Aurender N100H or Auralic Aries?

Hi Tom (falconquest),

I am set to make an immediate purchase decision on the Auralic Aries or the Aurender N100H. Which way did you go?

Thanks,
Dave

Thanks Tom and hgeifman. I pulled the trigger on buying a lightly used mint N100H. Should be here tomorrow.

Also bought a used Exogal Comet Plus DAC with Wywires umbilical upgrade and a Triode Wire Labs Digital American power cord for it. It is said that the Aurender and the Exogal are a great combo. Plan to use my 0.6m Curious USB cable between the two. What power cord do you use on your Aurender?

Can't wait to get it all setup.

Dave

Thanks hgeifman. Looked it up. Price is certainly right! 

Thanks again,
Dave

The Aurender arrived today. What a beautiful and solidly-built piece of audio gear it is! Had it installed and streaming Tidal in 15 minutes. Very nice.

One question for Aurender owners: When streaming Tidal "Masters" with the N100H, my DAC shows it is only receiving a 24/48 signal instead of the 24/96 signal when fed from my laptop. Am I missing something in the Aurender setup or maybe a setting in the Tidal portion of the software? Can anyone verify that their DAC is receiving a 24/96 signal when streaming Tidal Masters from their Aurender? 

Dave 

Thanks lalitk. Indeed, I did post a ticket through their cool "Help" feature. It was somewhat late in the day and I didn't hear back. I am sure that I will tomorrow.

I felt confident that one of the super-members here like you would step up and verify that their unit did indeed pass the 24/96 signal from Tidal Masters.  Thanks for the input.

Dave

Hi hgiefman,

A very informative response to be sure.

I also received a similar (yet less detailed) response today from Aurender stating the same. One thing that was included in the response to me was that my laptop, using the original Tidal software (vs the Aurander app) was performing the "Core" decoding (the first unfolding of the MQA decoding process) of the Tidal software and that Aurender is unable to do that as of now, but they had approached Tidal about developing this process in their app yet any progress would be months away (if ever).

So, these two responses explain what I was describing in my first post. I definitely was seeing 24/96 to my DAC using my laptop when playing many Tidal Masters files and don’t see that using the Aurender. Going forward, I will only see whatever resolution that was used in the original PCM file as determined by the original mastering using the Aurender.

I too spoke with lalitk (what a great guy!), and he told the same as he told you and that further validates the explanation.

I now plan to just enjoy the music since I have no plans to buy an MQA capable DAC in the short term. The only thing that still gives me consternation is that the many reviews (several using the Aurender to stream Tidal) and forum posts I read prior to buying the Aurender never mentioned this limitation.

Dave