Aurender N100 internal hard drive or USB external drive?

uber,

That’s way too many questions...just kidding. Looks like you got the N100SC model.
1. I would say yes, you should hear uptick in SQ. Based on my experience with head to head comparisons between Vault and Aurender playback from their respective internal drives. The music files stored on sounds fuller, detailed and smooth compared to those on Vault. The music stored on Vault drive sounds lifeless. There is a considerable amount of loss in high fidelity.

2a. What drive model, I would ask Aurender support team for recommendation.

2b. SSD better than HDD...Yes, here is why; by caching songs to the SDD for playback, it eliminates any sound quality degradation and even drop outs due to a non-optimal network connection from for example, a NAS drive. Playback from SSD also minimizes wear and tear on the HDD drive as after loading to the caching drive, the HDD goes idle.

With a internal drive, you’re also shortening the path and eliminating possibilities of external interferences between two components.

Good read here

https://www.audiostream.com/content/tips-setting-audiophile-nas-system-aurender-john-paul-lizars

Great article Anwar, thanks!

Sounds like due to the way Aurender caches all music queued up to play onto its internal ssd it might not be as crucial for where the hard drive resides as it might be otherwise.

However I still might prefer to install an internal HDD just to tidy things up a little.

Internally, you have less of an issue with more power supplies to pollute your AC.

SSD is best, but you don't need top of the line. 2 year old SSD's have plenty of throughput.  They have instant, random access, and no motors to spin up/down.

I only have about ~ 200 GB of music at home, I keep it on a thumb drive attached to my Roon server. Technically slow as can be, works fine.

Best,
E

Heard back from Ari at Aurender customer support.

You pays your money and takes your choice apparently.

Any brand off HDD or SSD was his reply although he did say he preferred Samsung for SSD and Seagate for HDD.