Cary Audio DMS-550 or Aurender A10


I was wonder if anyone had compared the Cary DMS-550 to the Aurender A10?

The streamer would be feeding my T+A PA3000HV integrated amp which drives a pair of T+A TCD 210S speakers. I would describe the T+A amp as being neutral as it gets out of the way of the music.

Comparing the two units - I do like the fact that the A10 has internal storage and in speaking with Aurender tech support the A10’s internal storage can be upgraded with a SSD drive of any capacity. With the DMS-550 I would be attaching a 8TB SSD external drive directly via USB cable.

The above being said, an interesting positive of the DMS-550 is that it has many more input options such as AES/EBU x1, Coaxial x2, Toslink x1 - so it can function as my digital preamp, instead of me connecting my other digital source components analog to the T+A. 

Looking at the internal construction of each unit you can see the A10 having a clear separation of the DAC and Streamer sections each with their own power supplies. This is not the same as the DMS-550, as it shares a power supply. Internally A10 also appears to be a bit cleaner in it's design layout, with possibly better isolation.  

But in the end what matters is the audio signature and the "voice" each unit would impart to my system.

As a side note - I did borrow a friends Lumin T2 an excellent piece of audio gear, but I did find it slightly bright in my system, and little fatiguing after longer listening.

Any thoughts, advise, wisdom would be very much appreciated.
josephp732

Showing 2 responses by dimbhaka

I recently added Cary DMS-550 to my system although I did not compare it with Aurender A10.

In my case DMS-550 feeds Luxman L-507uxii (Integrated) driving Spendor D7.2 speakers. I have an SSD connect to one of the USB ports and do not subscribe to any streaming services.

All my music until now has been flac files (CD & 96/24). I just bought my first DSD64 album: The Window by David Elias.  The sound was so good that I am on the lookout for more DSD albums. 

For me DMS-550 matches the Luxman/Spendor combination perfectly in terms of sound.  Although the Android app in not perfect, it is still usable.  

Note that USB connected drives are limited to 7TB.

Coming from a BluOS app Cary Audio App definitely does not have that polished look, but so far the app has been stable and is intuitive to use.

I attach a Sandisk portable SSD and shove it under the DMS-550 chassis; its feet are high enough to accommodate portable SSDs under it.