Comparing Aurender N20 vs eversolo dmp A8

@romanesq I have used both DAC, and much prefer the Holo May sound. It is solid and analog. dmp A8 DAC sound thinner, and very digital with sparkles on high end which are like artifacts imo. 

Update - so I tried and cheap and new mogami AES cable and now the N20 is sounding amazing. It sounds more natural. Need to do more tests and I am still waiting for a used transparent cable arriving in a couple of days that will be my go-to. Thanks folks for their insights on this matter

@audioman58 thanks for the tip on power cable. I see AC9 and AC14 versions. I am guessing larger gauge is for amps etc and 14 gauge is for digital boxes ? 

@jimmy2615 yes that's the ultimate plan. Waiting on my cable, I thought will give USB a try. I was hoping to at least have a matched or better performance. In some cases N20 is better like soundstage and vocals. But it was not blowing away DMP which I was expecting. Perhaps upgraded power cable and some other tweaks will do the trick. 

I did try AES cable yesterday (it was new and cheap) and it sounded very good. So the magic is in that combo like you mentioned. 

With N20, as others stated, use AES or SPDIF out to take advantage of the N20 superior OCXO clock. Also, the previous owner of the N20 may have never even used USB out and it could benefit from few days of break in. But as others stated, the best performance will be using AES.