Personally, I wouldn’t get N20 unless you’re planning to pair it a better DAC. With DA2 as your DAC, save your money and get N150.
Aurender N20 or A15
After many loops through the Aurender product selector, and paying attention to what I am willing to spend, I have landed at a likely choice between the N20 or A15. For any who've had the chance to listen to these two critically with the same external DAC, can you ascribe any difference in sound quality?
While I can certainly see that the N20 is a more flexible component in terms of digital connectivity, and has some additional hardware refinement, maybe the A15 is very very (i.e nearly indistinguishably) close to the same sound quality? I realize I might or might not choose to use it's onboard DAC (my current DAC is the DA2 module installed in my C2700 preamp) depending on how it sounds, and indeed the DAC might be "wasted", but there is no N15...
Thanks for any first-hand advice,
Mark
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What @lalitk said. The DAC 2 might be a competitive $1500 DAC. I believe that looking to get the most out of an Aurender requires a great DAC and attention to all cabling. I started with the MA12000 with the intention of of upgrading my iFi Zen Stream. I soon realized all component were critical to the most out of the streamer. The Aurender was only part of the expense. |
Some more background: Update. I auditioned a Weiss 502 for about a month. Very fine piece of equipment that was quite frankly built better (not as flashy, but better connections and knob feel) than my McIntosh C2700 pre-amp. I fully expected to find that the Weiss was audibly better than the C2700's DA2. Using Roon, and setting up a zone with both the Weiss connected via ethernet and the DA2 to my PC via USB, I was able to easily accommodate A/B comparison, and then a double-blind test. My son (who is a musician) and I both took the test and really could not tell the difference. The rest of my system is an MC 462 and B&W 802 D4s, so you'd think it would be resolving enough to tell the tale. The sound really is quite good, but now I am back to looking at the source because thinking about it some more, maybe that's my first constraint as my PC is in no way optimized for sound, though I do use an AQ Coffee USB cable. So now I am back to N20 or N200 to be sure my source is as good as I can practically afford, and then try another DAC (based on another technology - maybe a PSAudio DSD MkII or the T+A DAC 200 or Holo May or second-hand dCS Bartok). Thoughts? Thanks All. -Mark
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