Aurender N200

@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

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. 

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

@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. 

@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