Music Server Advice

lalitk

If you don’t wanna give up on ROON then consider the alternative from CAD’s CAT, Grimm Audio - MU1 and one of many Wolf Audio offerings. I was at AXPONA recently and I got to hear all the server/streamers from the top names, including EVO432, Auralic (full stack with clock) Innuos Statement and Aurender N30SA.

I am also a lifetime ROON subscriber but stream through Aurender 99.9% of the time. Once you done messing around with ROON, consider a Aurender N200 or N20 and call it a day :-) 

I am also interested in the Grimm Audio - MU1,  Aurender N200, or N20. 

I have never been able to audition these fine pieces of equipment and would be very interested if you could give us a detailed explanation of your observations with your experienced ears on what you heard at AXPONA.  I have the equipment that could easily benefit from their abilities.  Thank you. 

Check out SmallGreenComputer.com.  I have been using their products, and the Sonore products they sell for years.  Very reliable, easy to use, and fantastic support from Andrew.  IMHO, they offer great value by keeping their casework simple and eschewing expensive marketing.  The sound is wonderful, and I am using mostly their entry level kit.  I would imagine their better offerings would be competitive with many more expensive options.  They have a 30 day return option, too.

I’m an Esoteric fan. I have an N05 Network player with a Qnap NAS. I use this thru my home Ethernet network with fiber connection before the N05. The NAS was easy to set up so if you can do that sort of thing I would recommend it over the “all in one” proprietary solutions out there. I’m not saying anything against them, but my set up gives me more flexibility and upgrade ability. The Esoteric has super capacitors among other noise deterring features. That along with the fiber tx and rx in my Ethernet line, I’m extremely satisfied!

Trial the Euphony Stylus software. Then, once you hear it's in a class of its own, buy a Summus from Euphony or a ridiculously cheap used Pink Faun.

Or, repurpose your NUC, get another, and run Stylus and its endpoint in a dual pc set-up.

@communique1

If you don’t wanna give up on ROON then consider the alternative from CAD’s CAT, Grimm Audio - MU1 and one of many Wolf Audio offerings. I was at AXPONA recently and I got to hear all the server/streamers from the top names, including EVO432, Auralic (full stack with clock) Innuos Statement and Aurender N30SA.

The app interface is an important part of the streaming experience. I have been an Aurender user for 10plus years, it is the only brand I found to be well balanced and consistent in all areas, i.e. sound, build and robust app. The Conductor app takes little getting used to and it is certainly not as fancy as ROON but more importantly it does not do any manipulation of your digital bitstream. Their focus always been an optimized audio performance over a fancy app interface like ROON that consistently manipulates incoming bitstream and compromised performance.

I am also a lifetime ROON subscriber but stream through Aurender 99.9% of the time. Once you done messing around with ROON, consider a Aurender N200 or N20 and call it a day :-) 

@commumique1  I agree with you re the Aurender app but beware the Auralic app is as bad if not worse.

If you use usb, then save your money because usb will never give you the best sq no matter which server or tweak/gimmick you apply. 

the 432evo aeon is comparable to much more expensive servers we compared the aeon to a 25k innous statement with the upgraded psu

we also compared to theaurender n20 and the evo was better our servers are 100percent upgradable and are designed to run Roon properly we are a full core and endpoint in one.

One listen and you will be hooked the evo sounds more like analog with its 432 plug in and selectable filters.

Dave and Troy

Audiointellect nj

432evo us importers

Actually Innous has  a new $4k model using Mundorfs oil capacitors if you want a warmer tonal balance .

I had a Lampizator Pacific DAC that was pretty good. Then I added the Lucas Audio LDMS Music Server. Oh my, the SQ was night and day better. You should contact Lucas Domansky utilizing What’s Ap ( Free phone call) and just talk to him about your needs. He is a computer genius and a great guy to talk to for advice. I am getting an upgraded LDMS next week, My current LDMS will be available to buy. Lucas wanted me to keep it in the USA and as he gets a customer he will sell mine which is 18 months old. He said he would sell for $8k. that is just a little higher than your budget but well well worth it.

I will throw in a plug for the Aurender N200, it is just a tick better than the N10 which it replaced. It is very good.

I always go for sound quality first and skip the add on functions. Hence I have two Aurender… they just sound better. Given your excellent equipment I would be using an Aurender streamer. 
 

For me I have learned to use the app and since I am on an iPad already it is really easy to Reseach albums with AllMusoc and Google then find them in Qobuz. 

