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3 hours ago, DMelby said:

I too had a similar listening experience comparing MQA to files ripped to my local Aurender. I was quite excited to experience an improvement with MQA but my local files sounded thoroughly better in every way.  MQA files from Tidal were loud, harsh, and had a loss in resolution as well as harmonics. Tidal with MQA is great for casual listening but buying the actual CD is significantly better in my experience. YMMV.  I haven't been able to get on the qobuz usa beta yet to check that out but based on your experience looks like CDs will remain my go to choice.

 

+1, with respect to Tidal. Qobuz is not available in my region.

Jon

Innuos Zen Mk 3, Shunyata alpha usb cable, Esoteric N-05 dac/network player, MBL N11 preamp, Bryston 28B SST2 monoblocks, Vienna Acoustics The Music speakers, Kimber Select 1126/1130 ic's, Kimber Select 6063 sc, Shunyata Triton, Shunyata/PS Audio pc's, Shunyata Dark Field Suspension System, Harmonix by Combak footers, Shun Mook Pendulum stand

Industry Affiliation : None

 

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On 1/23/2019 at 10:17 AM, russellbobby said:

Could you give me specific titles that you are mentioning?. I feel my system is resolving enough for subtle changes.

Thanks,

Russ

A few of the newer releases with deceased artists paired with the Royal Symphony Orchestra (Buddy Holly, Aretha Franklin, The Carpenters), Artetha Franklin Spirit In The Dark, Otis Redding - Otis Blue, a few renditions of Bartok and Shostakovich recent releases, Grease Soundtrack, Charla - EVO Sessions (this is really great in MQA and a new artist discovery for me, check this album out!), Norah Jones - Come Away With Me, and also a series of Choral albums (I can’t recal the name of Choral group, but they were in Qobuz top rated list ). 

Let me know your thoughts on these because it seems like I’m on of the few people that prefers Tidal MQA to Qobuz Hi-Res. 

I will say that I tested the iOS apps of both tonight with 16/44 for both and the Qobuz 16/44 via the app does sound very nice. 

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NO IP TROUBLESHOOTING

 
I’m having some problems with what I thought would be an easy setup...I read a bunch of posts here but now it's on Page 103, so excuse me if this has already been addressed.  I have an AQVOX switcher on order but it won’t arrive for another few weeks.  When it does, I will bring it into the system.  In the meantime, my notes below are based on a temporary setup.
 
 
When I first received the A10, I did not have the WireWorld Platinum cables yet, so I used a basic ethernet cable included with the Orbi router.  Works just fine, no issues.
 
Upon receiving the WireWorld cables, I inserted them into the mix, direct from the Orbi to the A10.  No IP detected.  I tried putting an Airport Express (CLIENT MODE) between the Orbi and the A10 but still, no IP detected.  I’m going to try an Eero but I imagine the same thing will happen.
 
Can you help explain why the cheap ethernet cable works perfectly with a direct connection to the A10 but the high-end cables do not?  Thoughts on settings?
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1 hour ago, paris94 said:

NO IP TROUBLESHOOTING

 
I’m having some problems with what I thought would be an easy setup...I read a bunch of posts here but now it's on Page 103, so excuse me if this has already been addressed.  I have an AQVOX switcher on order but it won’t arrive for another few weeks.  When it does, I will bring it into the system.  In the meantime, my notes below are based on a temporary setup.
 
 
When I first received the A10, I did not have the WireWorld Platinum cables yet, so I used a basic ethernet cable included with the Orbi router.  Works just fine, no issues.
 
Upon receiving the WireWorld cables, I inserted them into the mix, direct from the Orbi to the A10.  No IP detected.  I tried putting an Airport Express (CLIENT MODE) between the Orbi and the A10 but still, no IP detected.  I’m going to try an Eero but I imagine the same thing will happen.
 
Can you help explain why the cheap ethernet cable works perfectly with a direct connection to the A10 but the high-end cables do not?  Thoughts on settings?

 

Some high-end Ethernet cables don’t seat easily or are too large to fit in a tight environment. Check that both ends are pushed in far enough so that the connection lights are lit or blinking. 

