When I owned my MA3, I used its Ethernet Roon streamer and compared it with my Bricasti M5 using AES, and I slightly preferred the sound quality of the AES input with Roon. It was close and I doubt I would have purchased a dedicated streamer if I just started with the DAC as it sounded excellent, its just the M5 sounded slightly better and made the value proposition of the MA3 not as good as I had hoped since I was planning on selling the M5 after purchasing the MA3. I have no idea how the M5 compares with other more expensive streamers...
Meitner Ma3 Streaming vs Aurender
Been researching for a dedicated streamer. I really like the Aurender line either the N200 or N20. I also plan to upgrade my DAC next. After reading a lot about the Meitner Ma3 it may be what I’m looking for. However the Meitner also has streaming capability as an added feature so do I go with the Meitner as a streaming DAC? Is its streaming SQ equal or better than a dedicated streamer such as Aurender? I would loose the storage capability of the Aurender, the caching payback and a dedicated app. So I could go with an Aurender N 200 and the Meitner or just the Meitner. Unfortunately no way to compare these options.
Anyone been down this road ?