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!
@jpan My pleasure. Btw, checked your system, and it’s very unusual, and really cool. Re digital, I’m an analog guy at heart as well, so I wouldn’t spend a ton initially if I were you. You can get way closer to a state of the art digital front end on the cheap than you can on the analog side. Also, can you share how you ended up with the channel d phono pre, and how you feel about it? |
@mdalton thank you… The Channel D was a recommendation from J.R. Boslaire, of Wally Tools. He set up my table and DBA. Over time we’ve become friends and since he knew my system, I went with it. It’s fantastic. I love it’s simplicity and design as well. Not meaning to derail the digital track, what would you recommend someone like me to get into digital on a reasonable level of price/performance? I would love a Mojo but that’s a bit pricey right now for me. Definitely my kind of gear though. |
So many choices, but I can only describe my decisions. I have cheap ( a Topping and an iFi), modest (an Okto), and moderately expensive (Gold Note). I did a dac shootout with a friend in his highly resolving system of my Okto, his Mytek Brooklyn, my Goldnote DS10, and his dcs Bartok, To my ears, I ranked the DS10 best, followed by the dcs (which was over $10k), then the Okto, then the Mytek. My friend preferred his dcs over the DS10. The DS10 is about $5k if you also get the optional power supply. I bought the dac first for about $3.5k, and subsequently added the power supply. It definitely made a difference - I had previously done a two way shootout with same friend betw the dcs and ds10, and I preferred the dcs that time. Do the power supply made a material difference. |
@mdalton many thanks! The DS10 might be the perfect fit in my system. |
Just exchanged my Rose RS150B (streamer and DAC) replaced with a Eversolo T8 (new came out in Sept) streamer only. Great buy for around $1300 USD. No quality problems....probably one of the best for software ease. I was considering Pulsar, but unit I wanter was4-5X the price. It's "slightly better, but ,IMHO, not 4X the price. Good luck in your search. Emjoy the music |
