Music streamers

lalitk

If you can stretch your budget, get the N100H and call it a day.

Buying that Aurender was one of the few major blunders I’ve made as an audiophile. I dumped it after less than a year and would never consider an Aurender product again. The N100H can throw a fit if the power goes out - it’s always on "standby" - and software updates can be a disaster. Many praise Aurender support but in my experience their sluggish, indifferent stock answers sometimes showed they couldn’t even be bothered to read the inquiry. Other times the answer was simply pedantic.

Yes, the Aurender software is slick and some people think it’s "sexy." No matter - I found the Aurender N100H hardware to be more trouble than it’s worth and the OS is a mess. To be fair, it may be the start of a good product but it would need some substantial fixes before I'd consider it a proper finished component.

I thought the unit was so bad that I couldn’t in good conscience sell it on A’gon, even though my unit was "mint." (It still had the protective plastic over the display.) So I sold it to TMR at a major $$$$ loss but that wasn’t their fault - they paid me what is was worth.

TMR was very nice to work with, btw - I’d do business with them again if I ever acquire another heap of headaches like the Aurender.

The primary benefits of a network streamer without DAC are ease of use and convenience. In other words, making it so listening to music is more enjoyable. So checking out the software user interface before hand and doing some research on how the unit performs and integrates into your existing music library and streaming sources are a good place to start.

We recommend Lumin in large part for those reasons. But there are many other good options.

Past that, there is an argument to be made about a streamer's digital audio connection to your DAC being less noisy and therefore having an impact on the quality of the reproduced sound.

An example I often use is when we found a popular brand-name sound card was improperly grounded and sending out extreme amounts of noise over the digital coaxial cable. The noise can be rejected/mitigated by the DAC's receiving circuit, but of course it's better if there isn't any noise to begin with.

cleeds-- I have no doubt you had problems with your Aurender .
Every manufacturer has a lemon once in a while. I have owned my N100H-4-4TB for about a year or so with no problems at all . I moved from a small desktop with an external hard drive and wireless keyboard to the Aurender . Although I thought the desktop sounded great !
The Aurender absolutely smoked it ! In all perimeters . I was using an outboard Dac to my preamp .
Paratham--- Using your dac in your integrated would , I think , bring a likewise large improvement from the laptop.  Aurender has a great track record and I think lalitk is right . That is a good price for the N100h.
If you can--try to go for it . I think that Aurender will blow you away.
I have a friend that has used a laptop and we matched it ti the aurender 
to compare . Was not even close .
One other thing that I found ( surprisingly ) .The type of power cord used on the Aurender made a big difference .
Hope this helps and just my two cents worth 

+1 on Lumin

solarjam

cleeds-- I have no doubt you had problems with your Aurender .
Every manufacturer has a lemon once in a while.

Quite so, no doubt. My issues with the Aurender were only in part the actual product - which I do not think was a lemon - but also the indifferent support. And to be fair, many users praise Aurender support. But my experience with them unsatisfactory.

I’m spoiled, though, because for decades I’ve had excellent support from companies such as Bryston, Grado, ARC and McIntosh. In years past, I received excellent support from Infinity, Tandberg, Nakamichi and PS Audio. In my experience, Aurender isn’t in their class. Not even close.