Streamers - Auralic, Aurender, Lumin, others...

Thanks, everyone!

I use a Mac because it’s fast with the M1 processor and does upsampling flawlessly. I don’t think connecting it directly to the DAC is a good idea, though.
If Aurender has a better app, interface, and good recommendation algorithms, I’ll have no problem switching from the Mac.

What a drag that Auralic went belly up. I was wondering what was going on today — their website’s been down all day. I wish there were something like an Auralic — small, black, with a coax input and upsampling option. There’s a coax input on my Lampizator, but I have to press the button manually to switch from USB.
With the Auralic, I could connect my CD player and decide remotely whether I want to listen to CDs or Tidal.

What about the cheaper Aurender models, like the N150? Are they good as well?

I don’t know why, but Lumin doesn’t have a good reputation in my country. Some people have griped about the sound quality. How would you compare Aurender and  Lumin in terms of sound quality and interface / app?

The Holo Audio Red ($950) is the best sounding streamer you can buy until you get into Lumin U2 territory or any Aurender.

It is pretty much just a box but sounds amazing. 

@gkelly What’s so special about Innuos? It’s not expensive (innuos mini) even new.

EDIT: It doesn't work with Room, damn! 

So we have for now: Innuos, Aurender, Lumin and Sonore.

With Qobuz and Tidal Connect the need for Roon becomes mute. on a sidenote, once you get an InnuOs You will be able to put the Mac 💻 on the shelf, just where it belongs in a Audio setup. Sorry for such a rude comment it just that I thought we had gotten over the guys with a Mac as their music streamer. You’re like the third person today with one of those so once again I apologize for the comments

Aurender Conductor is an excellent user interface. But it isn’t as good as Roon. Not from UI/UX and not from the selection algorithm for auto/radio station playback. Roon is much better. Aurender, as I stated earlier, relies on cache when used natively with Conductor. It’s both its pro and a con at the same time. You eventually end up with a humongous queue and it’s annoying. If you set it to continuous play that queue is going to continue to grow. Overall the Aurender wound quality when used with its conductor app leveraging SSD caching is superior to using it as a roon endpoint. The difference is small but if you have a revealing setup you will hear it. 
 

Lumin native app sucks. I would only use lumin as a Roon endpoint.