The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[russellbobby]

I jus my A10 yesterday and I am very happy with the performance so far. I have the SR Black Fuses for the unit but have not installed yet. At the dealer, I compared the DAC section to Bryston DA3 and the Aurender was better. I am running the A10 with an Allnic T1500 integrated amp and that combo is a definite step up from my previous Coincident Frank/ linestage + Lumin A1 combo. More musical, larger sound stage and more transparent. And i prefer the conductor app over roon

 

 

 

 

I have a question for other A10 owners, have you got the optical input working on your unit - i would like to be able to hook it up to apple tv and dvd player. no luck getting that connection to work as yet

 

 

Pretty high praise. I am getting ready to pair mine with a MicroZOTL2.0 pre amp. The Modwright 9.0 anniversary sounds pretty nice but I think these is more!!

Tidal sounds great and if MQA is all that it is cracked up to be this it will be even a better value.

 

I just ordered an optical cable. They do go bad. Have you tried another cable? Have the output set to stereo on the Blu-ray player?

[russellbobby]

This A10 seems to be a real winner. I never thought that it's internal DAC could be at the level that you describe !

 

I definitively need to try it before I purchase an expensive stand alone USB DAC !

 

Yes I was very hesitant about it competing with the Oppo Modwright but it actually sounds a lot better in my system. The Oppo uses a Sabre Dac where the Aurender uses a AKM. AKM has a much warmer sound.

 

Check out Norah Jones. " Its a wonderful time for love'" on the Day Breaks album on Tidal. Norah's Voice is a little hot I think, but just a great sounding tune.

[russellbobby]

I figured it out. Everything was hooked up right and the cable was working but I had not payed any attention to the volume control on the A10 because it was being bypassed because i was using the volume control on the integrated amp. Unit came with volume turned off and assumed that was the way it should be run. Anyways, turned the volume control on all of the way on the a10 and that solved the problem. All good now.

 

 

You mean -60 default. I did not know there was a way to bypass the volume control.

[russellbobby]

I believe I have the first official review of the A10 coming. However, Aurender won't ship the unit for review until it has official MQA support.

Please take any review with a grain of salt if is used as a stand alone. I have an A10 and just received a microZOTL 2.OS which is replacing a Modwright 9.0 Anniversary linestage and the SQ is fantastic. The A10 must be used with a decent>high quality pre-amp. IF you are going to spend 5-5,000 on this unit you HAVE to mate it with a pre. You will be short changing your self how good this unit really is.

Happy New Year,

Russ

[russellbobby]

TIDAL Launches New ‘Master’ Audio Feature

 

 

New York/London/Las Vegas, 5 January 2017: Global music and entertainment platform, TIDAL, today has announced the availability of ‘Master’ quality recordings. A wide variety of content from labels and artists, including Warner Music Group’s world-renowned music catalogue, is now available in Master audio across all of TIDAL’s available markets worldwide.

 

TIDAL has integrated MQA, the award-winning technology that enables this innovation, and has offered it to all TIDAL HiFi tier subscribers under a new ‘Master’ listing. Initially available on desktop, a wide range of recordings are already available and the collection will grow rapidly.

 

“TIDAL is committed to bringing members closer to their favorite musicians and offering MQA sound quality will allow subscribers to hear music just as it was recorded in the studio,” said a TIDAL representative. “We’re thrilled to bring master quality sound to our members.”

 

Mike Jbara, MQA CEO, said, “TIDAL is an artist-centric music company. We could not be more excited that they share our vision of having fans hear the authentic performance of their favorite music.”

 

Visit TIDAL.com/Masters to learn more, non-members can sign up for a complimentary 60-day trial.

 

-Ends

 

Anybody know when MQA will be enabled?

[russellbobby]

Anybody get their MQA enabled Aurender to stream MQA files from Tidal? I think just the desk top version is running. Wonder how long before it is enabled in the Aurender ? Anybody?

[russellbobby]

I have an email into Aurender but they are not the quickest to reply.

Sounds like MQA will be decoded on the software side so everyone should be able to enjoy eventually.

[russellbobby]

Ok .. go to your desktop and favorite the masters albums you like. Close the Conductor app and re-open and they will show up on Tidal in the app. Not sure excactly what I am hearing but a definite sound bump. The wife works from home so I am pretty much screwed till Sat morning for any serious listening. The A10 is prepped for MQA so wondering how it is sounding on the N 100 series.

