The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[Mazza]

43 minutes ago, russellbobby said:

Just not a fan of most volume controls in most dacs. I can leave the Aurender at 100 knowing I am not losing any resolution. 

 

 

ahhhh ...ok ..... didn't realise the A10 had a variable output, the W20 doesn't of course.

 

I agree with your point, quite a few digital volume controls aren't good at low outputs because of the way they achieve this. A good article on this at https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/features-menu/general-interest-interviews-menu/311-what-s-wrong-with-digital-volume-controls

[Mazza]

I’d definitely recommend the Kii’s and the W20 and together they are a match made in heaven.

 

Yes, you can still use a separate external DAC with the Kii’s. but what happens is that the resultant analogue signal that is fed to them is first converted into the digital domain using an ADC and then passed to internal DACS  [each speaker has 6 of them!] which service each speaker amp and driver [again, 6 of them]. The idea behind this is that each DAC is tuned for each amp and driver. If you feed it a digital signal instead of analogue the ADC is bypassed but the signal is upsampled before being passed to the individual DACS.

 

Using an external DAC to feed analogue to the Kii’s allegedly keeps the audio ‘signature’ & character of the external DAC through this conversion process but I have not tried it. 

 

I auditioned the Kef’s at the same time as the Kii’s and they are a very fine speaker, definitely worth a listen.

 

I hope the above helps

[Mazza]

Think of the W20 as a straight substitute for your CD transport, feeding your DAC etc, for example you cannot mount any DSP software onto the W20; it is a player only.

 

The W20 does have dual AES outputs and links for external clock so that should work with you Teac. You have probably looked already, but here is the web link https://www.aurender.com/page/w20

[Mazza]

4 hours ago, bmichels said:

So, I wonder if, without use of the dual mode AES/EBU and the Clock input, the W20 still offer an advantage over the N10, or if, with my DAC configuration, will the N10 will sound as good as the W20 ? 

 

The N10 is indeed much more recent than the W20 that is quite aging now...

 

I A-B’d the N10 and the W20 with a Puccini DAC and the SQ of the W20 was notably different in many areas. Wider and deeper soundstage, deeper and firmer bass and airier mids. TBH in a different league. I guess the results could be less noticeable with a less capable DAC and that should be borne in mind. 

 

I bought the W20 but I use a different DAC. I think the W20 is up there with the finest players you can buy. It will be a future classic

 

Id suggest that you don’t get hung up about the age of design ... I still use my Theta CD player .... it’s 15 yrs old and it holds its own against any new kit. It is not necessarily about age of design but about the quality of the design and the build. The W20 has both, in buckets full.

[Mazza]

@bmichels “The W20's batteries are spec'd to last 3,000 charge-recharge cycles until they reach 80% of capacity. If the W20 is used eight hours per day, 365 days per year, the batteries should last about 40 years”

[Mazza]

It’s not my calculation, it’s a quote from a review and the figures came from Aurender themselves. 

[Mazza]

1 minute ago, bmichels said:

3000 / 365 / 3 ( 3 full cycles per day minimum) = 3 years !??

 

And you are making assumptions on how long a charge cycle lasts and you forget that there is more than one battery bank. As I said, they are not my figures, they came from a review and they came from Aurender. 

 

Suggest if if it’s that important to you, speak with Aurender, they are very helpful. 

 

Oh and you can’t check battery condition which was one of your questions

 

[Mazza]

7 minutes ago, bmichels said:

I agree. I am very confident that the W20 will be a very substantial upgrade to my Auralic Aries V1 fento

 

I upgraded from the Auralic Aries Fento, which I had for about 6 months, to a W20.

 

As good as the Auralic is, the W20 is in a totally different league and once you have heard the W20, it will very difficult to want to go back. So beware!

[Mazza]

1 hour ago, HDgeorge said:

one tip is to check power cords for it. I tried on a friends N-10 the Stealth Dream v12 digital and it's a blast.

 

IMHO the use of fancy mains products will have limited effect on the W20 SQ unless your mains is in a real mess. The N10 has a single linear power supply powering the motherboards, whilst on the W20 the processing and signal side of the motherboard is fed directly by dc power from one of two battery banks. When playing, the W20 SMPS is powering the HDDs and recharging the 2nd battery bank. It is isolated from the processor and signal circuits. I can see that it would also be very difficult to evaluate through A-B comparison the effect of mains leads because of the reboot time every time that you power down.

 

I suspect that directing essential funds on better interconnects will give far more perceptible results to SQ

[Mazza]

@Ponzi  Result! Obviously something has happened. I wonder if it could also be one of a couple of things?

 

 Breaking-in is one. Personally I'd favour that the biggest changes tend to happen to mechanical devices so I wonder if it is your speakers. The other is possibly the mains? Listening late at night when there are less voltage peaks, dips and noise is considered by many to be superior to the same during the day. I guess the test for the latter would be to see if that glassiness you mention is gone for good or keeps returning.

[Mazza]

I have recently experimented with some mains products and my system includes an Aurender. Rather than pollute this thread with a bit of an off topic subject, here is the thread if you are interested:

 

 

[Mazza]

@christophhh if it is as bad as you say then you have something wrong somewhere. Ok I have W20 rather than N100 but I cannot believe that Tidal will sound so radically different between the two machines. Some Tidal I find almost indistinguishable from native playback and even the worst is ok rather than “shit”. And I am talking MQA and non-MQA. 

