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

So, it seems that a Roon Nucleus for instance would be a better place to start as far as streamers go than say an Aurender?  

I'm very happy with my Nucleus.  First time Roon user with it.  Replaced a 2011 MacBook Pro running iTunes and BitPerfect and has clearly better sound quality.  Much less noise and there is lots of music down there.

Took about 20 mins to be up and running, so very turn key.

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

If I could afford it, I would get the Aurender over the Roon in a heartbeat.
I demoed it a couple of weeks ago and was very impressed with the interface and ease of use.
B