Aurender N10, Esoteric F-05 Integrated Amplifier, Synergistic Active USB, Oppo 203, Synergistic Atmosphere Level 3 UEF Speaker cables, Legacy Audio Focus SE, Rega Planar 10 turntable with Aphelion 2 cartridge.

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1 hour ago, paris94 said:

I spent a few hours troubleshooting today and tried your recommendation just recently, turning the A10 off between reconnecting cables...no lights with WireWorld Cat8, but standard-grade ethernet cable works fine.

 

Inform your dealer and try getting a substitute Wireworld cable from him to compare. The current one may be defective in some way.

Jon

Innuos Zen Mk 3, Shunyata alpha usb cable, Esoteric N-05 dac/network player, MBL N11 preamp, Bryston 28B SST2 monoblocks, Vienna Acoustics The Music speakers, Kimber Select 1126/1130 ic's, Kimber Select 6063 sc, Shunyata Triton, Shunyata/PS Audio pc's, Shunyata Dark Field Suspension System, Harmonix by Combak footers, Shun Mook Pendulum stand

Industry Affiliation : None

 

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Anybody try battery power to run their equipment? Great review of a Yeti 400 here  http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0119/Goal_Zero_Yeti_400_Lithium_Portable_Power_Station_Review.htm

Very favorable to a PS audio P20 and a Stromtank at a fraction of the cost. Price of a good power cord.

Think it would be perfect for running the A10 and My MicroZotls 2.0s. 

Any comments? 

Thanks for the input.

Russ

27x17x10 Golden Ratio room,EtherRegen>Melco N1A EX H60 server/streamer >T+A Dac 200>Coda CsIB > Paradigm Personas 5f, Combak Harmonica Footers, Townshend Podiums, Custom swarm sub system , Iconoclast 4x4 UPOCC XLR cable, Townshend F1 Fractal speaker cables  SoTM dBl7 Ethernet cable, Puritan 156, Farad 3 LPS,  Synergistic, Audience,and Triode wire labs power cabling ,Stillpoints, SR fuses,GIK Slatfusors

 

 

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On 1/28/2019 at 1:45 AM, paris94 said:

I spent a few hours troubleshooting today and tried your recommendation just recently, turning the A10 off between reconnecting cables...no lights with WireWorld Cat8, but standard-grade ethernet cable works fine.

 

Check if the Wireworld will function between your router and a normal pc / laptop. If not then you have a defective cable. 

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SYSO 
Changes from 4(5).15.28
  • Improved metadata handling
  • Fixed DSD playback problem with A100 on direct output
  • Fixed unexpected IP reset during software update 
  • Bug fixes and improved stability
ACS SYSO 
Changes from 1.1.48
File Management
  • Added support for deleting/moving/renaming files
  • Improved stability
Tag Editing
  • Improved album cover art tagging support
  • Bug fixes
Ripping
  • Improved real-time library updates when new content is added
  • Improved overwriting duplicate handling
  • Improved metadata and album cover art retrieval
  • Bug fixes
Others
  • Improved interoperability with other Aurender players
  • Improved metadata handling for copied content
  • Bug fixes and improved stability
Conductor
  • Improved ACS support
  • Fixed other minor bugs and improved stability
ACSManager
  • Port to Conductor now defaults to previous Aurender connection
  • Fixed other minor bugs and improved stability

Aurender N10, Esoteric F-05 Integrated Amplifier, Synergistic Active USB, Oppo 203, Synergistic Atmosphere Level 3 UEF Speaker cables, Legacy Audio Focus SE, Rega Planar 10 turntable with Aphelion 2 cartridge.

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Thanks for the heads up, rwwjr.

Was kinda hoping SW update included the new skins. ☹️

 

Lyngdorf MP40..Aurender N200..Panasonic UB9000..SimAudio Titan MCH Amp..Emotiva BasX A4..KEF Ref 1 Meta..Dali Phantom IW..SVS Prime Elevation(4)..JL Audio F112..Shunyata Research Ztron Alpha HC/Wireworld Silver Electra PCs..IsoAcoustics Gaia I and II, Orea Bronze..Billy Bags rack.

