The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[Noushy]

Correct but my dealer has and I trust his ears even more than my own. Running through my $30k MSB setup the N10 had the best SQ as it should. The money on the N10 is spent on the multiple power supplies, mono style each isolated and it makes sense. The ACS10 is similar to the A10 in its power supply and actually better than the N100 most likely given the additional space. He did not A/B the A10 against the others.

 

Noushy

[agladstone]

Thanks @Noushy ! 

How would you compare the sound quality of your upgraded N100h w/ SSD and larger Cache Vs. the N10 Stock? 

[Noushy]

The SQ does not change when upgrading the storage drive. This merely made the unit quieter and slighter faster with data transfers. This was done because the spinning Seagate drive failed.  As for the cache drive, being a Samsung 860 Evo (stock is Samsung 850 Evo) and assuming all SSDs have a similar sonic signature unlike magnetic HDDs I doubt there was a change. The biggest difference is the startup is faster and it needs to hit the storage drive less because of the speed and larger space. I doubt there is much benefit sonically and if any it would be very small. The largest improvements come from the power supply and the clock. This is true on the DAC side as well and why the power supply and clock options are available for the MSB gear.  Now on the A10 and N10 there seems to be a sonic improvement that is pronounced while on the N100h it seemed the background was more black (quiet) and the bass seemed tighter. Again each user may or may not notice improvements.  Of note the toroidial transformer used in the N100h is identical to N10 (both have linear power supplies) but the N10 has three. Hope that helps.

 

Noushy

[Emm]

Shortly, in Munich perhaps, I think we will see the W20 successor 

[Noushy]

Will be exciting and curious to see what they do. I have noticed several W20 units from dealers at very good prices making me suspicious that it is going to be discontinued. It has been out for 5 years.

 

Noushy

[Emm]

This was the reason I went for N10 and not for the W20.

The agreement was to trade in the N10 with the W20 successor

[Noushy]

Excellent choice I may be doing the same.

 

Noushy

[AurenderAmerica]

On 2/15/2019 at 5:52 PM, Deyorew said:

I was curious on the ACS10 how you use the "folder" function. For instance it says it has a "Music 1" as the first folder.

If you wanted to use one folder as device ripped cds and a separate once as imported from an HDD and label it "Music 2" is it just in the background how the files or stored? Or when using the App do you have to go between "folders" for your different libraries?

 

Also still curious how it handles dsf files. On the website it looks like it handles them natively without any issues or conversion...

@Deyorew folder browsing on ACS10 works the same as it does on other Aurender servers. The first 10 folder names on the root of your Music1 and Music2 HDDs show up as browsing tabs. So you can get really creative about how you organize your library. 

 

Additionally, you can always dig deeper into the folder structure (beyond those first 10 folders) in Folder browsing mode.

[agladstone]

14 hours ago, Noushy said:

Excellent choice I may be doing the same.

 

Noushy

Maybe I’ll wait and buy one of yours (N10’s)  

 

[rwwjr44]

Update

• Ravaenna
• Tidal
• Qobox

[coot]

As Aurender owners know, power failures can damage the product. Do any of you use a UPS for protection? What make and model works well with a minimum of headaches? Suggestions, please.

[jon2020]

51 minutes ago, coot said:

As Aurender owners know, power failures can damage the product. Do any of you use a UPS for protection? What make and model works well with a minimum of headaches? Suggestions, please.

 

My Shunyata Triton automatically switches off and cuts power to all components during any power surge. When the home circuit breaker is restored and the rear switch of the Triton flipped back on again, all components power up back as they were. No damage whatsoever. Very reassuring.  

Hope this helps. 

[sfseay]

16 minutes ago, jon2020 said:

 

My Shunyata Triton automatically switches off and cuts power to all components during any power surge. When the home circuit breaker is restored and the rear switch of the Triton flipped back on again, all components power up back as they were. No damage whatsoever. Very reassuring.  

Hope this helps. 

This isn’t helpful with the Aurenders, which don’t like power being killed on a whim.  Battery backups are only as good as long as the battery holds out.  If you aren’t home when you lose power eventually your battery backup will die and power will be lost to the Aurender.

[coot]

33 minutes ago, jon2020 said:

 

My Shunyata Triton automatically switches off and cuts power to all components during any power surge. When the home circuit breaker is restored and the rear switch of the Triton flipped back on again, all components power up back as they were. No damage whatsoever. Very reassuring.  

Hope this helps. 

 

For $7 grand it had better be VERY reassuring!

