The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[DancingSea]

On 11/6/2022 at 6:29 AM, kipdent said:

What computer platform do you use? If Mac, I can highly recommend the method I use: Mount the Aurender's internal drive and use the fabulous Chronosync application to create a backup task from it to a hard drive attached to your Mac. It will create a bit perfect backup of the Aurender which then you can store somewhere safely. I'm sure Windows has an application that functions similarly. The Aurender online support files give great directions on how to mount your Aurender's drive to either type of computer.

 

Aloha,

 

I just bought a N100H from Aurender and am in my 30 day trial period.  A couple of questions:

 

1) Regarding Chronosync.  Roon has watched folders, which Aurender does not.  Meaning with Roon it can be specified to watch any folder you choose and Roon automatically imports any new additions.  Could Chronosync be used as a way to sync the self made Aurender music folder on my Mac’s external HD to the Aurender internal hard drive mounted on the desktop (Music1 folder)?  I was hoping that might serve as a manually operated watched folder.  Rather than having to go through and manually drag folders to the Aurender, could Chronosync do all that for me?  In theory Chronosync would be on top of only adding new albums.

 

2)To the forum at large, what’s the conventional wisdom regarding Aurender break in time?  How many hours should I give it?

 

Thanks!

[DancingSea]

2 minutes ago, kipdent said:

Precisely! You set up automated “tasks” in Chronosync with a chosen schedule, and as long as the volumes are available, Chronosync scans the source and destination disks and quickly adds only changes since the last synchronization. Plus, the company is an outlier—no subscription required. Pay for it once and free updates for life. (PS—I have no association with the company; I’m just a very happy customer.)

 

Cool.  I’ve owned a Chronosync license for seems like 20 years.  I use it to backup my music hard drives.  Great to hear it can be used as an Aurender watched folder proxy.  Thanks.

[DancingSea]

To answer my own question. Ari suggested 150 hours for break in and to upgrade the power cable. 

[DancingSea]

I gave Chronosync a whirl.  Asked it to sync about 2GB worth of music.  I don't have the fastest home network.  That said, it whirled around for 30 minutes and my Mac eventually froze and restarted itself!  I made the rest of the transfer manually, which only took a few minutes.

 

I'll get up my nerve to try Chronosync again.

[DancingSea]

On 1/31/2023 at 5:43 PM, kipdent said:

How frustrating! Sorry to hear it. In fact, your experience is the opposite of mine over the years. Though slow, for me Chronosync has been rock solid and reliable. 
 

All software up-to-date, both Chronosync and macOS?

 

Yes, all well with ChronoSync. I’ve used it for all my backups and synchronization for 20 years, always rock solid. 
 

For some reason my Mac doesn’t get along with Aurender over a variety of issues.  And Conductor is too dated for my tastes, especially after Roon. 
 

Aurender build and sound quality are excellent. So is their customer service.  I’m glad to have spent time with the Aurender, but ultimately decided to return it. 

[DancingSea]

On 10/26/2023 at 4:11 AM, GJo said:

I like Roon's user interface and streaming service integration.

 

I'm discouraged by Aurender's slow adoption of Roon Ready certification. When I purchased my N30SA, I contacted Aurender USA and asked about Roon Ready integration and was told it was imminent and hopefully would happen some time in October. A week ago, I followed up with Aurender USA and was informed they were hopeful this would happen before the end of the year.

 

Searching the web, I see that moving the target date forward appears to have been a familiar theme for some time.

 

I'm not looking to enter a debate about what sounds better. Simply expressing some frustration, and wishing Aurender could be more accurate about the status of Roon Ready integration into the Aurender universe.

 

Roon integration can take a very long time on the Roon side.  On the Roon forums, Hegel routinely posted the Roon integration was imminent for several years before actually getting it.  Roon takes great care that the integration is flawless before giving out the certification.  Roon integration on Aurender may indeed be soon, or might be a well into the future.  It will get here though.

[DancingSea]

5 minutes ago, GJo said:

No doubt that is all true.

 

However, it takes both companies to make it work, and Aurender Inc's failure to get Conductor 4 working correctly for so many users makes me wonder where the responsibility lies on the certification spectrum.