 

might be your network chain needs looking at?

[Mazza]

@christophhh there are no settings to play with in the Conductor App. Not familiar with the Schmitt, are there any settings in there that could be influencing/biasing the sound to one or the other?

 

Notwithstanding that, to be clear, your connection is:

 

network router——(via Ethernet)——mac——(via usb)——-Schitt——(via xlr)——pre-amp etc etc?

 

And with the N100, you *literally* just swap out the Mac, with exactly the same cables?

 

with the Mac setup, you are on battery or mains? Are you using an Ethernet adapter?

[Mazza]

@christophhh so one variable is that you are connecting  the Mac wirelessly to the router? Whereas with N100 you are linked by Ethernet cable to the router? 

 

If if so I’d suggest checking out the Ethernet cable? Might be faulty/damaged?

[Mazza]

The Conductor App is not any conduit for the music signal.  It is merely a controller. All signal transfer is via the N100’s Ethernet port. The App sends an instruction to the N100 and then sits back as the N100 and Router ‘talk’. All rendering of the music data stream is done by the N100 not the App

 

Interestingly what Aurender have recommended to you bypasses the N100 Ethernet port totally. Never tried such a device myself so can’t advise. An alternative could be to swap out your cable for another. 

[Mazza]

Ok so it looks like the USB adapter is not going to work for you. So I don’t know why Aurender started to suggest it.

 

Back to swapping out the Ethernet cables. You don’t need anything too fancy just one that’s well made. Personally I use a Cat6 cable off Amazon. You don’t need Cat6 but similar price to Cat5 with some benefits of improved shielding. So why not. Just pick an Amazon one that has lots of good reviews

[Mazza]

5 hours ago, Barbapappa said:

 Is there still a way to disable USB power? 

 

@Barbapapa you cannot do it from the App,

 

You can get the same effect by putting some small pieces of electrical tape over the + & - pins at each end of the USB cable.. or you can carefully open up the sheath of a cheap USB cable and cut the same wires, or make your own..

 

Never tried it myself but AFAICR something simlilar was talked about on one of these forums

[Mazza]

Definitely agree, the w20 which is going on for 4+ years old is yet to be bettered. For eg, I have aTheta CD Player which is 15+ years old IMO is not bettered by anything on the current market. The old adage ‘buy cheap, buy often’ is still valid....quality is never a short option 

[Mazza]

On 12/23/2018 at 6:30 PM, russellbobby said:

Can anybody chime in that is/has used Tidal and Qobuz both on their Aurender? Tidal Masters vs native 24 bit ?  

Thanks

Russ

 

I use a W20. 

 

At one time I had both but have dropped Quboz because of the cost and stayed with Tidal. To be honest whether you use Tidal or Quboz the SQ seems to more driven by the quality of mastering rather than a choice between MQA and HiRez. It can be very variable. 

 

For this reason, and bigger library, I chose to keep with Tidal and drop Quboz. With the alleged financial position of Tidal, that might have to change before too long. 

[Mazza]

Sorry just read your post again .....I find  native 24bit is consistently preferable  to Tidal Masters but again the difference is variable from recording to recording. You have to be very certain you are comparing the same recording and they can vary a lot, there can often be several versions of the same album with no apparent difference 

[Mazza]

3 hours ago, merge03 said:

@noushy, please don't equate "reliablity" (e.g. RAID) with "disaster recovery" (e.g. backups).  They are not the same thing.  RAID is an amazing thing.  RAID (at some level) should be embraced by everyone who can afford it.  But RAID is not a backup strategy.

 

 

You and the other posts are right.

 

I naively thought my NAS based raid was a backup to my Aurender. Until that is, it was pointed out to me that I may be able to swap out a failed NAS drive and rebuild the NAS backup but what would happen if the NAS itself failed and it couldn’t be replaced? So paranoia set in and I now backup my backup to the cloud! Not just music, but photos and other important files. 

 

Took nearly 3-weeks though! I hope I don’t need to restore from there......

[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?

[Mazza]

29 minutes ago, Noushy said:

The W20 uses its batteries this way and essentially has a built in battery backup.

 

I am not sure that it does. See my post on what happens when you lose power.

 

The battery-side feeds the sound-board, but as I understand it, the normal SMPS feeds the HDD's and 'computer' side of the W20

[Mazza]

7 hours ago, Noushy said:

This is straight from Aurender and one if the reasons I was thinking of getting this.

 

Power Failure Protection
The LiFePO4 battery power supply for the audio circuits also acts as an uninterruptible power supply. In case of any sudden power failures, the Aurender W20 will power down safely.

https://www.aurender.com/page/manual-w20

 

 

That’s what the manual says (and that is all that it has to say on the subject) but it doesn’t appear to act like a true UPS. Probably because the batteries’ principle function is not about UPS. Ok, maybe it does power down safely like the manual claims BUT if that is true, then it doesn’t always restart as if a controlled shutdown has occurred, which rather undermines its claim. 

 

I’d say don’t buy the W20 for the UPS feature! It is not reliable ..... buy the W20 for the sound and YMWV depending on your other components of course and provide UPS, if you want it, by another means.

[Mazza]

6 minutes ago, Vincent1234 said:

This is just an example and this will not only apply to Aurender. I've been in this hobby for over 40 years and I strongly believe that really excellent sound unfortunately will never be cheap. System synergy however indeed is key - in every price bracket.

 

👍+1, but with the law-of-diminishing-returns