My nomenclature may be in error but functionally the Nuc feeds the D-05x via USB. I wanted to do away with using the NUC and thought that the Pulse would do that.  I quickly found out during setup that I still needed the NUC. (I know about Innuos other offerings, but I don't need or want a CD ripper.) I  knew the Aurender wasn't Roon so I tried the Aurender App and felt paralyzed by the learning curve. However, it sounded very good. So now after having both the Pusle (didn't like the sound) and the Aurender N10, I'm willing to part with using Roon as my primary interface and delve into Aurender's app. My strategy has evolved to using Roon just to discover new music and use Aurender, or other software related to another device for my primary digital listening. I also inquired about the N200 and other streamer suggestions.

The D-05x is a Roon endpoint.

If you fed your D-05x via USB from NUC, the D-05x in not an endpoint. Endpoint is the Roon lingo for "streamer". The NUC would be in your scenario both the Roon Core and the Roon Endpoint. Not optimal for sure, certainly not optimal to use the NUC as the streamer. 

I you really like to try Innuos, you can get a ZENith or a Statement, that can be both the Core and the Streamer, feeding your DAC (the D-05x) via USB.

I also assume you know Aurender does not do Roon? You should know since you have had Roon since inception. 

You are correct about the Pulse. I fed it with the Nuc as Roon Core. I feed the D-05x directly from the NUC via USB. The D-05x is a Roon endpoint. 

How do you feed your Esoteric D-05x from your NUC?

By the way, the Innuos Pulse you mention is not a server. It is just a streamer. You would still be running Roon Core in your NUC with it, there is no other way to use Roon with Innuos Pulse. You would need a separate machine for server (Roon Core) duties.

You’re right about vinyl quality. For the brief time I toyed with vinyl again a few years ago I was appalled at the quality of some of the offerings. Surface noise in some cases was obvious, meaning they’re using low-grade regrind material, as well as just plain bad masterings. I won’t get into the pricing lol.

Not sure you’re aware, but there are a few websites for researching recordings and their quality. I often use Discogs, DR Database, and Hoffman Music Corner for this purpose. And AllMusic for music quality. Not for everything, but definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already.

I'll add that the vinyl versions do not always sound better than the digital stream! As I acquire more vinyl it's appearing as if more record labels are capitalizing on the resurgence of vinyl and releasing vinyl just for the sake of releasing vinyl with little regard for sound quality. There are streams I'm listening to with my current setup that are truly wonderful sounding and prefer over the vinyl counterpart.

I use Roon to explore "new to me" jazz artists, usually from Europe. If I like it I'll search to see if it's on vinyl and if so I purchase it. (Discogs, Bandcamp, etc.) You'd be surprised how much music is actually available on vinyl, but not sold/marketed in the US. I don't download music at all. I can still use Roon for that purpose. You're correct about my viny rig. It's anchored by an Ortofon MC Diamond and sounds simply amazing and is my preference. But I also like digital and want it to sound as good as I can afford, thus my reason for reaching out to the AGon community. 

I have a barely used Gen 10 NUC that I need to sell. Yesterday I cancelled Roon. I agree that the Roon app is far superior to Conductor, but as you go up the Aurender line the sound improves and for me it is about the music presentation. After all, isn’t that why we spent so much on our analog system? An automatic turntable is much more convenient, but I bet that isn’t what you are using. Aurender uses my NAS and the internal SSD for local storage and the reproduction is first rate due to the fact that all is played locally. What I mean is that the NAS server data is uploaded to the Aurender’s internal memory (cached) and played from there. Pretty sure that you know all of that and I will admit that many are in your camp and will not move from Roon due to feature set and hats off to Roon Labs.

A bit more responsive to your question, add an external clock if possible and play with your Ethernet cable and filter just prior to entering your player.

Your response above appeared while I was typing. Roon is the best tool for searching by a specific parameter. I probably do more searching for music on the Apple Music app than Conductor, but Roon is unique. I have been cutting back on record purchases because my digital is very good and because I’ve started to listen to music that just isn’t available on record.  Many small record companies now offer high resolution downloads for a comparable cost to vinyl, but again music on the Aurender is played from cache, so not sure that paying for downloads is useful except where the music isn’t streamed.

I agree with you jaybe that the N10 sounds much better than my present setup. However, I do a lot of exploring on Roon to find vinyl releases and it is critical that I keep this function. I'm considering keeping Roon through another pseudo-system and using that for the same "discovery" purpose, exporting the list to Excel and searching/auditioning/listening using the Aurender app. Thx for your reply.

I can't advise between your options but can comment on the Aurenders. I went from a home-built server with a lot of top-end components to an N10 and the N10 blew the server away.

But the app. It's terrible (others will argue). Aurender is not responsive to improvement requests, from me and many others, including on forums where their US tech maintains a presence- yeah, we'll look into it. But nothing. My comparison is to JRiver. I'm not looking for a JRiver experience from their app, but there are certainly many areas where they could make improvements. Bottom line, however, the app works.