 

Admittedly harsh on my part, but my patience is tested as my N30SA continues to require repeated connecting during listening sessions.

 

I'm not an Aurender defender by any means.  I wrote a blistering review of the long since returned N100H on the Aurender website primarily because of the failings of Conductor and how it falls well short of the architecture and stability such high end (and excellent) hardware deserves.  Coming from the Roon/HQP world, I found Conductor to be non-competitive and outdated on multiple fronts (totally respect if others feel the opposite and love Conductor!)

 

Aurender even called me about the review!  They seemed rather stunned by what I wrote.  I may have played a small part in further nudging Aurender towards providing a Roon option for those who prefer such things.  Nothing wrong with choices.

 

I'm snooping around here to see where the Roon progress stands as I was extremely impressed by their hardware.  I've held off going with Lumin or HiFi Rose to wait and see where Aurender lands with their Roon implementation.

 

Can't say if the Roon delays are because of Roon or Aurender.  But I do know it's not a simple process to get Roon certified and Aurender, while fantastic on the hardware side, does seem to struggle by comparison on their software progress.  

 

 

 

[DancingSea]

1 hour ago, jhwalker said:

Roon doesn't have a "sound quality". It's just a server that sends bit-perfect streams to whatever endpoint you are using.

 

I wish this were true.  But Roon absolutely has a unique sound quality.  As does Audirvana, or HQPlayer or Amarra.  Software has perhaps an equal effect on SQ as hardware.  Both are equally important.  Part of Aurender's secret SQ sauce is Conductor software.

 

When I was comparing Conductor directly to Roon, I did feel that Conductor sounded better.  It was fairly obvious.  But for me, the Roon user experience and stability is a good 10 years more advanced than Conductor.  It just is.

 

Roon integration is coming.  Roon are like the Borg, resistance is futile.  But I don't think folks should get all worried that the presence of Roon's RAAT is going to mess up Conductor's sound quality.  It won't.  And adding the optional Roon capability will be a meaningful benefit to Aurender's market share.  It's a win win for everyone.

 

Perhaps one could argue that the switch from AMD to Intel has altered Aurender's sound signature for the worse.  But that ship has sailed with or without Roon.

 

The natives need not worry about lil' 'ol RAAT.  I'm confident Aurender is designing the implementation to be fully bypassed if so desired.  And Aurender will make Roon sound as good as it possibly can short of creating their own Roon Core device.

 

 

[DancingSea]

1 hour ago, jhwalker said:

Again, if a specific software actually DOES sound different (or an endpoint handles that stream differently), that's a problem, not a feature.

 

NOTE: this is NOT to say that Audirvana (say) or Amarra is NOT doing something internally that "sweetens" the sound in some way, which may be difficult to detect if outputting directly to a DAC (e.g., via USB, etc.).  But if they're actually just sending the file to a renderer (e.g., via DLNA), then they WILL sound the same unless the renderer is mishandling the stream.

 

In my experience, all music software, including the great sounding Aurender Conductor, has a different sound.  How they specifically get to the sound difference I'm not sure as I'm not a software engineer - and for me, the semantics of bit perfect vs "something internally that sweetens the sound in some way" does not matter.  I'm only interested in the end result.

 

Part of Aurender's selling point, from day one, and rightfully so, is their "bespoke software" and how it sounds better than the competition.  Aurender doesn't claim that Conductor sounds the same as any other bit perfect software, nor should they.

 

I have no issue with you seeing this differently and understand the school of thought from which you speak. 

[DancingSea]

Is V3 of Conductor generally stable?  Are these lamentations of bugs limited to V4?

[DancingSea]

Does anyone have experience with an Aurender A100?  How does it sound as a streamer/ server compared to the N100H or other lower end AMD models?  And how is the DAC?

[DancingSea]

In any case, got a great deal on a 2 year old used A100 ($1285) from The Music Room.  Will keep my Roon/HQP rig for when a chic GUI calls.  Was surprised that Aurender will provide a full 2 year manufacture's warranty on a used unit from an authorized dealer.  Impressive.  Never heard of a company doing that.

