Aurender

Is finding your system,"completely satisfying", the real endpoint regardless of what others prefer? Makes sense to me.

Not to co-op my own thread, but many of you seem to be quite knowledgeable.  The I2s standard does not address implementation external to the board level.  Is the external I2s clock usually supplied by the output device, or by the DAC?

@dinov 

Aurender is not NAS friendly, so I’ll look elsewhere. If there was that option, I’d highly consider Aurender.

This is completely incorrect but downloading your files to the Aurender HDD or SSD will improve SQ.

I can't speak the the I2S issues raised by the OP, but with regard to the AES/EBU interface being limited to 192khz/24 bits, that is because that is the limit according to the AES/EBU specification.  Due to this limit, Dual AES was developed to support higher resolutions.  While you can of course bypass this limitation by using USB, some DACs seem to perform better with AES.  At least, that has been my experience, using an Aurender N20 with a dCS Bartok.

just like any aspect of the hifi system building game, people speak about their journey, their experience, their system -- with a certain baseline of expectations, skill, experience and budget

people find happiness and excellent sound at many various levels of expense and expertise... that happiness is found at modest levels of system building is a blessing for those who achieve this, while others may push push push, with ever more effort, learning and expense trying to achieve ever higher levels of sonic quality (as they perceive it) ... there is no right or wrong either way, we all enjoy the pursuit our own way, subject to our time, energy, wallet, and disposition

i think the key is no one should judge where anyone else is on the journey and how they achieve musical happiness, how they spend the money and effort and the sonic result achieved... if you are fully satisfied with a bluesound node with an added lps, power to you - but don’t tell others that if they have a grimm, an innuos zen or a roon core+optical rendu that theirs isn’t better (and vice versa) ... let’s just celebrate that everyone can find their ’happy place’

@baylinor 

I appreciate the invite. I would love to connect with you and listen to your amazing system next time I visit Austin. My point of engagement was not to cast doubt on what you’re hearing with Node 2, which is a great performer for the money and even better with upgraded power supply. Bottom line, if you’re satisfied with what you’ve put together then it shouldn’t matter what else out there. 

I used to own Vault 2 so I can say from my experience, Aurender streamers offers a substantial upgrade in sound over Node albeit at higher price of admission. Streamer is just one piece of the pie, so one needs to ensure your rest of the system is up to the task. My impressions of Node vs Aurender are in the context of my system (listed here under my moniker). 

You’re welcome to stop by next time you’re in Houston.