 

[coot]

I'll take battery backup as long as it gives me time to do a shutdown. A look at Amazon and reading the users' horror stories it make me wonder If there is such a thing as one that actually protects without a smelly odor or fan noise or other problems.

 

Thanks for your comment, sfseay, point taken. The ideal would be one that returns to ac power when it's back on. My outages rarely last more than a few seconds and no breakers are triggered.

[jon2020]

1 hour ago, sfseay said:

This isn’t helpful with the Aurenders, which don’t like power being killed on a whim.  Battery backups are only as good as long as the battery holds out.  If you aren’t home when you lose power eventually your battery backup will die and power will be lost to the Aurender.

 

As stated, nothing happens to my Aurender during outages. It works just fine after power is restored.

[Noushy]

3 hours ago, coot said:

As Aurender owners know, power failures can damage the product. Do any of you use a UPS for protection? What make and model works well with a minimum of headaches? Suggestions, please.

I run an industrial grade lithium ion UPS that runs on circuits using Shunyata Power conditioning. The UPS units were made for digital signage and it works great.

 

Noushy

[sfseay]

19 minutes ago, Noushy said:

I run an industrial grade lithium ion UPS that runs on circuits using Shunyata Power conditioning. The UPS units were made for digital signage and it works great.

 

Noushy

Massive technological overkill doesn’t make a great system.  It just makes for good conversation in certain circles.

[jon2020]

2 minutes ago, sfseay said:

Massive technological overkill doesn’t make a great system.  It just makes for good conversation in certain circles.

 

How would one know if one has not heard Noushy's system? The problem with opinionated critics giving critical opinions without even a listen.....I rest my case.

[Noushy]

Thanks guys. I used this mounted behind the rack on the wall next to my outlets.  I am not home or else would show a pic.  I use Shunyata Alpha NR power cables. To each his own.

 

https://www.xpcc.com/products/j60/

[NordicBob]

22 minutes ago, jon2020 said:

 

How would one know if one has not heard Noushy's system? The problem with opinionated critics giving critical opinions without even a listen.....I rest my case.

+1 

[Ponzi]

I have two Aurenders, the N10 and the ASC-10.  My power has gone off from time to time, on account of weather.  I have been here to switch the unites off before the power comes back on, and on occasion I have not been here to do that. I have never experienced any loss of data or other undesirable consequence. Not being very tech savvy I have a basic question:  why do the Aurenders have such elaborate power down procedures? What actually is the risk if one does not power down properly? Does the same risk exist for all electronic storage devices?  If so, isn’t the data stored everywhere at risk? How is that risk dealt with?  I am not prejudging any of this, I just don’t know.

[Mazza]

I have lost power to my W20 a few of times [the ones that I know of!] and I have to say that the reboot/start-up makes me get out my worry-beads. It seems to take an eternity and on a couple of times I have had to intervene and power-down and re-power because it seems to get caught in a loop [like 30+ minutes to re-start!]. So I can see how the Aurender's  have a 'reputation' for being somewhat flakey when powered-off incorrectly.

 

What is interesting [?] is that when power is lost, the W20 battery symbol appears on its display but the unit won't operate which shows that the battery doesn't offer any UPS function, which is what Aurender say in their literature. So fine. When misbehaving as above, the battery symbol is still lit-up suggesting it is recharging, which is unlikely since the power interruption is usually for just a few seconds. There is nothing in any of the literature which explains how it is meant to operate/behave/what the re-boot process is.

 

Any insights, anyone?

[Noushy]

They are basically dedicated computers running a version of linux. Its no different than improperly shutting down a desktop computer. If the power gets cut abruptly the unit will do a verification on restart of the boot/cache drive. One time this happened to my N100h and the boot volume became corrupted.  Took hours to bring it back online with help from tech support. Fortunately this has not happened since or on any other Aurender server I own.

 

Noushy

[merge03]

Exactly as Noushy states, just a fancy little Linux computer.  A computer which has all the same weaknesses of any disk based operating system.  If not cleanly shutdown, the system may decide to verify the disk on power up.  Usually this is nothing more than a little time spent checking the disk.  On infrequent occasions the fdisk procedure may make some small corrections.  On rarer occasions the disk can be deemed to have corrupted data.  It basically depends on whether any writes were directly in progress at the moment the power died.

 

I'm not a fan of battery backup for compute devices.  That solution is far more expensive than the problem.  A good power management system (of which there are many) is all that is needed.  The critical feature is for the power to be cleanly disconnected as soon as the first supply side glitch is detected (brown-out, surge, phase drift, etc. etc.).  The power must remain off until manually switched back on by an operator.