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New to this forum but have owned Aurender for about 6 years.  I currently have a N100h, N10, and a new A10.  Upgrading to a MSB Premier DAC.  I have changed out the spinning HDD drives for Samsung SSD units and it seems to have improved the detail even though the data is played of the smaller caching SSD units.  Happy to share insights.  BTW my local dealer is where I first auditioned the S10 (David Michael) but ended up purchasing from a dealer my brother uses. 

 

Noushy

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Welcome @Noushy, I am looking forward to your input. Who replaced your HDDs for the SSDs? Was the process difficult?

 

Bob

Aurender N10, Esoteric F-05 Integrated Amplifier, Synergistic Active USB, Oppo 203, Synergistic Atmosphere Level 3 UEF Speaker cables, Legacy Audio Focus SE, Rega Planar 10 turntable with Aphelion 2 cartridge.

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Bob, I am an avid computer hobbyist since age 10 so I did all the work myself with some assistance form my dealer and Aurender tech support.  If you are not comfortable doing the work have your dealer help you or a tech savvy friend.  Linux understanding helps but not necessary unless you want to change out the cache drive.  Also know that Aurender is ok with your dealer swapping out the storage drives but the cache drives supposedly voids the warranty (if your unit is more than 2 years old then the warranty is already expired).  If you live in metro Detroit I can help you or will be glad to share insight on how this is done.  Pics show my A10 with the factory 120GB cache SSD and the upgraded 480GB Samsung Enterprise drive as well as the 860 EVO 4TB storage drive.  I also was able to do the N100h and my N10.  The N10 is similar to the A10 but has a second storage drive and larger factory cache SSD, the N100h is a bit trickier in that it uses a mSATA cache drive (Samsung 850 EVO).

 

Noushy

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1 hour ago, justubes said:

Hi, 

 

Was there much sonic benefits changing out the cache drives. 

 

How about changing the to ECC Rams ? Beneficial when used only for streaming cache? 

 

Thanks

J, I don't think there was any sonic benefit to changing the cache drives.  My goal was to increase the size to at least the larger models (240G).  In addition, Aurender servers use the cache drive as both a boot and cache.  

     There are three drives in each unit.  The first is a tiny USB flash drive, it carries an image of the boot software and is a failsafe to recover the unit.  Not exactly sure what else is on it since I have not played with it.  It is gold in color and small and every unit has one.

     Second, there is a cache drive and it is either 120G or 240G and all of the larger units have it as an enterprise/industrial SATA 2.5 SSD. The N100h has this as a 120G mSATA drive.  This is what holds the boot volume along with two 1G volumes (unsure maybe for fast caching) and the remainder is the SSD cache that holds the latest and/or most played music.  On the N100h that volume is about 100G, on the A10 it is the same, on the N10 and W20 it is around 220G.  The newer drives are much faster and personally I feel Samsung Enterprise SSDs are probably the best for this application.  They also have fault tolerance to power failure and thus less likely to lose data on a sudden power down.  By changing these drives, the unit also boots much faster.  The only Aurender so far that uses a less robust non-enterprise drive is the N100 which uses a mSATA 120G Samsung 950 EVO.

     Third there is the storage drive, which is what holds your music library.  On the N100, A10 and N10 they are 2.5 notebook drives.  The 2TB models are all WD drives (WD green) and the 4TB units were Seagate Barracudas and now WD Blue drives.  The Seagate drives in the higher capacity are notorious for failing (as in my case) and very susceptible to heat.  My N10 had two of them, my N100 originally had the 2TB drive and then upgraded to the Seagate 4TB per Aurender.  I would absolutely replace those drives.  Limited experience with the 4TB WD drives but my guess is they are more reliable and thus why Aurender switched.  the W20 has full size 3.5 drives as does the X100 and the ACS10.  

     As for sonic quality, I immediately noticed a difference by replacing the spinning magnetic drive with 4TB Samsung 860 EVO drives.  The unit became dead silent both on power up 'no more sound of the small spinning hard drive(s)' and when playing music.  The background was essentially 'more black' and instruments seemed clearer with better imaging.  The bass became tighter and more crisp as well and I noticed this both with the N100 and the A10.  I have not listened long enough to see if the benefit was there with the N10 as it has better shielding and better power supplies.  My guess is the EM/RFI is decreased and that is what gets passed into the system.  The N100 has the least amount of shielding due to the smaller chassis.  The A10 and N10 have segmented chassis and each component is separated in its own place (power supplies, processor/mb, storage, and digital board).

