Streamers - Auralic, Aurender, Lumin, others...
Any recommendations, please? :)
I'm looking for a streamer only – without a DAC.
I’ve been leaning toward the Auralic Aries S1 since it’s reasonably priced and available pre-owned. It also has a coaxial input, so I could connect my CD player as a transport. I’d mostly use it as a Roon endpoint, as I run Roon on a Mac Mini and really enjoy it — especially for its great music recommendations.
I’ve read some threads here, and many of you seem to love Aurender and Lumin. Has anyone had a chance to compare them with the Auralic?
Thanks!
I was looking for a stand alone streamer as well as i was very happy with my SPL DIamond DAC. I found the Bricasti Design M5 and couldnt be happier. It has the AES output that i was looking for (as the SPL accepts AES), is a stand alone Streamer (no added stuff), and is made in the USA. If you have the chance, i would highly recommend looking into this model. |
I used an Aurender N100 for several years. The "Conductor" is quite a decent UI. However it does NOT support my preferred streaming service, Presto. If ones electric utility is at all unreliable (mine, in very rural VT, is) some Aurenders should be on a UPS, as losing power, while switched on, can "brick" the device. The N150 has an internal UPS and solves that issue, I do not know about the higher end Aurenders. I have switched to the new Eversolo T8 which does everything that the Aurender did plus it supports a full set of streaming services. It has a better clock than the entry level Aurenders and supports up to DSD 512. The T8 also supports connecting a USB CD drive for playing or ripping CDs - I have ripped CDs and it works OK. I do not know how it sounds playing CDs as I have the Esoteric K-01XD SE. Do ensure that whatever you choose has a femtosecond clock, has good buffering, supports the services you want and supports the resolutions that you want over the DAC interface you intend to use.
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@retiredaudioguy thanks, I'm reading right now about Eversolo T8. It has nice price tag - much better than Aurender / Lumin. Similar to Volumio Rivo+. Are you saying that sound quality is better from Eversolo than from Aurender N100? |
if you’re just talking streamer, no dac, and not doing dsp or some other processing, only differences among streamers are explained by noise, or its absence. Remember, it’s just a transport, like a cd transport, so sole objective is accurate reading of digital stream. that’s why you don need to spend big $ or overthink it. |
