Music streamers

lalitk

If you can stretch your budget, get the N100H and call it a day.

Buying that Aurender was one of the few major blunders I’ve made as an audiophile. I dumped it after less than a year and would never consider an Aurender product again. The N100H can throw a fit if the power goes out - it’s always on "standby" - and software updates can be a disaster. Many praise Aurender support but in my experience their sluggish, indifferent stock answers sometimes showed they couldn’t even be bothered to read the inquiry. Other times the answer was simply pedantic.

Yes, the Aurender software is slick and some people think it’s "sexy." No matter - I found the Aurender N100H hardware to be more trouble than it’s worth and the OS is a mess. To be fair, it may be the start of a good product but it would need some substantial fixes before I'd consider it a proper finished component.

I thought the unit was so bad that I couldn’t in good conscience sell it on A’gon, even though my unit was "mint." (It still had the protective plastic over the display.) So I sold it to TMR at a major $$$$ loss but that wasn’t their fault - they paid me what is was worth.

TMR was very nice to work with, btw - I’d do business with them again if I ever acquire another heap of headaches like the Aurender.

If you can stretch your budget, get the N100H and call it a day. You also get a ‘killer’ app interface that is considered the very best outside Roon. A dedicated streamer like N100H offers much better sound quality and noise rejection over a laptop. 
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649681914-aurender-n100h-silver/

I use a streamer more for convenience than anything. I'm not sure where your setup is but I don't want a laptop in my stereo cabinet. It's easier to control a streamer with an app on my tablet. Sound quality would be more about how well your integrated deals with USB. If it's fairly new using asynchronous it's probably fine. 

I am not using the Dac from my laptop. The int already has one hence the usb connection. So generally people use streamers without Dac just for connectivity and accessibility is it ?

You will get the biggest improvement when you add the DAC.  Computer DACs are cheap noisy affairs.  Any gains that may make going from a laptop to a dedicated streaming component will be incremental in comparison.