2. digital
  3. 157042-138624

Aurender N10

From mfr product puff: "[Aurender]  N10’s AES/EBU, BNC, Coaxial, and Optical outputs provide a superior musical presentation. As opposed to an asynchonous USB connection, where the DAC pulls packets of information from the player, N10’s SPDIF and AES/EBU audio outputs push signal out to the DAC at intervals defined by the on-board OCXO clock. With a clock this precise, trust us, you want to use it!"

Anyone have a basis to agree or disagree?
hickamore

Showing 2 responses by auxinput

auxinput
2,920 posts
 
As far as USB goes, it really depends on how good the USB receiver board is within the DAC.  If is is using an Amanero board, then you can definitely get really good sound out of a USB connection. The Amanero board has to receive the USB data and then clock the data at the proper samping rate before sending i2s data to the DAC chip. 

Of course, a cheap USB cable is going to sound crappy just like S/PDIF cables.

With S/PDIF on the other cable tables, the A10 has to clock the sampling rate and then send the pulses in exact timing for the audio file (such as 44.1khz, 96khz, etc.). 

You can get some pretty damn good S/PDIF cables (think Nordost Heimdall or better, or Transparent Audio or Purist Audio Design.
auxinput
2,920 posts
 
If you are looking at R-2R DACS, the Audio-GD products are also excellent.

The Denafrips Terminator is excellent I'm sure.  It is voiced just slightly laid back (due to the Elna Silmic capacitors used in power supply). 

The Audio-GD is not going to be quite as laid back and more neutral / high resolution I think:

http://www.audio-gd.com/Products-EN.htm

The R-7HE is the most expensive offering, but not as expensive as the Terminator.

Audio-GD also uses discrete analot output stage.  The Terminator uses op amps I believe.
More to discover