Aurender N200

Glad to hear! Fingers crossed. 

@oddiofyl I’m an authorized Aurender dealer and am currently helping out two other A’goners decide on units, both are considering the N200. 

The N200 is an incredible value for a standalone streamer. Not only does it easily eclipse the Bluesound. This past weekend I had a customer bring his Modwright-modded Cambridge CXN v2 to compare. While the modded CXN performs at the level of say a DirectStream DAC, the moment we connected the N200 to its DAC over using the CXN’s built-in streamer, everything just snapped into place, and within ten seconds of listening the customer said “Yeah, I’m getting one”.

There are reports online of the unit surpassing the performance of the N10, and I wouldn’t be surprised. While the N10 is not yet discontinued, it is already listed that way on Aurender’s site. This is significant as the N200 retails for $2K less than the N10.

I’m happy to work with you if you’re not already working with another dealer on this and can answer other questions you might have about what to expect, setup, platform and such. 

Juan Charvet

blisshifi.com

Congratulations and welcome to the Aurender family! TMR is also great to work with. Make sure you break the unit in for a few days before giving any initial impressions. You can just loop music or noise tracks nonstop for a few days and you’ll be good to go. I’d appreciate if you post your impressions once you’re ready to evaluate it. 

@dinov and @cleeds - for clarification, Aurender does not require you to use the internal bays for storing your music library. It absolutely has the ability to connect to a NAS on your network if that is the route you prefer to go. But there are benefits to installing the drives in the Aurender unit as it then does not risk any noise being leaked while the files are transferring from your NAS over Ethernet.

Likewise, the internal drives on an Aurender also act like a NAS on your network. You can access the drives and the files on them from any other device that can access your network.

So if you really want to use a different system to manage the music, you can still do that, and you can still use Aurender Conductor to navigate that file system and play back the music on your NAS. I hope that clarifies things. 

@dinov I agree with you on where the value proposition is with Aurender. But if it were up to me, in the case of a hurricane, I'd rather take the N200 that has all of my NAS files in it! The N200's form factor isn't that much bigger than a typical robust NAS with a double-drive bay, and it has three cords to remove - an ethernet cable, power cable, and USB or coax, vs a NAS that may only have a power cable and ethernet cable. But hey, to each his own. :)

@dinov Not trying to change your mind, but I want to provide clarification. Should an Aurender unit go down, you don’t need someone with an Aurender to retrieve your music files. You can remove the drives and install them in any other enclosure to access the files on it, just like you would any other hard drive. I just want to make sure we’re providing factual info and not giving any misleading perceptions. 

@dinov I was just ensuring the right information is offered to the public and also trying to be lighthearted and humorous about the situation. I 100% agree that if you are not using the built-in storage of the Aurender, you would not be using it for everything it is capable of, so it might be better to invest in a streamer-only solution. So know I’m not trying to continue to push it on you.

I do very much appreciate your support and I’m not trying to pick a fight with you. You deserve to find the solution that works best for you, and I’m sure you will find it! Thanks for your continued support.

This is the first time I’m hearing of Toolshed gear, and I see they are in the next state over from me. I’ve loved the different SET amps as I had them over the years, but I’ve since moved on. 

@oddiofyl How big is your room? I’m a fan on full range drivers run by low-powered tube amps combined with woofers powered by Class D. Have you tried the combo, say in like with Oris horns or something similar? Sounds like your system would be ripe for that if you have the room. 

Yeah you don’t need huge speakers for that space. La Scalas are massive, basically 24x24x36. The Volti have such a different sonic signature from Klipsch and features a bit more tonal richness so it will depend if that will work well with the rest of your setup.

@sdw Have you compared the N150 to the N200? If so, can you describe how notable are the differences sonically? I have heard both but as an Aurender dealer I’d love to hear a customer’s experiences with the two as I was just talking to someone else on the phone about the two last night. 

@oddiofyl What coax cable are you using?

Also, are you switching sample formats often? If so there is a setting to allow to adjust for that and put a few second delay. Doing that sometimes helps to adjust for the switching. 

Glad to see you got the D-750 already, and I’m sorry to hear the N200 and your DAC are not playing together nicely. Do you happen to have a toslink cable? I think maybe one was included with the N200. If you try that and it works, then the SPDIF interfaces “should” be fine and it localized it to the coax connection. If Toslink also drops out, then it is a signal that one of the units’ SPDIF interfaces is problematic as a whole.

If you haven’t already, check it there are firmware upgrades for both units and also try a hard power down on both for a few minutes. 

Very odd that the N200 works flawlessly with the RME but not your Lab 12. 

I just received another N200 for a local customer today and will be opening it for him to install the hard drive he had me pair it with (2TB Samsung EVO).

Steve - I know the Aurender can see other drives on the network, but I haven’t tried to make that work myself. Was it easy to set up?

And yes, the build is very admirable. I'm also quite pleased with the new Conductor V3 platform/app for mobile phones. It's much more usable and attractive vs past versions! I've already submitted a few feature requests and improvements. The Aurender engineering team has been quite receptive in the past.

Well, I surely hope it gets repaired. But for anyone who has an N200 or is thinking about one and is also looking for a DAC to pair it with, I have said before and I’ll say again that my favorite match is the T+A DAC 200. In addition to being a stellar performer, the form factor similarity to the N200 is attractive!

As I just got another N200 in and am setting up for a customer, I decided to stack it with the DAC 200 so I could get a shot. These were not hooked up together at the time of the shot (as the N200 does not have AES) because I was just focused on getting the SSD set up for the customer.

Great to hear!

@oddiofyl I’m glad you resolved your issue! Seeing your DAC’s specs, it seems it only is capable of converting up to 192Khz, so adjusting that setting makes sense.

Regarding some not being able to discern streamer quality, I usually boil it down to the fact that those people’s systems are not resolving enough (like putting a $9K phono cartridge on a $1000 turntable / tonearm), they aren’t the critical listeners, or the upgrade in sonics isn’t worthwhile. But for those with a highly resolving system who are looking to make the best out of it, a high performance digital source should make a significant impact. 

@oddiofyl Hopefully you are letting the manufacturer know your findings as well. Sounds like this might be less of an individual issue and more a challenge of their implementation of the SPDIF interface.  

@budburma @jmlm 

To add to Lalit’s comments, there are a few other differences and improvements. 

The N10 has the advantage of an AES output and slightly better clock, but the benefits gained from that are not as strong as those gained in the newer N200. 

The power supply in the N200 allows for a lower noise floor and improved dynamics that Lalit mentions. Many will agree the N200 sounds better as a result, and for less money. Even the Aurender team is surprised with the performance for the cost, considering the N200’s retail is $2K less than the Aurender. 

The N200 has an uninterruptible power supply, which means that during power outages, the N200 safely shuts down. Previous generation units are not guaranteed to have this, and I have had plenty of customers with legacy units that have experienced corruption due to improper shut downs. 

Roon support is also likely coming to Aurender in the next quarter or two. Older Aurender units including the N10 will not be supported as the architecture is completely different. 

I am an authorized Aurender dealer and would be happy to discuss any other questions if you have them. Feel free to PM or call me to chat.