New streamers from Aurender!

[krass]

note that "Tidal" shows in bottom of the display,

[krass]

It would be good to get one that has less:

 

No graphics, no harddrive, etc.

 

I could be wrong but I don't think the N100 model has hard drives ?

They only have USB out (so no etc either)

 

by 'graphics' I guess you mean the OLED display ? the associated development is already done on earlier models so not sure that removing it would make the price much cheaper (and it's one of the nicer displays)

[krass]

I followed the same journey and have been using my X100L for a month now. Zero regrets (except the now redundant MacMini); the Aurender interface and ease of use is phenomenal.

[krass]

dead simple headless operation is one... Better sound is another... Caching limits are not a thing in the Aurender... Plus they are no longer a DIY prospect, a linux headache, or any other numbers of things.

 

+1

 

- macmini headless was fine, when it worked. Fed up the number of times that something didn't quite startup correctly and I had to VNC in from an iPad to see what was up.

- JRMC/JRemote is good for music; Aurenders app is better

- MacMini with any decent sized internal capacity is noisy (disc noise), and fan would butt-in now & again

- Aurender 6tb & SSD doesn't need fast /cabled network connection to stream hi-res (eg from NAS); I can avoid Ethernet rewiring

- Sound quality out-of-the-box is much better; I just don't want to mess around any more with MacMini services optimization and quite happy not to have to try out Amarra, A+, BitPerfect etc

- I had some MacMini issues with USB output (buffering problems at everything >48k); never found out what problem was after weeks of googling and disabling different USB ports etc

- Aurender just works, every single time, easily, delivering great sound.

- it looks great

 

I used a MacMini for about 18 months, just got fed up.

Sure I paid more for the Aurender than a MacMini +player software +NAS +etc, but I now spend 100% of my music time listening to music and not performing SYS admin.....

[krass]

I get that, people may have different opinions, but what is the downside of offering it? You can set up your screen however you want. If a person does not like it, one can choose the other screen settings they offer: turn the screen off, have the trippy blue McIntosh meters, or perhaps the mellow pale yellow ones.

 

Answer me this: What downside is there to having the option to view album art on the physical player?

 

assuming the display can support it (yes), that the hardware interface to the display can support it (I assume they have not taken shortcuts at the pin-level of the OLED hardware interface) and the functionality can be added to the player OS (I guess yes), and the SW development cost is reasonable (I guess yes), then there should be no downside for the manufacturer to offer this.

 

so I agree, no (or insignificant) downside

[krass]

I was wondering about these servers too.

 

If, like me, you mainly want to select and play music by selecting an album and clicking play (in Audirvana I double click on an album thumbnail and it plays, having been loaded into the playqueue behind the scenes; and the next album I choose like this relaxes it in the playqueue), can you do that with the Aurender remote app? I don't really like fiddling around with playlists.

 

yes Craig, that's the normal way i use the app. the app has nice features to find/browse music using all the usual methods (by genre, by album,by artist etc), it has a number of "quick buttons" to speed up some of the filtering, and it has a nice text search that can be combined with all the other filter options (ie type "gen" and it filters and refines all results as you type. Then click on the "Rock" button and all the non-rock results disappear, etc etc).

 

once you find what you want to play, just touch it and it gets put at the end of the queue. Or you can touch and hold and a lot if other options appear such as play next, add to end, add all tracks, etc etc.

 

it's very functional, fast and easy to use. in fact it's a joy to use and has changed the way I listen to music.

[krass]

I'm not an Aurender user of Tidal; I think that Tidal integration is not yet available but I'd love to find out I'm wrong.

 

from rumours I've seen around here, I'm expecting post CES firmware update sometime in the next month or so, that will include external music service integration (Tidal ?, others ?) and will provide the X100 with the same NAS interface capability as the new N models (cover art and browsing etc).

 

but it's all guesswork on my part.

[krass]

Your guesswork is accurate. All Aurender models will have Tidal streaming integration, accomplished by a firmware upgrade and an upgrade to the Conductor app on the iPad. All models also will be set up with the same NAS interface capability, enabling the user to browse music stored on the NAS the same way as on any internal storage. They're getting close. You will be very pleased with the upgrades.

 

very happy to hear that bpw !

 

and just today Tidal announced their arrival in the Netherlands, where I live. Good timing everybody............

[krass]

I think Jimmy's worried that the Tidal (etc) client will be the Aurender App on the iPad, meaning that the content then hasto be streamed to the N100 via AirPlay.

 

What we hope for is that Tidal (etc) client is running on the N100 machine, thereby not requiring AirPlay between the iPad and the Aurender unit. The iPad remains a control point only.

[krass]

Yeah I understand your situation but I use music services for music exploration . The music I really like I will buy a used cd from Amazon or hi res from Hd Tracks or Acoustic Sounds . I subscribe to both Tidal and Spotify . Spotify has a bigger selection so I will use that a lot .

 

Subscribing to multiple music services has actually saved me money because I no longer buy CD's

that to me are mediocre to good .

 

Different strokes for different folks i guess .

 

Jimmy, I use Spotify a lot on my X100. I know you don't like AirPlay (neither do I), but for streaming this already lower-quality music source I find it quite fine. You anyway have to use an iPad, so using the iPad Spotify app and just clicking one AirPlay button is for me is just not something that bothers me.

 

I would even suggest I prefer to use the Spotify app rather than having it embedded in someone else's interface....

 

For "real Hifi" I agree, i too play the hires stuff via physical cables.

 

Just a thought

[krass]

Why not? Again, the connection between iPad and Aurender is

iPad ---wifi---> router ---Ethernet---> Aurender

Pretty darn simple.

 

...I agree, it must be so; since Aurender has no form of wireless connectivity it has to receive the Airplay'd signal via wired Ethernet.

[krass]

I was wondering if someone could post a detailed review of the iPad interface for Aurender. How responsive is it? Any connectivity problems or annoyances with the way it works? How does it compare to iTunes Remote?

 

I currently have a Mac Mini and log into it from my laptop via Screen Sharing to control iTunes, Swinsian, Audirvana, Rdio, etc. That works for the most part, but the Mac is a blessing and a curse. I can always eventually get the problem fixed, but I really wish I didn't have to deal with the problems at all. The appeal of a solution like Aurender is to have all this be stable and streamlined to the music playback use case, but if the primary UI is sub-standard then I don't think I'm going to be happy with it. So I'd love to hear other's impressions of how well it's designed. Thanks,

 

not a detailed review I'm afraid; but the interface is the best I've used. The brown colour disappears once you start using it (get used to it) and now I prefer it to something bright & distracting. The App is fast; one thing Chris C pointed out in his original review is that artwork is downloaded from the Aurender and cached on the iPad; so none of the annoying delay whilst it reloads artwork when you scroll off the bottom of a page with a lot of albums in cover view.

 

It is effortless. It reminds me of the days when you put a CD in. pressed play and it just played without drama.

 

Apart from "the brown", have you (or anybody) ever seen a single bad forum comment on the Aurender interface ?

I haven't...........