+1 @pokey77 on the Aurender N30SA over the Taiko. There are a few other threads on other forums that cover this. Not only does it sound better, the N30SA costs $10K less.
Aurender
I have a Korean car, watch KDramas and even listen to some KPop, but I don’t get what Aurender is doing.
I’m currently in digital hold given that my new Holo DAC died, but intend on listening to my IFi Zen stream and look at upgrade paths.
Some of the most respected members of this forum swear by Aurender, so it must deliver, but here is my point of confusion:
1. Coax and AES are the preferred outputs, but higher bandwidths require dual AES out, but I don’t have dual in on my DAC.
2. Aurender’s top models claim to have great clocks, so why not pass this on to the DAC via I2s?
3. Top Aurenders accept external clocks and I assume this is used with a DAC that accepts external clocks, but why bother when I2s would take care of this?
4. The argument against I2s is that there isn’t a standard, but this isn’t a problem in most implementations.
I’m sure that I have misrepresented things above, so please correct my understanding.
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Thanks for the info. Roon can exhibit functional issues due to seemingly minor network issues. For example, don't use a smart switch unless you know what you are doing. Perhaps, some Conductor users suffer the same fate. Roon musicality claims are all over the map. I wonder if this can be traced back to Roon Core implementation. |
“Not only does it sound better, the N30SA costs $10K less” Have you compared Taiko running on XDMS with N30 in your system? |
@lalitk Unfortunately no, when I did compare it was in someone else’s system and Taiko was running Roon. At that point the units have the same level of body and natural delivery (which is significant compared to any other streamer / server I’ve ever heard), but the N30SA had better clarity and separation. Maybe XDMS puts the Taiko up a notch, but for a $10K difference, I’m wondering if the SQ improvement from the software alone would justify the price difference. What I would also say is that while I do have the N30SA, it is hooked up to the T+A SDV 3100 HV Reference Streaming DAC Preamp. I’ve spent a lot of time comparing the two, and it is really close. The N30SA does still beat the SDV’s streamer just ever so slightly with body and detail, but I have to try really hard to tell the difference. I’d like to try hooking up a simple fanless NAS, thinking of getting a QNAP HS-264 to try, putting one of my SSDs and a linear power supply to connect via Ethernet into the SDV and compare it to the N30SA’s local library. If the SDV is close, that really makes it a killer unit as its preamp and DAC sections are also the best I’ve ever heard. And again, in full transparency I am both an Aurender and T+A dealer, so feel free to take my comments with a grain of salt despite these being my honest convictions compared to all other gear I’ve heard. |
lalik innous servers ajrun an older inferior processor so they are having Roon issues Sense is much less resource intensive. 432EVO uses a much newer and more powerful processor then Innous also unlike Innous we run Roon in its own core on the cpu it took frederic vanden pool the evos designer five years to develop a totally unique operating system designed to run Roon properly Fredeic is a master linux programer so his operating system actually employs three cores of the processor. One core runs Roon One core runs machine operations one core handles music files all run on a fast yet low noise processor. combine this proprirtary operating sstem with great hardware you can produce a superior sounding Roon server. Dave and Troy audio intellect NJ. US importers 432EVo music servers
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