Russ

[russellbobby]

The latest from Aurender:

Hello Russ,

At the moment we have not finalized MQA certification for the A10. I’m not sure when we expect it to be complete, but we have been working hard at it and from what I gather most of the delay is due to MQA taking longer than expected to certify/verify the aspects of the MQA platform that would make the DAC in the A10 MQA certified. We are currently successfully streaming MQA content and playing it back with the A10 using beta versions of the A10 firmware, so it is just a matter of time.

Best Regards,

Jesse

[russellbobby]

Here is the latest from Aurender

All of our servers have been MQA compatible for a couple of years now – if you happened to have an MQA file, on, say an N100H or W20, and the Aurender was connected to an MQA certified DAC (up until now, very few), then the MQA file will play back with no issue and in full MQA mode.

Since the A10 has it’s own internal DAC, we have been working on the certification process for the DAC to be MQA compatible, just as if the DAC were a separate MQA certified DAC. I know many other manufacturers have been undergoing the same process and many are also awaiting final certification.

What is needed at this point is an explanation from MQA as to what exact benefit there is to having an MQA certified DAC versus a normal, non-MQA DAC that has the MQA decoding happening upstream from the DAC in a player software such as Roon, Tidal, et al.

I think we will find that there is still more to the story here and those products which are MQA certified will deliver the MQA file at a higher level of performance than if the file is simply decoded in software and sent to a non-certified DAC.

Best Regards,

[russellbobby]

Does anyone know if I have the Aurender N100H (I do) and an MQA enabled DAC (I do) if I can play the Master / MQA available titles via the conductor app or will the Tidal MQA files only play via the Tidal Desktop app?! I wonder if Aurender needs to come out with an update to conductor app for this to work?!

If you have a decktop PC you are all set. Favorite the master albums. Relaunch the conductor app and the albums will show up. press play

[russellbobby]

I believe that is how the latest info from Aurender reads. Please reread the post from them above. I know the albums will show up because I am playing them on my A10. Not full resolution for me though because they are still working on the Aurender dac that is built into the A10.

Please let us now if it works for you.

Russ

[russellbobby]

UPDATE:

Im always the first to admit when I'm wrong (and in this case perhaps also "jumped the gun" a bit too quickly), so after another long Tidal MQA listening session this Morning (while simultaneously ingesting far too much coffee:) ), these are my updated conclusions:

First, as opposed to the Rock and Pop selections I listened to yesterday that I felt sounded pretty awful, I started out this morning listening to all of the Jazz and Classical Tidal MQA albums, and I must admit, they sounded pretty damn good to me! (Especially the Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Coleman albums in addition to the 2L recordings and the Bartok String Quartets).

So, I must make the conclusion, that the culprit in regards to the awful sounding Tidal MQA albums I sampled yesterday, must have been my new nemesis, formally known as Dynamic Range Compression!! I suppose the masters MQA selected for those albums yesterday must have been newer versions with heavy Dynamic Range Compression and as I had suspected prior to starting my listening session today, Jazz and Classical titles would have been much less likely to have been "poisoned" by the loudness war!

Additionally, I sampled a few more rock albums and found some that did sound very good and better than my own 16/44 FLAC rips. Specifically: All of the Smiths albums (although my rips are all from original 1980's released CD's, I have been told the new remasters from the smiths complete box set did sound better, these must be from those masters?)

Also the Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago II and Fleetwood Mac Rumors all sounded a little better than my 16/44 FLAC rips, but all three sounded worse than my DSD / SACD rips.

Thus, I will stand corrected and apologize for my hasty remarks made yesterday and conclude that just the same as my experience with downloads from HDTracks, just because something is 24/192, or DSD or MQA does not alone equal that the album will sound good, some will sound fantastic, and others will have heavy dynamic range Compression and sound awful!

 

Need to hold off judgement on my A10 and MQA until Aurender finalizes the software. The A10 streams Tidal beautifully, and when paired with a Microzotl2.0S the sound is sublime.. This is a fantastic compo for 7K don't see how you can beat it for a front end of a fairly high end system.

[russellbobby]

On my A10 they went from the desktop to Tidal favs and play normal. Not sure resolution as the Aurender just reads Tidal Hi-fi. Do a restart of the app and reboot the A10, usually everything falls into place.

[russellbobby]

This is the latest from Aurender when asked about the volume control possibly truncating bits when used with a preamp.

Hello Russ,

No, the Aurender’s digital volume control is being performed in an FPGA and does not lose resolution when used.