 

Does Conductor V4 improve on the overall organization and GUI from V3?  I'm leery of diving into V4 if it's going to be buggy, at least for now.

[DancingSea]

8 minutes ago, GJo said:

Conductor V4 GUI is similar to V3.

 

The recently released Beta V4 is not buggy in my system. V4 has the benefit of vTuner internet radio, which V3 lacks.

 

What improvements do you experience with V4 over V3?  Is it just the Tuner internet radio?  Or is there more to it?

[DancingSea]

2 hours ago, GJo said:

Just vTuner for me. I use internet radio on a regular basis, so it's a nice added feature.

 

Otherwise, I don't notice much difference between the versions, but others who have drilled down deeper may have more to offer in that respect.

 

On the Aurender websites for V4 they list improvements as "New Settings Menu", "Play Action Commands" and "Internet Radio by vTuner".  Not exactly a large list.  But who am I to complain given I have no idea what's required to accomplish even that?

[DancingSea]

Not sure if it has been mentioned in this thread before, but I contacted Aurender Support today and asked about Ari.  Aurender said he is no longer with the company.  That's a significant loss for Aurender as Ari went far beyond what one would expect - perhaps even imagine - customer service could be.

[DancingSea]

The reason I contacted Aurender is that a year ago Ari helped me setup a new N100H.  At his recommendation, he did a remote screen share with my Mac and used JRiver to do some sort of metadata wizardry.  He said it would make my iTunes tracks work best with Aurender and Conductor.

 

Ended up returning the N100H.  I thought I saved his renovated files, but apparently I did not.  I reached out to Aurender to see if Ari could do it again, and was informed he is no longer with the company and that no one else at Aurender knows how to do what he did in terms of metadata.

 

A question for you guys.  Is there something that must be done in terms of metadata before transferring iTunes based tracks into my just arrived A100?  Or is it ok to just load iTunes files like normal?

 

Thanks.

[DancingSea]

34 minutes ago, Koso said:

Ari was the epitome of excellent Aurender service. Sad news.

 

I reached out to Ari this week because I'm setting up my new Aurender and am Conductor illiterate.  Even though he no longer works for Aurender, he offered to help.  Amazing!!

[DancingSea]

11 hours ago, Koso said:

Ari was the epitome of excellent Aurender service. Sad news.

 

Ari leaving Aurender is like Nick Saban retiring from Alabama!

[DancingSea]

I assume a new music server will be hitting the market soon, the Ari-ender ;)

[DancingSea]

24 minutes ago, audio.bill said:

Thought this post might be of interest on this thread:  Aurender and Roon

 

Interesting.  I saw the screenshot on audioshark but couldn't find anything with that text on the web.  I wonder where it's located?  I did a google search of aurender.com for "roon" and no results were found.

[DancingSea]

40 minutes ago, Mazza said:

On the bbs chain, one of the posters claims:

 

”Aurender once claimed that they did not work with Roon because Conductor sounded better and they were unwilling to degrade the sound. The reality is that Aurender products at that time were using AMD chips that were not powerful enough to work with Roon.”

 

whilst true on the AMD chip, the other reason is not correct. Originally Aurender cited that they were not introducing Roon because it meant abandoning their own software and relinquishing all control of their product to another company and abiding by their rules and their software licence. 

 

And yet becoming a Roon endpoint in no way means Aurender must abandon Conductor.  Lumin, HiFi Rose, Auralic, BlueSound etc are all Roon endpoints and still have their own software as a free option.  Aurender was just being stubborn, but market demands have forced Roon integration upon them.

 

The Aurender AMD chips are not powerful enough to run Roon's RAAT (Roon Advanced Audio Transport), much less actually run Roon itself.  RAAT is what allows a device to become a Roon Endpoint.  The Roon Core, in most cases, still runs on someone's separate personal computer or some other consumer device like a NUC that is not purpose built for audio like an Aurender.  Roon's own Nucleus (their version of an Aurender) is just a cheap NUC in a fancy case.

 

Now that Harman/ Samsung has purchased Roon, it will interesting to see if they come up with a better Roon Core.