     Finally I did not touch the SODIMMs as I doubt they would have any benefit.  Increasing their capacity seems a waste since the Aurender software is a stripped down version of Linux with their own front end/server.  Increasing the RAM would probably have no benefit.  Again my guess is streaming does not require that much ram.  It is read from the server/NAS and then passed through the output.

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I had both a N 100H and a N100S ( 1 tb solid state). Couldn't tell the difference between them sonically. Not sure why Aurender no longer offers the SSD as an option. Probably cost prohibitive.

27x17x10 Golden Ratio room,EtherRegen>Melco N1A EX H60 server/streamer >T+A Dac 200>Coda CsIB > Paradigm Personas 5f, Combak Harmonica Footers, Townshend Podiums, Custom swarm sub system , Iconoclast 4x4 UPOCC XLR cable, Townshend F1 Fractal speaker cables  SoTM dBl7 Ethernet cable, Puritan 156, Farad 3 LPS,  Synergistic, Audience,and Triode wire labs power cabling ,Stillpoints, SR fuses,GIK Slatfusors

 

 

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Russell, I assume because of cost and capacity (at the time of the N100h 4TB release a comparable SSD would have added at least $1300).  I am told they will install any drive as long as it works if you send it back to them.  Again these are what I noted on my system with my N100h and A10.  (1) significant speed up in scanner and full scan functions, at least 50% less time.  (2) data transfer improvements of around 10-20Mb/s, (3) dead quiet unit both on startup and operation.  No hard drive whine. (4) improvement in sonic clarity and detail, tighter bass.  This one may depend on your system, DAC, etc.  Again my office system consists of Mcintosh D150 preamp, MC75 x 2 amps, AQ/Shunyata cabling, and Focal Sopra no1 speakers and REL sub.  On my home system with my N10 I honestly could not tell a difference but again I did not spend much time listening.  I replaced my N100h in the office with an A10 and again before and after drive replacement I noticed the same improvements.  However the largest improvement was with the N100h.

 

Noushy

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Regarding @Noushy's HDD/SSD swap, I just want to clarify that the Aurender does not support, encourage or endorse hardware/electrical modifications. The Aurender product is conceived and and sold as a finished product when it leaves the factory. Aurender provides the best product we can for the price. End-users are, of course, free to do perform whatever after-market modifications they want to their personal property, but doing so does void the 2-year warranty. 

 

Hard drive replacement must be done by an authorized dealer or by Aurender's own Irvine, CA service center.

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Yes i have clearly posted that.  I had the luxury of doing the swap with my dealer.  In addition my unit was well out of the factory warranty.  If you choose to do this on your own understand that you do this at your own risk (and potentially risk your warranty if it is less than 2 years old.)  I am neither advocating or recommending that anyone replace their drives.  My own experience is that the Seagate Barracuda 4TB 2.5 drives are prone to failure and this has been documented across many forums related to computer notebook drives.  I was never able to get an answer from Aurender as to why they switched brands other than in the past WD did not offer a 4TB 2.5 drive.  For me the loss of an extensive library that was sorted and selected over many years was catastrophic and many hours were lost.  Yes I had all the music backed up on my home NAS units but I had over 2000 albums on my N100h.  The issue that caused it to fail was most likely heat and it happened during the Aurender clone process to my new replacement A10.  This most likely put increase stress on the mechanical drive and that combined with the increased heat caused it to fail.  Ari was very kind in offering tech support and help and in fairness Aurender offered a great price to repair the unit.  It was much easier and more convenient for me to have this done with my dealer and swap my other spinning drives as well.  It also saved me the cost of shipping to and from Aurender in California.  

Peace, Noushy

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Thanks Noushy, 

 

Great info! 

 

I understand the ssd needs to be formatted in Linux and an auto recocovery or reset made to get OS from the thumbdrive. 

 

As for the large drives, mine are 6tb each and maybe only 30% full. 

