The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[Ecki]

Hi all,

 

I just discovered this forum and ingested the entire Aurender thread. As I am having my N10 for over 5 years now, I thought I should share my experience, including a simple backup strategy with a Synology NAS.

 

My setup is a Burmester 911 power amp, a Burmester 088 PreAmp and a belt-driven Burmester 089 CD-player. Testing revealed that the RCA connection between the 088 and the Aurender sounded better than the optical connection. Differences between different RCA cables could be easily heard - although I have no logical explanation for that. The difference between a CD in the Burmester 089 and the same music as a data feed from the N10 is astonishing. 80% of the time my CD player just serves as a wonderful DAC for the N10.  

 

In over 5 years the N10 had only once a little problem that other users reported here as well. At some point an update failed and it went into a infinite "reboot / reload incomplete" update loop. The support from Aurender was fast and efficient, as good as it can be. That was all. No other issues. Taking into consideration that the Aurender is a PC, this is just showing what a great job these guys do in letting you forget what is under the hood. 

 

When Burmesters 151 was released, I received one for testing from my Burmester dealer. As the 151 has no digital output (shame on you, Burmesters  ), I could not test the 151 against the N10. Comparing the 151 with the 089/N10 as sources for the preAmp, I think they are close with the 089/N10 having the edge. The Burmester software is no challenger for the iOS Conductor app.

 

Talking about the Conductor app, the app has improved in the most important areas, we now have ratings, streaming and no "full restart if you reopen the app". I could think of many improvements, starting with the colour (why not make this a choice?) and ending with a switch to ignore MacOS-file related "Can't analyse file" messages in the scanning. But the software works and is reliable in everything which it does. If for whatever reason it fails, you can delete the data files from within the Conductor app, delete and reinstall Conductor - bingo, there you are, connect to the Aurender, download the tag-file, it is working again. 

 

Does it sound like I love my N10? You bet, I do, it works like a charm. And coming back to sound, high-resolution files sound simply out of this world. Although my biggest motivation buying the N10 was reducing CD-cover clutter around my system, it has brought me the awesome experience of high resolution audio. When it is full (60% currently) I am going to replace the disks with double capacity. 

 

On Backup

 

I saw some unanswered requests by Aurender users about backup. Actually this is easy. The idea is to backup to a SAN and to upload the backup to the cloud as a hedge against fire, theft etc.. I am using a Synology Diskstation as a NAS device and Amazon Drive as a cloud storage provider. Amazon Drive is 70€ per year for unlimited storage!

 

Within the Synology web applications do the following:

1) Mount the Aurender, so it appears as a folder in your file system 

2) Create a Backup task, to backup this folder (the mounted Aurender) to a local Synology folder. 

Now in case we need, we can recreate the Aurender HD from our NAS.

3) Create a Synch task, to synch the local Synology folder (copy of Aurender) with Amazon Drive. Make the synch a one-way synch, your drive to Amazon drive. For protection from stupidity you should also enable the feature "Do not delete backup folders / files it source files are deleted!" in the synch options. 

 

I prefer a file synch to a backup-file because it is easier to check if a backup/synch has worked. 

 

To sum it all up, to me the N10 has been for 5 years a reliable source of most amazing sounding music. For anyone pondering over buying an N10 or not, I can only advice you to get one. You won't be disappointed. 

 

Best regards,

Ecki

[Ecki]

Sorry, yes, my Aurender is an S10. I had to reboot it to find out

 

Quote

Do you know if similar can be done as you describe using an external USB HD connected to PC / MAC in place of a NAS and then sync Local external HD with Amazon Cloud (in place of a NAS within your description)? 

 

If you install Amazon Drive local on your PC, you can copy the mapped Aurender drive to the local Amazon Drive and have the Amazon SW do the synch into the cloud. 

[Ecki]

Has anybody figured out how to display a PDF (linernotes) in the Conductor app?

 

best,

ecki

[Ecki]

Internet Radio for the US, Canada and Germany with the new Conductor app!

[Ecki]

Russ,

 

The Conductor App lets you search for a station. Just enter "audiophile" and you will some stations that stream with 320 Kbps MP3s. That about as good as it gets at the moment. No lossless CD audio quality.

 

To find the 320 Kbps stations use the Shoutcast.com website. There you can display stations by bit rate.

[Ecki]

I think that is the reason. But don't be frustrated, the internet radio stream just shows how important RESOLUTION is. After this feature became available more me in Germany for the first time today, I played for an hour internet radio. What a relief it was to listen to CD quality or even studio masters.

 

If you have your Aurender for the amazing sound quality, the internet radio feature is more a gimmick than something really important.

[Ecki]

I have been an Aurender fan since I bought my S10 in 2012. After nearly 10 years I recently upgraded my system with the N30SA. 

 

I use AES/EBU with the in-akustik Digital-2404 AIR Pure Silver cable to connect a N30SA to a Gryphon Ethos CD player and DAC. I found that the cable has a surprisingly big impact. I tried various USB cables (up to the 5k $ price range) but preferred the AES/EBU connection. 
 

I am very curious (and obviously tempted) about the MC10 clock module.
 

As far as I understand, in a USB connection the receiving side drives the bus and the clock. With the AES/EBU connection the sender provides the clock. The Gryphon Ethos has no master clock input.

 

This would mean there are 3 possible configurations:

 

a) MC10 plus N30SA -> USB -> DAC without MC input

b) MC10 plus N30SA -> USB -> DAC plus MC10 

c) MC10 plus N30SA -> AES/EBU -> DAC without MC input

 

In the configuration a I don’t recognise the value of the MC10 as the precise clocking gets lost. In the configuration b, with DAC and Aurender using the same master clock, I see the advantage. As my DAC doesn’t support an external clock input, b won’t work for me.

 

Am I correct in assuming c is as good as b because the DAC gets the clock through AES/EBU?

 

[Ecki]

Thank you very much for your sharing your experience. I am not familiar with the dCs components (yet). 

 

For me too AES/EBU sounded warmer and nicer than USB (without any external master clock). 
 

My current idea on upgrading my system is to get a 10 MHz master clock for the N30SA this year. 
 

At some point I want to upgrade my DAC as well. My Ethos CD player has an AES/EBU output that provides the CD transport data. I will be looking for a DAC with 2 AES/EBU inputs plus a master clock input. 

Thank you for pointing out MUTEC, I am just checking out their website. 
 

Cheers, 

Ecki

[Ecki]

On 1/27/2024 at 5:11 AM, GJo said:

Adding a Mutec REF10 Master Clock in a couple days. Am curious to hear what it does with the N30SA. I can also use it with my Esoteric disc player. 

I have a similar configuration, a CD player / DAC without a clock input, the N30SA and have been thinking about the Mutec Ref10 too. Please share your findings. 

[Ecki]

Quote

Seems to me like a lot of extra processing through the MC3+ (or MC3+USB) that could muck up the sound.

There is no processing. Normally this is done with a simple counter / devisor per output channel. Important would be that the resulting MC3 signal has the same ultra low jitter as the Ref10.

 

I have a rather simple configuration. The Mutec Ref10 would provide the 10Mhz master clock to the N30SA. The connection to the DAC is AES/EBU so the DAC would be clocked by the input signal. 
 

With the N30SA I have not heard any difference between my switched network and a direct feed to my internet gateway. I think the Ethernet isolation of the N30SA is very good and network optimisation should have a rather small effect.