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Aurender A10 setup - loading from CDs

Just purchased A10.  The instructions in the quick start guide for connecting to my local network worked. The A10 appears to find the Aurender app on my iPad. And the app appears to communicate with the A10.

 

My goal has been to move my CD collection to the A10.   Unfortunately, I am completely lost when comes to how to do this. What I’ve tried doesn’t appear to work. Here’s what I’ve tried.

Strategy 1:

          Following the online App Guide on the Aurender site, tried making the direct local network connection between my MacBook Pro and the A10.  The first three steps when well:

  • 1.     Locate the Finder menu bar at the top of your desktop.
  • 2.     Click GO -> CONNECT TO SERVER from the navigation bar.
  • 3.     Type in 'smb://' followed by your Aurender's IP address. (For example: smb://192.168.1.171) The IP address can be found under SETTINGS -> NAS.

 

Step 4 didn’t appear…

4.     Click Connect and a window will appear with folders labeled hdd1'and 'hdd2' Open the folder.

But the popup window for Step 5 did appear:

5.     A popup window will ask for a Username and Password. They can be found in the iPad application under SETTINGS -> NAS.

Unfortunately, when I went to SETTINGs -> NAS [Server], instead of giving me a Uusername and password, I was asked to provide a username and password.  I can’t find these anywhere, so this is a dead end for me.


Strategy 2:

The online App Guide also has a section describing how to add music to the A10 from an external USB memory device. To try this, I first dragged two album files from my iTunes music directory on the MacBook to a 4TB external HD. I then plugged in the HD to one of the A10’s USB ports.

I tried copying these albums following the instructors under the “Disk Information” tab in “Settings” on the app. I did the copy all command to music1 and the albums now appear in the playlist editor. Success, but none of the album art came over and its now clear how it could be added. Nor am I confident that this is the longterm solution.


I'm a newbie to computer audio beyond ITunes/iPod.  Any advice about how to get beyond this impasse?


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shoff
133 posts
 
I believe that MQA and Aurender partnered to to allow the DAC MQA unfold to be purchased for around $60 and downloaded to your N10.  Since the N10 is already MQA compatible as a server, adding the DAC MQA portion will now make your unit fully compatible and you can achieve a "full" unfold.  Since you have Tidal you can now listen to All 10k+ MQA Masters.
hgeifman
2,105 posts
 
@rinpoche, Go to your album folder on your Computer and select any album.  Look in that folder for the words "folder.jpg".   This means Doug's Script installed the album cover art in the correct location.   

NOTE:  My albums were ripped using iTunes.   Unfortunately, I discovered that some albums had no cover art meaning after you transfer them to your Aurender, the album cover will NOT appear on the Conductor iPad App.  I manually went into that albums folder, looked for albums NOT having the folder.jpg file, Googled the album name, found the cover art image (jpg) and copied it to the correct location.   YES, this was very time consuming (and boring).  The challenging part is finding the albums that do not include cover art.  I searched every album and added cover art to the albums missing it.  This process took me several days. THERE MUST be better solutions but I could not find them.  

The Aurender A10 delivers “FULL Decoder MQA file playback from the internal DAC.   This is possible since the A10 has its own DAC.

The Aurender N10 handles MQA by providing MQA Core decoding only (the FIRST unfold typically to 88.2 or 96kHz) which could be converted to analog at that frequency by a non-MQA DAC or fully MQA decoded when processed by a DAC that functions as an MQA Renderer.   Listening to MQA Coded albums having the first layer unfold is an improvement (my opinion).  As was stated above, the cost for the MQA Core decoder license is $54.99.  

When you open the Conductor App, go to the Master Tab and hit Master Search.  10,000+ MQA Coded albums will appear for you to search (great news).   HOWEVER, we discovered, that sometimes the search will get mixed up and only 48 MQA albums will appear.  This is a software opportunity (bug) that Aurender is working on (Question was asked at AXPONA).   The suggested work around is to remove the Conductor App from memory and re-load it.  This resets the Master Search field and temporarily solves the problem.  I do not have a time frame when this will be fixed but I am hoping very soon.
hgeifman
2,105 posts
 
Instructions for clearing iPad (or iPhone) Apps from short-term memory are:  

Double tap the home button to open the multitasking screen. scroll left or right to the App you want to close, swipe up on it to close it. Repeat for any other apps you want to close.

  


rinpoche
154 posts
 
hgeifman — wow, thanks for everything. I have downloaded my iTunes library. Easy peasy. Not nearly as difficult as I anticipated. If i understand you correctly, you are saying that if I download the MQA decoder, Tidal will sound better with MQA songs than it does with H-fi even though my Aeris (Jeff Rowland) DAC doesn't have MQA decoding ability. Did I get that right? 
hgeifman
2,105 posts
 
Yes.  The Aurender will MQA decode the first MQA layer and the sound quality should be better.  Your JR Aeris should be fine.  Please give a try.  The Aurender App provides the option to purchase the MQA decoder in the settings section.  
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