 

I have been wanting to remove them to clone as the transfer backup is painfully slow and the Aurender gets extremely hot after a few hours. It looks like my network is very slow and it would take a couple of days to transfer 3 tb worth on music over the network. 

 

Do you have suggestions how I can best do this as my duplicator hdd dock only supports 3 tb drives so I have not been able to make a backup so far, preferable save the contents of both drives into a smaller one for backup purpose. 

 

The nice thing about the Aurender is that the drives stop spinning when not in use, so this could help to keep the drives alive for many years hopefully. 

 

Regards

J

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9 minutes ago, justubes said:

Thanks Noushy, 

 

Great info! 

 

I understand the ssd needs to be formatted in Linux and an auto recocovery or reset made to get OS from the thumbdrive. 

 

As for the large drives, mine are 6tb each and maybe only 30% full. 

 

I have been wanting to remove them to clone as the transfer backup is painfully slow and the Aurender gets extremely hot after a few hours. It looks like my network is very slow and it would take a couple of days to transfer 3 tb worth on music over the network. 

 

Do you have suggestions how I can best do this as my duplicator hdd dock only supports 3 tb drives so I have not been able to make a backup so far, preferable save the contents of both drives into a smaller one for backup purpose. 

 

The nice thing about the Aurender is that the drives stop spinning when not in use, so this could help to keep the drives alive for many years hopefully. 

 

Regards

J

J,

     The new storage drives do not need to be formatted, just clean unpartitioned.  You can message me and I can give you the details.  If you have 6TB drives then they are the larger 3.5 drives, so you either have a W20 or ACS10.  The XL100 also has a larger drive but only one.  There are very few SSDs larger than 4TB (they do exists both Micron and Samsung make them for Enterprise use) and it would be quite costly.  As for duplicating for backup purposes I have a small desktop unit that can do drives up to 10TB so you should be able to purchase one.  The alternative is to use Clonezilla running on a PC.  You create a bootable USB drive and that loads Clonezilla.  That is able to duplicate any size drive.  In fact it was written for large clustered computing centers, it even runs on linux but you don't have to have linux to duplicate them.

 

Noushy

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Hi AriMargolis,

 

I own a N10 and I am very pleased so far.

i have only one question, when the pause is selected after some minutes it seems that the Aurender enters into a sort of sleep mode. What exactly happens with the HD disks at this state? Do they enter in sleep mode too? Or continue spinning?

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@Emm thanks for your question. The hard drives are hardly ever actually spinning unless you are actively playing “DJ” and adding songs to the queue. 

 

A few minutes after the last songs have been added and cached to the SSD, the HDD spin back down.

 

The screen will go dark after 5 minutes of inactivity, at which point the unit is in an idle state. It is ok to leave it on and in this state as long as you want.

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20 minutes ago, AriMargolis said:

@Emm thanks for your question. The hard drives are hardly ever actually spinning unless you are actively playing “DJ” and adding songs to the queue. 

 

A few minutes after the last songs have been added and cached to the SSD, the HDD spin back down.

 

The screen will go dark after 5 minutes of inactivity, at which point the unit is in an idle state. It is ok to leave it on and in this state as long as you want.

This was exactly the point of my question, whether I can leave the unit always on, as i have noticed that it doesnt sound so good after a cold start, and will need some hours for the sound to improve.

p.s. do you have a Greek origin?

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23 minutes ago, Emm said:

This was exactly the point of my question, whether I can leave the unit always on, as i have noticed that it doesnt sound so good after a cold start, and will need some hours for the sound to improve.

p.s. do you have a Greek origin?

 

Hmm. My N10 usually needs about 15-30 minutes to sound its best and I always let it default to standby rather than power it down. That first few minutes sounds grainy to me and vocals can be a tiny bit distorted (this with three different amps). I use either the Iso Tek or Ayre system burn-in discs before a serious listening session. Just let it run in a continuous loop until I am ready to sit and listen.

Aurender N10, Esoteric F-05 Integrated Amplifier, Synergistic Active USB, Oppo 203, Synergistic Atmosphere Level 3 UEF Speaker cables, Legacy Audio Focus SE, Rega Planar 10 turntable with Aphelion 2 cartridge.

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