However, depending on your system electronics and the relationship between your amplification equipment, you may have better results using the volume attenuation in your preamplifier. Our next software release will have a button to easily set a fixed output from the A10 when used with a separate preamplifier.

 

So this is great news if you have a pre without a remote. You can adjust the volume either in the app or the Aurenders remote volume without losing any info..

[russellbobby]

I just received the A10 and I am streaming MQA to it from Tidal and it's fully decoded. I believe an A10 update is coming soon.

 

Good to hear. Please do your review with and without a preamp.

[russellbobby]

This is the latest from Aurender when asked about the volume control possibly truncating bits when used with a preamp.

Hello Russ,

No, the Aurender’s digital volume control is being performed in an FPGA and does not lose resolution when used.

However, depending on your system electronics and the relationship between your amplification equipment, you may have better results using the volume attenuation in your preamplifier. Our next software release will have a button to easily set a fixed output from the A10 when used with a separate preamplifier.

 

So this is great news if you have a pre without a remote. You can adjust the volume either in the app or the Aurenders remote volume without losing any info..

 

"Please disregard the prior information that the volume control for the A10 is performed in the FPGA for the A10, as it is actually a function of the AK4490 DAC chip for the left and right channels. Further information on technical aspects of the volume control can be referred to [email protected], where we will do our best to help with your questions”.

[russellbobby]

Straight A10 only and full MQA.

 

I know that baby is going to sound real good with the Constellation linestage. Hopefully on the DAC side its 95 percent of the Berkeley Audio Design Alpha DAC RS and EMM Labs DA2 you have.

Is 24/192 the best you are seeing on the Aurender?

[russellbobby]

I've got 352.8 kHz MQA on the A10 right now.

 

 

 

 

 

Nice... Wish they would let the rest of us enjoy MQA. I really don't think there are many units out there. Very little chatter on any of the forums. Hopefully with a few good reviews they will move a few units. It is kinda expensive for non enthusiast but if you break it all down 4tb music player-streamer, a solid dac, and a pre( if you want to use it that way) not a bad deal. Still has an optical in for the cable box. Usb out if you want to use as a player with a different dac.

I installed 2 black Synergistic fuses from the get. I know it killed my Oppo Modwright-N100 combo so very anxious to hear what you have to say.

[russellbobby]

So, if I purchase an A10 in the near future it should be MQA ready with the update already installed and no further action necessary?

 

MQA is still Beta so nobody has it yet but the testers and Chris. So depending when you take delivery it may still not be available.

[russellbobby]

The Aurender A10 Chris is using has a built in DAC which, with an update, is able to "decode" MQA encoded files.

 

With the all the other Aurender Music Servers (without included DAC) like the X100, N10, W20 how will they handle MQA files?

 

A - Will they just pass through the files to the DAC which, if MQA enabled, will it be able to decode those files?

 

B - Will they be able to "decode" the MQA files by themselves in Firmware (software)?

How will a non MQA enabled DAC handle those files ?

 

Sorry for all the questions but I've read most MQA/Aurender related posts and it's still a little confusing to me.

 

Looks like nobody has a N series with an MQA dac to see if indeed it is passing MQA. I cannot tell on my A10 as it shows Tidal as Hi-Fi. I do believe I am hearing 24-48 but have no way to confirm.

[russellbobby]

All Aurender servers pass the audio bit perfect, unless adjusted not to. So, MQA will play back on an MQA DAC without issue.

So what resolution thru Tidal am I hearing on the A10 with the current firmware? I added the Tidal masters from the desktop.

Thanks,

Russ

[russellbobby]

Right now you are hearing either 44.1 or 48 because it's undecoded.

 

Thanks, that is what I thought.

[russellbobby]

@Chris,

Any idea when Aurender is going to release the MQA update? I have been hearing "very soon" for a while now. Other than MQA can you share any other upgrades in the new update?

Also, when is your A10 review going to publish?. I am certain that you like to spend some time on a product for break-in, using it with different equipment, music files and software etc. Any quick early impressions? . Just wondering...

Thanks

[russellbobby]

Aurenders reply was that they are aiming for end feb for the A10.

 

No plans for having software decoding for the rest of the models, guess since Aurenders pass bit perfect anyway. So i guess they will just let tidal do the work.

End of February certainly does not sound like very soon. Beta has been out quite sometime, guess they are tweaking.

They announced the A10 over a year ago. Serial number on my unit is 0039. Not sure if they started at zero but not many units out there. Maybe a few reviews and the full blown MQA decoding will give it a jump start.