this thing more the more I use it.  

Thanks all.  I connected another DAC that displays sampling rates and  I see what's happening.    

“When I play a MQA track into my non MQA DAC it identifies the sample rate as 96k on the DAC but the Aurender says “44.1k MQA”

@oddiofyl

With MQA license, the Aurender MQA Core decoder in N200 can only unfold first layer of MQA files, thus the 88.2kHz or 96kHz sample rate reading on your non-MQA DAC. Technically, there is no audible difference between 88.2kHz or 96kHz files. Only you can access if there is a ‘value’ in keeping both subscription. I tossed out Tidal after extended A/B in favor of Qobuz.

@oddiofyl 

When I play a MQA track into my non MQA DAC it identifies the sample rate as 96k on the DAC but the Aurender says “44.1k MQA

This is not correct, 2x 44.1k is 88.2k but MQA doesn't upsample. Maybe do a full shutdown and restart on your N200. Do you have upsampling switched on?

Go to MQA Core upgrade in Settings and switch to enable. My N20 came with MQA Core installed but you may need to buy it from Google Play.

You will need an MQA DAC for 176.4/192 Khz unfolding.

When a component keeps you up until 1 or 2 am every night it's worth the money....  that's all I can say about the Aurender.   Its amazing what it can do.  Sounds great too.  

I was curious about how Tidal would sound through it.  I had activated the MQA license just because and was curious how it would handle files with it “ON”.   
 

When I play a MQA track into my non MQA DAC it identifies the sample rate as 96k on the DAC but the Aurender says “44.1k MQA “

Any insight into why ?   Does it with higher sample rates too.  Basically reads 2x on the DAC

Yes, it's strange but hopefully it won't reappear.   It was super annoying,   which was really annoying because it sounds so good.    Gremlins.....

Glad to hear! Fingers crossed. 

Update on problems with signal lock,  I was away for a few days and left the system unplugged.  Returned , powered back up and the problem with signal acquisition was gone.   I really like this DAC, that was a weird and frustrating problem.   Hopefully it is gone for good

I have used Roon and really don't need it , the Conductor App is easy and fairly intuitive.   I am not adding another subscription,  I have enough thanks 

I demo'd a product a few months ago in a Roon environment and wasn't impressed , and it didn't sound great, ok but not great.   And it should have,  was it the system or the source ? Not sure but I wasn't wowed

“Aurender does not support Roon”

Thank goodness! Each time I met with chief designer and owner of Aurender at audio shows, I thanked them for not caving into Roon and sticking with simple yet very robust Conductor app.

Consumer always wins when there is a healthy competition!

The Aurender pulls your Playlist from wherever they are, it will pull from local drives or Tidal / Qobuz from what it looks like.  

Aurender does not support Roon.   

Does the N200 have a roon core that also allows you to use playlists? I purchased two streamers and neither one does playlists created from Flac I have on a Freenas. No playlist functionality.  You can only play one or all items in the SAME directory.  You can shuffle/repeat from the SAME directory. There's no way to make a playlist from album "A" followed by two from "B", one from "C", etc.  It's one or all from "A" and then navigate manually to "B" or "C", etc.  As much flexibility as playing individual CDs all stored on a disk.
How would it work if I was using a Trinnov routing to the amps?

Chiming in late here, but also looking at used Aurender N200 vs. N10. I wonder is anyone can comment on how the two compare as both streamer and server/player.

I just wanted to say how responsive Aurender is with support.    Super fast and helpful.    This was a great purchase.    They are working on an update that should be out soon that will address Android disconnects

Honestly the Vault wasn’t exactly super stable, have to close all programs for the Tab to find the Vault 

Minor issues I can live with in a product category that is always being refined through firmware.  

This N200 is amazing what it can do.   I had some content on a hard drive with some    .wav and .flac files and they have never sounded better.   If ican stop listening and turn it off for a little while I am going to put a  Samsung EVO 4T  SSD in it later.

 

Manufacturer reached out to me and seems intent on helping me 

It’s a great sounding DAC.  That’s the rub…. 

@oddiofyl Hopefully you are letting the manufacturer know your findings as well. Sounds like this might be less of an individual issue and more a challenge of their implementation of the SPDIF interface.  

Update. I was not imagining things , the DAC can not cope with more than one active SPDIF input. It has trouble switching between any Redbook and HiRez source across it’s SPDIF bus. Turn one unit off on Coax 1 and the unit on Coax 2 will resume play. It is the input board’s logic or it is not well insulated.

It isn’t broken in the traditional sense , but it is not working properly. No problem if USB from Aurender to DAC and Optical from Bluesound to DAC .

