Aurender vs. Roon

Mrdon,

We sell many of the best server brands, from Aurender, Naim, Baetis, NAD, and Innuous.

Aurender can be controlled through Roon but that is only through Airplay running on the Aurender which limits you to 16 bit 44k only.

Aurender does perform well but the lack of true Roon compatiblity is hurting them the Conductor app is very good, the difference is Roon’s much greater experiential design links performers in a way that leads you to think about how muscians are connected.

Also Roon gives you the ability to upconvert and transcode your data, so for example if your dac can handle 24bit 768k sampling rates you can take a 16 bit 44k sample from Tidal and process it to the highest sampling rate your dac can handle, Or if you prefer the sweeter sounnd of DSD output your file that way to a DSD compatibile dac.

Then factor in that you can control Roon compatible devices from many manufacturers such as a Google Chromecast or a Sonos device all while being able to listen to your high end music system in one room gives you a lot of interesting features that many people really enjoy.

Add in steallar intergration of your stored music with streaming Tidal give s you a very winning platform.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Docknow, yes the Nuclueus would be easy to use, so are a lot of other servers. 

We are not fans of the Nuclues for one very good reason, for its price point there are better constructed servers which will output a cleaner signal to your dac.

If you look at the $2500 Roon Nucleus server vs the $2600 Innuous Zen server you will see a world of difference.

The Roon server is based on an Intel Nuc with optomizations and a large memory cache the unit still uses a switch mode power supply.

Compare that the the Innous Zen:

1: Custom designed linear power supply
2: Custom designed low noise mother board designed for audio
3: Custom designed USB board
4: Optomized software 
5: Ethernet noise filters are in many ot their models as well.

For this reason we picked Innuous over the Roon product, Roon is a great company but has very  little experience in designing hardware.

Aurender uses very well executed hardware the issue is true Roon compatibility, for this reason Innous is one of the best server choices on the market. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous and Aurender dealers

.docknow many people purchase the more expensive version which is $2500 
If you add a linear power supply you are approaching the Zen.

We would love to do that shootout.

gdnrbob, if you read our post above, the Roon is nothing special for hardware.Aurender is a much better designed and sounding box, the issue is Aurender is facing stiff competition from Innuous who makes a fanastic server that is also a Roon server.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous and Aurender dealers

Mattmiller why would you possibly say that, the conductor app is a very good app, it is very different than Roon.

Roon is much more experential with links in the Bio page to other related band's musicians, a radio feature that mixes similar artists and complete intergration between Tidal's Library and a stored one.

Roon offers up conversion to higher res sample rates, a eq function, and PCM to DSD and vice versa playback.

Roon also can control other devices that are Roon endpoints so you can have the same music in your reference audio room playing on a Naim Muso or a Sonos box or via Chromecast or NAD Bluesound prouduct throughout your home.

The Aurender products are excellent sounding, and are very well made, if the features of Roon don’t matter than yes Aurender’s conductior is an excellent app. They are very different things.

Obviously you have to pay $119 a year for Roon and Conductor is free.

Aurender has Airplay Innuous doest not.

As per sound and build quality both are outstanding. The Innuous Zenith is a mind blowingly good sounding server that improves upon the Zen.

As per availability we are ordering units three at a time, Innuous is filling orders the first runs of the new MK III products all sold out pretty fast.

Most new orders take 3 weeks to get product, there have been delays with the Zen Mini. Statements, Zen’s and Zenith’s are all flowing out to their dealers.

Dave and Troy
Aurender and Innuous dealers

kingbarbuda, Roon software can be added to any home computer on the network as well. 

Nad M50.2 is your server and can be picked up as a Roon endpoint, also any Sonos device is the same way. 

The idea of getting a high end server like a Roon Nucleus or an Innuous would be to replace your Node in the music room with a direct connection via USB to your dac providing your dac accepts Usb.

If you have a modern dac that can do DSD or high resolution PCM you can output any of these frequencies to your dac and we have found that high res PCM or DSD files generally sound far superior to the 16 bit 44k original sample.

We would recommend that you look at the Innuous products as they are true audiophile grade servers that can also house the Roon program.

You could selll both the Bluesound Node and the NAD M 50.2 and replace them both with the Innuous server and get far better sound quality out of your dac. 

The difference with the NAD M50.2 is that is has a built in raid drive and analog output a Nucleus or Innuous would require an external back  up drive.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innuous and Aurender, and NAD dealers

Lalik man it is nice to see you love your N10 but some of your comments are totally off, "the N10 has no peer other then the N20," I guess all of those people who are building other reference streamers such as Innuous, Antipodes, Baetis, SGM and others are making totally inferior products? 