[DancingSea]

48 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The answer was a quick, “no.” The reasoning is what’s important to this discussion. I was told the people at Aurender like to make things and be creative coming up with solutions to problems. 
 

Using that as a guidepost, one can see why Aurender resisted implementing Roon for so long. It isn’t all about money and market forces. It’s about being satisfied in one’s work as well. 

 

I appreciate your reflections and I have no doubt in what you're sharing.  However, Aurender's adoption of Roon in no way interferes with Aurender's desire to "make things and be creative coming up with solutions."  They can still create away with Conductor, or anything else.  The Roon implementation does not hinder that creativity.

 

Therefore, especially given for how long Aurender has staved off Roon adoption, its ultimate implementation is almost certainly about customer pressure to have Roon as an alternative to Conductor rather than Aurender suddenly falling in love with Roon.

 

If we follow your line of thinking, then Aurender's new found friendliness for Roon must likely be because adding Roon is now (not before, but now) opening some new creative door for the Aurender team.  Perhaps it is.  But I can't imagine that was the straw that broke the Aurender Roon camel's back.  The primary reason, not only, but primary reason is that Roon is getting more and more popular in the high end market and has become the standard bearer for library management software.  Conductor sounds great, but it's not even competitive with Roon on the library management/ music discovery front.  Conductor is a good 5 year behind Roon.  And it's for those reasons that market forces have pushed Aurender into adopting Roon, something they obviously have never been enthusiastic about.

 

Nearly every meaningful competitor to Aurender has their own proprietary software and Roon as an option.  Aurender has been the outlier.   And it's those market forces that have ultimately caused Aurender to, smartly, bring Roon aboard.

 

The decision itself to bring Roon aboard is Aurender being creative and coming up with solutions. 

[DancingSea]

8 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

No. I’m just giving people a little perspective that they likely didn’t have. Those who like to create often don’t want to use other peoples’ creations. It’s unsatisfying. That’s all. 

Yes, which is precisely why the decision to add Roon was born out of financial realities rather than the need to be creative.  The Aurender's team was creative prior to Roon, and will remain creative after Roon's integration.  

 

Aurender has admirably remained true to their vision of low power processors and undemanding software, all in the service of audio quality.

 

Therefore the integration of Roon is likely more out of resignation rather than creative inspiration.  They rightfully realized the financial health of the company is enhanced by the Roon option.

 

All of which in no way interferes with their creative flow!

 

The Roon software engineers have simply come up with a significantly better library management product than Conductor will likely ever be.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  And that's the bottomline.  

 

Creativity & Conductor still intact and unhindered ;)

[DancingSea]

2 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I guess we’ll just disagree on this one. No worries. 

 

We're actually not disagreeing.  But rather talking about two different aspects.

 

I'm agreeing with you about Aurender's desire for creativity and then adding observations about the marketplace.  There's no conflict between the two.  Just two different parts of a complex issue.

[DancingSea]

20 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

No. I said nothing about why Aurender is including Roon

 

Well, you wrote:

"The reasoning is what’s important to this discussion. I was told the people at Aurender like to make things and be creative coming up with solutions to problems. 
 

Using that as a guidepost, one can see why Aurender resisted implementing Roon for so long. It isn’t all about money and market forces. It’s about being satisfied in one’s work as well. "

 

Then GJo wrote:

"in the end, it’s always about money.

Follow the money and it will lead to the reason Aurender is working to partner with Roon."

 

To which you responded:

 

"No"

 

 

It's reasonable to conclude from what you've written that you are taking the position that something other than market forces are the primary motivation for Aurender adopting Roon.

 

If that's not what you're saying, then ok, feel free to clarify your opinion.

 

For me,  it doesn't take a Harvard MBA to conclude that market forces are certainly a significant reason why Aurender has adopted Roon.  Not the only reason, but a significant one.  

 

The desire for creative independence may very well be a reason why Aurender resisted assimilation, but it's hard cash that has motivated them to relent.

 

Otherwise we'd have to come up with a logistical flow that explains how adopting Roon is aligned with their need for creative independence 🤗