Unfortunately it is a recent build and has the most recent firmware so at this point as really believe it is a hardware limitation.

 

Yes, done for a while , one last piece to the puzzle and I have my desert island system.   

I sold off about $5000 worth of stuff not being used., or more   Have a few thousand in stuff to sell so it will take the sting out of it.  Shame to not use it. They went to good homes 

I had enough stuff for a nice second system but it didn't make sense and I turned it into the Aurender and the Toolshed Line stage I'm having built now 

@oddiofyl 

You have been on quite the successful acquisition roll.The Lab 12 DAC, the Toolshed 300b SET and now the Aurender N200. 😊

Charles

A very worthwhile purchase,  I finally have a digital front end that sounds great with streaming and stored content .   Listening to some 24/192k content and it has never sounded better.     Amazing machine.  

Thanks again to Mario and Dan at The Music Room 

I thought my switching DSD off and limiting 384k sample was my problem but no....

Those settings revert back to default at power off 

TOTAL PILOT ERROR !!!   I was trying to compare USB via Coax with them both plugged in and it was confusing the DAC .   Removed the USB and problem gone.  Plays anything up to 24/192k like it should.   Duh... 

@blisshifi 

Regarding some not being able to discern streamer quality, I usually boil it down to the fact that those people’s systems are not resolving enough (like putting a $9K phono cartridge on a $1000 turntable / tonearm), they aren’t the critical listeners, or the upgrade in sonics isn’t worthwhile. But for those with a highly resolving system who are looking to make the best out of it, a high performance digital source should make a significant impact.

This explanation is thoughtful and well reasoned in my opinion. With a resolving audio system, how could one not notice improvement with a better source component?

Charles

@oddiofyl I’m glad you resolved your issue! Seeing your DAC’s specs, it seems it only is capable of converting up to 192Khz, so adjusting that setting makes sense.

Regarding some not being able to discern streamer quality, I usually boil it down to the fact that those people’s systems are not resolving enough (like putting a $9K phono cartridge on a $1000 turntable / tonearm), they aren’t the critical listeners, or the upgrade in sonics isn’t worthwhile. But for those with a highly resolving system who are looking to make the best out of it, a high performance digital source should make a significant impact. 

This has been an interesting thread on streamers. I understand from Bliss’s comment on page 1 that Aurender is great at streaming but optimized also for storage for those that have files.

That’s not me. No files to play. Simply Tidal or Qobuz streaming for now. My question: is there any streamer under $2k that will outperform a LUMIN U1 mini for this purpose? Assume dac will probably be an Aqua La Scala mkii, under the thinking rule of thumb that put 75% of digital budget into dac, 25% to streamer, give or take

Exactly,  maybe their experience was indifferent for what ever reason but there are a lot of lateral moves in this hobby that can be very flavor of the month club impulse buys.  
 

This obviously was a major upgrade but with 80% of my content streamed or stored on a drive or PC this made sense for me.  It is amazing what it can do, I haven’t even scratched the surface yet.  It is so intelligent,  it is unreal how smart this box is.   It monitors every parameter of its operation 

Many have said the Android version is bad but I went in and allowed permission for it to always run in the background and that made it much more stable. 
 

A must have for me was a screen with Album art and other metadata.   Transport keys are nice to have also.    SPDIF was high on the want list too. 

@oddiofyl 

Yes. The Aurender sounds better, absolutely

It sounded good via USB but via coax with the Aurender as the clock it is markedly better. More weight , shimmer in the upper registers

I swear I could hear the brass of a cymbal crash’s warble … the deformation or flexing of the cymbals

I was interested in your listening impressions and comparison of the two streamers. It seems intuitive that a higher quality music streamer would be impactful in a positive manner. It represents the source of your digital signal chain.

It strikes me as odd when some report upgrading their streamers made little, or no difference. Does not seem logical at all, But I understand people are simply reporting what they hear in their respective audio systems.

Charles

Yes.  The Aurender sounds better, absolutely 

It sounded good via USB but via coax with the Aurender as the clock it is markedly better.  More weight , shimmer in the upper registers

I swear I could hear the brass of a cymbal crash’s warble … the deformation or flexing of the cymbals    
 

If you stream a lot, have a great sounding DAC and your system can realize the potential of a really good streamer you should see if your dealer is kind enough to let you take one home to demo .  Further proof everything in the chain makes a difference   Whether things play nice together is a different thing    
 

I’m glad I read into this further and kept along the right troubleshooting path  

I had a hard time believing either was broken    Simple software toggle