As per upsampling only the N10 and N20  offers that with Roon based servers you have upconversion and transcoding available at many more price points and certain dac's sound better as higher bit rates or better with DSD files, so with comprehensive upsampling all of your files from 16/44k files can sound like high resolution files.

As per 480p to 4k it is more like 1080p to 4k and that is what a lot of highly rated projectors have been doing including JVC and Epson and we have an Epson 4k Laser projector which actually uses the same wobulation technique and our 1080p content shown via their upconversion  technlogy looks amazing.

We love Aurender and they make fantastic products but don't kid yourself that Roon compatibiity isn't hurting their sales and that many people prefer the comprehensive feature set of a Roon based server. 

It all comes down to what you are comparing a product to. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Aurender and Innuous dealers

We have three on order,  most new orders are shipping in three weeks. 

We can always lend you a server if you need one. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Larryl we have the Ndx 2 xps 2 combo which comes close to the 555.

Our favorite streamer the lumin x1 it sounds amazing.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Twoch, Roon is one big boat anchor? What are you smoking Roon rocks, if you notice more and more manufacturers are making their products Roon compatible endpoints, we just put out a new Krell K300i integrated amplifier for example and I can seemlessly send music to it from Roon as well as being able to send music to dozens of other devices all over my store.

Sure some people are not Roon fans, and yes it does suck to have to pay for software but Roon has a huge ton of advantages.

You may also forget we do sell and really like Aurnender products, and they make a fantastic little server, what we pointed out is that not having Roon compatibility is hurting their sales, their hardware is excellent which unit a client prefers is up to them.

Roon is getting more and more traction because it is fantastic software, if you are only going to stream Tidal or Qbuzz, or Spotify or Internet radio then the Conductor app is fine and it is free it does have some nice features. We do like the built in Airplay function of the Aurender servers and wish the Innuous would have that.

Thyname we do agree with you, we sell: Lumin, Aurender, Baetis, Innuous, Naim, and Nad servers and streamers plus a whole lot more, the Innuous is one of our absolute favorites for all the reason mentioned in this thread, is it perfect no it isn't but the company continues to make better and better products. 

Mrdon the Calia is supposed to be an excellent dac so unless you are unhappy with its performance I would concentrate on the sever part.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ: Innuous, Aurender dealers

mrdon are you looking for a server or a streamer?

The Naim Ndx 2 oor a 555 are expensive streaming dacs, the  NDX  is $7500 for example. The Lumin D2 is excellent but it also includes a dac while the U1 does not.  

The Aurender and Innuous products are mostly streamers, although the Innuous Mini has analog outputs and the Aurender A1 has its own built in dac.  

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ 

What is a mbp

Dunedain of  course an Aurender N10 sounds better then a laptop. 

When we  first started selling Aurender we used to compare a mac mini  to the n100h and the differerence was very audible.

A high end server is designed for music transport a laptop is not.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ 

Lalik it is lovely that you are an Aurender owner and fan, if you notice in our posts we never said the Aurender units weren’t good or they did not perform, what we did say is that many people are choosing Roon for a number of reasons.

The Conductor is one of the best music control apps, out there, it is very very good, and does offer a bit of the meta data quality that Roon offers.

You may be missing one of the greatest points with Roon you can have a house full of music and Roon can control many other devices such as Sonos, or NAD Blue Sound or Naim or other Chromecast or Airplay enabled devices.

Other people love the complete libray integration of both storred and streaming music.

Other people love the file handling and eq functions that the DSP tab provides.

Other people love the experiential quality of the Roon meta data.

Companies such as Aurender are going to be challenged by more Roon enabled servers because Roon is gaining more and more market share and they always keep on improving the software.

Also on this thread it seems you bash upconverting. There are many many dacs that will sound better with upconverted digital or transcoded at least with Roon you can have your choice of playing a file Native, as upsampled PCM or playing Tidal as all DSD files.

The choice of how you want your music files relies on the user and what sounds best on the dac.

Companies such as Innous are pushing the bar in sound quality and for a small upstart company they are gaining a large share of the server market.

Why? Because they build an excellent sounding, very well designed, and very reliable server, and in each price catagory seems to be the best sounding product.

How many companies do you know that build servers with ethernet noise filters in them for both input and output to best feed an ethernet enabled dac?

