Grimm MU1 Streamer - Really "The Best"?

@nyev 

The newer power conditioner I have took four weeks until the sound went from analytical to musical. And week five brought about a good bit more improvement as well. I was wondering if I'd have to try a different power conditioner, but it all worked out, but 5+ weeks seemed like a long time to me! So I get your comments on the K50 for sure.

FYI - I'm using Nordost Heimdal 2 AES and I also tried the equivalent Heimdal 2 USB and I thought AES was ever so slightly better. And it didn't hurt that the cable was shorter so less mess behind the rack. -I've read a lot good about Jorma and I may try better AES cables in the future. I think Lalitk probably knows some good options.

I’m really interested in getting my hands on that AES cable after reading Aurender’s marketing pitch on how much better it is than USB. Which I know is just marketing.

It’s clearly aimed at differentiating from Innuos who only do USB - except for the fact that their brand new Pulse products support AES, and my guess is all their new products will as well.

As others have said what matters is which interface they’ve invested in. But here’s the thing - if Aurender has invested in making AES good such that they recommend it over their USB interface, and the USB interface sounds good, then how much better will AES be? I’ve seen countless accounts of AES being far better than USB on the Antipodes K50, but I’ve not seen this as widely mentioned for Aurender.  Yet it seems Aurender and Antipodes are aligned on prioritizing AES.  Aurender claims:

Ultra-High-Quality SPDIF and AES/EBU Digital Audio Outputs

The N20’s AES/EBU, BNC, Coaxial, and Optical outputs provide a superior musical presentation with some DACs due to the superior clock and oscillator. As opposed to asynchronous USB connections, where the DAC pulls packets of information from the player, N20’s SPDIF audio outputs push the signal out to the DAC at intervals defined by the on-board precision OCXO clock. With a clock this precise, once heard, you’ll want to use it.

@nyev reading your post about the PhoenixNet, bear in mind that it is a 100Mb/s device, so it would limit the network speed of your whole house if you put a second one in where you were pondering. We now know that a lot of streaming devices sound better running on a 1Gb/s connection speed, which the PhoenixNet cannot do.

@richtruss , yeah I wouldn’t even have enough ports for the rest of my house with the PhoenixNET. And unfortunately, 100 mega-quality-bits doesn’t cut it for other applications. In my fantasy that I’ll unlikely try, I’d connect the second PhoenixNET to my whole-house switch in the smart panel. The PhoenixNET would only have the one audio line coming out of it.

Funnily enough, I just saw a post in another forum that said someone suggested adding a second PhoenixNET to their system and they claimed it was transformative. They also added a PhoenixUSB though. Who knows. Was just a thought.

@nyev You really don't need to spend many thousands on a clock. There are plenty of Chinese ones on Ebay and After Dark from Hong Kong sell decent clocks.

However a very high quality clock cable is vital, this will cost $2k+ and should be 75 Ohm rated for the N20 and not more than 1M.

The N20 will work great with a clock connected directly to it, don't worry about getting a DAC with a clock input.

Yes, Aurender say the SPDIF/AES outputs are best but this will all depend on your DAC.

USB offers greater resolution and DSD and besides that in my system the soundstage is much bigger with USB. Again though the N20 only upsamples using SPDIF/AES.

Anyway no crime in using both at the same time and switching between them.