750$ Intel NUC vs $6000 Aurender N200: I don't hear the difference

been streaming (ripped music and/or Tidal) for a dozen years. When I moved from a Audirvana/Mac mini setup to a dedicated streamer/server, the Auralic Aries sounded better than the aurrender units and the DS Lightning software was also much better. At that point using USB to external dac. After a couple of years with the Auralic, got a very good dac with ethernet and went with Roon on a dedicated server using ethernet to dac. USB is a flawed interface and your better days use ethernet or i2s.

@djones51 

Most streamers, not all, don't have the necessary CPU and memory to run roon core. That's the main difference. I keep my NUC in my office and a streamer in the audio rack, both on the same network.  I have used a NUC directly connected to a DAC via USB. As long as you have a good modern DAC using asynchronous USB,  for instance a Benchmark DAC 3, noise shouldn't be a problem. 

Streaming into my Benchmark DAC3B in an all-Benchmark stack the differences between an Ethernet based streamer and a Fibre Optical based streamer was massive via DAC USB. My network is likely noisy with a lot of computers (about 10 machines for my work), network switches, etc...

I kept everything the same on the system except switching from a Sonore microRendu to an Sonore OpticalRendu. I also got a new network switch that had 2 SFP slots for the Fibre Optical. I do think the DAC3B was suffering from noise in the network. Or, the electronics on the microRendu was not as clean as the electronics on the OpticalRendu. 

In the same light I had an Innous player come in for an audition. It was played through USB. My normal player is an Intel nuc i3 with 8gb ram, using Audirvana 3.5 and out a Matrix USB card all attached to a LPS. 

The Innous was bested by a bit but both were fairly close.

Later I brought in a Bryston BDP-3 player and went through the same audition. This time the Bryston player won out. But again the difference was minimal. As a side note, the software although seemingly old school, is extremely quick, and bug free.

I would now like to bring in an Aurender  to try again, but I think due to their software issues I read about online, I really don't want to deal with those problems.

p.s. Introducing Roon never helps the sound quality, and it is why I will never buy it even though the interface seems to be second to none.

So, me and an audiophile friend got together to sort this out.

All the caveats were resolved. Both NUC and Aurender used USB, both were fed by Tidal. Now the surprise was that NUC beat Aurender by a nice margin.

The Aurender sounded cleaner and more audiophile but more analytical and lacking lower end bass (hence cleaner we felt).

Roon ROCK on NUC had better bass and was more natural sounding. 

Go figure.

Hmmmm...now if I add a fanless chasis and LPS to my NUC it might sound even cleaner and beat Aurender in every which way.

The N200 is going back.

Anyone talking about noisy network or noisy USB etc are missing the point. This is a shootout under identical conditions. Roon + NUC vs Aurender N200 running Aurender software.

This thread might sound like heresy to the "source is as important as DAC" crowd, but I am as surprised as you are, and frankly quite disappointed.

Conclusion: Roon has done a fantastic job with Roon ROCK that has obviated the reason for a music server unless you want to spend the big bucks (>6000$ I am assuming, and even that needs some testing).

Also Roon has a UI next to none, a nice bonus.

Roon on mac mini was always meh, Audirvana sounded better, but not the same with roon rock.

Also: Am now thinking of buying roon permanent license.

as a server importer you are wrong on a number of facts

it does not take 6k to beat a nuc our  a higher end server will blow a nuc away

we are roon dealers and we have the  nucleus on display a nucleus  is a nuc in a nicer case with or wihout an lps

our 5,500,00 432Evo high end model sounds far better and the 7,500.00 Aeon will shock you with just how good a server can sound and the sonic difference these devices can make

if you love Roon and really want to experience how much better your digital can sound you should try one of our servers

we agree with you Roon is the best

our servers were designed from the ground up to run Roon and they are full cores as well as being an endpoint

Dave and Troy

Audio intellect

US importer 432Evo music servers