We have done those tests Tidal played direct by a streaming dac and then the Innous feeding the same dac via its filtered and packeted ethernet port the sound quality was was better via the Innous Zenith then by beeing feed direct.

Unfortunatly Innous was stung by the recent Intel chip shortage but it does seem that Innous have located a supplier of this chips that has sufficient quantity to enable the production of the Zen and Zenith models and Intel is supposed to be getting the pipeline going again.

This was an Intel screw up in not forcasting demand not Innous and many companies that made products using a certain class of Intel CPU’s were affected.

Companies like Innous push the industry to rise to new heights personally all of these server companies should make one of two versions with the choice of what OS you want to run wouldn’t that be lovely?

Recent review of the Innous Statement:

http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/innuos-statement-music-server/

If you read my review of the Innuos Zenith SE you will know that I considered that server to be a game changer, a product that redefined what was possible with digital audio

The Innuos Statement takes what the company did with the SE and goes considerably further in the quest to unearth maximum musical brilliance in any recording.

I suspect that the more I use it the more I’ll hear, especially if paired with better conversion, amplification, and transduction.

I am confident in saying that it has few – if any – peers in the network server field, which means that it is one of if not the best digital source you can buy today.


Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers

Lalik we never said that Innous is the only game in town, right now they are the hottest server company on the market and they represent an excellent value for the dollar.

We can understand that you like other Aurender users love their products, the biggest issue with Aurender is that the N10, and W20 are now showing their age, and now that they are up against the new rung of uber servers that are represened by Innous, SGM, and the Memory Player as being the best in the world. 

The fact that an Innous Statment is less expensive than the W20 or the SGM or the Memory Player and it is incredibily well built 

Aurender is taking a different approach now, they are focusing on building some very nice all in one streamer/dacs like the upcoming 30, rather then over hauling and upgrading the N20 and W20. 

Both the N10 and W20 are fantastic servers and they certainly do fit some users better than the Innous product, but Lalik come on please recognize that the Statement is absolutely blowing people's minds in a way that we haven't seen in a very long time, at least until when the original N10 and W20 hit the market. 

Maybe you should demo a Statement and compare it to your N10 who knows you might just make the switch. 

We will be doing that very same demo in a few weeks after our new demo Statement has had a some time to burn in.

One of our clients has the N10 so it will make a very nice comparative demo may the best server win.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers

Lalik, your love of the Arender is commendable, IMHO there is no other server like the N10.

They are all like the N10 a Lumin is like the N10, proprietary technology its own app, except that it doens’t have storage, the Auralic is like the N10 custom app, propreitary technology internal storage.

All of these servers do the same task yes they sound different and some like the Innous use Roon while other like Antipodes also can run Roon and the Baetis can run Jriver or Roon but they are all the same high end, high performance digital transports.

They all differ in terms of execuation and of course sound quality.

We champion in the Innous not because it is in our vested interest alone,  it the press at general who are saying the Innous Statement is breaking new ground in the ability to present a dac with the best possible signal and it is a game changing product.

Please read the reviews so far everyone who has experienced an Innous product has been bowled over by it:

Current Statement reviews:

Ear: http://www.the-ear.net/review-hardware/innuos-statement-network-audio-server

The longer you let the Statement settle in the better it sounds, it’s like a Naim component in this respect, and by the end of the server’s far too short (month long) tenure I was getting seriously addicted to it. Whether streaming Ryley Walker on Tidal or Bugge Wesseltoft from the drive it has a beguiling transparency and openness that is dangerous to get used to, especially as it has inevitably to go back. The Statement is a more subtle source than most, its qualities are those of omission, it leaves out the distortion so that the music can come through. In this and all other respects this Innuos is a genuine state of the art component, put it on your ‘must hear’ bucket list straight away.

From Hfi Plus Digital Product of the Year 2018

Server of the Year: Innuos Statement

We’ve had little more than a few quick plays with the Innuos Statement because they are proving so popular that they are in very short supply (every one allocated to us ends up being sold to reduce the backlog of sales), but even the briefest of exposure to the ZENith Statement shows you are in the presence of something special.

The full media server uses Innuos’ basic concepts that hold right down to the latest version of the half-sized ZEN, including separate linear power supplies, careful case construction to isolate key subsystems, and a custom OS designed specifically for media replay. However, it takes those concepts to their logical extremes, with separate boxes with clever chambered internal housings to keep everything fully isolated from other parts of the Statement.

The ‘killer app’ though is just what these things do to the sound of the Statement, compared to almost any other server (including Innuos’ own). The company does a short demonstration at shows, comparing the ‘it can’t get better than this’ limited edition ZENith SE Mk II to the Statement. Those who can afford it, buy a Statement, and those who can’t start planning their own version of Breaking Badjust to rustle up the money to own one.

The review is coming, so you better start saving!

Full Review Hifi Plus https://www.hifiplus.com/articles/innuos-statement-music-server/

The Innuos Statement takes what the company did with the SE and goes considerably further in the quest to unearth maximum musical brilliance in any recording. I suspect that the more I use it the more I’ll hear, especially if paired with better conversion, amplification, and transduction.

I am confident in saying that it has few – if any – peers in the network server field, which means that it is one of if not the best digital source you can buy today.

John Darko: on the older SE pre Statement piece:

Streamers and servers:

Premier League

• Innuos Zenith MKII SE

Division 1

• Antipodes DX Gen 2

Division 2

• AURALiC Aries G1

Division 3

• ALLO DigiOne Signature
• Antipodes DS [discontinued]
• Aurender N100H
• AURALiC Aries
• LG V30
• Sonore ultraRendu

again from Darko
https://darko.audio/2019/02/a-short-film-about-the-innuos-zen-mk3/?fbclid=IwAR0erU_SoPq_QORo2Sct0wD4...

Lalik it is not us being just Innous fans it seems that most of the reviewers who experience the Innous prouducts are raving over them as well.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers

Yes and Lalik, the W 20 is $17,600.00 so it is even more expensive!

The Zenith which compares to the N10 is $4,300.00 vs the N10 which is $8,000.00 so big difference there.

There is also the 1TB version for $13,750.00

or the 2TB version for $14,400.00

So it seems you can have a lot of price difference from the $17,600.00 one version W20.

Please find us a W20 in the New York metro area and we will be more than happy to do so.

Why don’t you read the review Mr. Kennedy is pretty emphatic on his finding on the Statement from the last line of the review:

" if not the best digital source you can buy today. " that is a pretty glowing endorsement isn’t it?

We see things very differently then you Lalik if something is better we would easily sell off the older item and replace it with the newer one. Our allgience is to getting the best sound possible and not the brand, if we can find a better server for the money than the Innous we would switch in a second. 

Again just for giggles why don't you hear a Statement for yourself and what if it moves your system's performance in a big way would you deny that, if the Statment made you system signifigantly better, because of your support for the brand you currently have?

Our philsophy is to pursee the best possibly products hence we are always testing new and emmerging products if the design makes sense. 

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers

Fza your post seems rather malicious, this video has been proven to be bunk  and has been discussed before. The video has also been discredited as a smear campaign by a guy who discredits much of the industry, The same guy who rails against profit and over charge, sells is own line of very expensive cables which cost very little to make, yet are priced at many times the cost of his materials, where is the integrity in that?

Back to your video points to consider:

One:  looking at a products guts on line does not verify the sound quality of the piece.

Two: OCD facts are wrong, the MK III units all use a custom mother board, custom power supplies, proprietary software, their own very high quality USB board with very low jitter in the Statement, ethernet incomming and outgoing filters depending on models, custom cases and footers.

Three: OCD guy never brought a unit to test his comments that he can home brew a comparable unit for less is like postulating my souped up home built Honda racer will smoke a 2019 Porsche 911 Turbo, and even it it did it wouldnt mean that the home built car is reliable, resellable, servicable, and in said example perhaps when you factor in time and parts build the savings on home built unit may not equal much.

Four: The Innous products are some of the highest rated digital streaming products on the market and have been heralded in every review as being great sounding, reilable, products that have been advancing the catagory of digital streamers since they came out and each successive generation is a noticable improvement over the last.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlCG2fK-abo

Lets see what Mr. Darko a respected reviewer of all things digtial says.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers

Mrdon and Thyname, 

the biggest point here is that OCD hifi guy is looking at a screen shot of a product  and making a determination about it.

This is about as valid a point at looking at a beautiful woman and saying she is going to be fabulous in the sack because she is great looking, she could be great or be just  awful, without direct empirical evidence you are postulating now aren't you?

Or looking at a pretty picture of an expensive amplifier and stating it is going to sound terrific because it looks good.

Proper ettiquette as well as scientific procedure is to get in said product and do a point by point test of its sound quality.

Either the piece performs or it doesn't.

The video is in poor taste because no one in his right mind would just go off on a product without testing it personally and knowing all of the facts about its construction and cost of manufacture and of course its sound quality.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous dealers