The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[DancingSea]

My solution is to simply stay with Conductor 3.  4 remains a bit buggy and internet radio is not of interest to me.  I'm sure 4 will get there one day...

[chasm]

This is an attempt to try to crowdsource to get a new feature added to Conductor - Album Favorite. I had an N200 which I thought sounded very good. This year I upgraded to an N20, mainly because of the review on this site (thanks Chris). It sounds excellent, and will be my final server. I listen exclusively to local files on SSD, except when trying out new music. 

 

I found Conductor on Android to be somewhat clunky compared to BluOS which I had used for years. BluOS has two features which should be standard on every player - favorite album (along with song) and access to Amazon Music. These two are lacking on Conductor, although support tells me they are on the future feature list. When you ID a song as a favorite, it also shows up on the fave album list - but not the whole album, just the song. I find it overly clicky to have to navigate from the album list to the song then to the album to play the entire album, especially if the song is in a multi-album set with all the same covers. Favorite album is obviously a standard feature, and should be very easy to replicate from the code for favorite song.

 

Aurender: bring your standard feature set up to industry standards!

[DancingSea]

6 hours ago, chasm said:

This is an attempt to try to crowdsource to get a new feature added to Conductor - Album Favorite. I had an N200 which I thought sounded very good. This year I upgraded to an N20, mainly because of the review on this site (thanks Chris). It sounds excellent, and will be my final server. I listen exclusively to local files on SSD, except when trying out new music. 

 

I found Conductor on Android to be somewhat clunky compared to BluOS which I had used for years. BluOS has two features which should be standard on every player - favorite album (along with song) and access to Amazon Music. These two are lacking on Conductor, although support tells me they are on the future feature list. When you ID a song as a favorite, it also shows up on the fave album list - but not the whole album, just the song. I find it overly clicky to have to navigate from the album list to the song then to the album to play the entire album, especially if the song is in a multi-album set with all the same covers. Favorite album is obviously a standard feature, and should be very easy to replicate from the code for favorite song.

 

Aurender: bring your standard feature set up to industry standards!

 

Good luck with that 😇

[NTWrong]

Couldn’t you just create a playlist and add to it as you go? I have one I called “Best Best”, meaning I love it both as music and for its sound quality. When a song jumps out at me, I click the three dots next to the song and add it to my playlist. Presumably you could do the same thing with an album.

[tms]

@chasm you wrote

 

This year I upgraded to an N20, mainly because of the review on this site (thanks Chris). It sounds excellent, and will be my final server.

 

Are you referring to the N20 or the N20 SE?  I'm thinking of moving from my N10 to one of the N20 editions. Any comments much appreciated.

 

Todd

[chasm]

@tms

 

I have the N20 and not the SE, so I couldn't describe any differences between those units. As far as the N20, I find the attempt to write about what I hear to be difficult as I lack a refined understanding of generally accepted (on forums and reviews) terms to describe sound.  The difference between the N200 and the N20 was immediately apparent to me, after a 40 minute wait between music on the first and the same music on the second. I did set the SPL to be close to equal, and found music on the N20 to have moved forward, soundstage wider, even greater clarity, and overall a greater sense of pleasant envelopment. 

 

Before the N200 I had an NAD M12 with the BluOS blade. The difference in SQ between that and the N200 was greaster than between the N200 and the N20. But I am happy with the improvement I got with the N20, and would recommend a listen if you can get the chance.

 

CJ

[Clyde2]

On 3/18/2024 at 7:17 AM, XCop5089 said:

Hmmm!

 

I don't know what Aurender have done with the latest 4.9.14 version of Conductor for iPhone, but I can't get the background to stay on "Dark!"

 

It keeps reverting to a "White" background!

 

Anyone else having problems?

Version 4.10 seems to have cured this one. 

[DancingSea]

Aurender now listed on Roon's page of compatible brand partners....

 

https://roon.app/en/partners/194/aurender

[ufoerp]

On 3/30/2024 at 1:06 AM, DancingSea said:

Aurender now listed on Roon's page of compatible brand partners....

 

https://roon.app/en/partners/194/aurender

Thanks for sharing this important update.

But how to use Roon app on Aurender player?

[DancingSea]

2 hours ago, ufoerp said:

Thanks for sharing this important update.

But how to use Roon app on Aurender player?

 

It will be (eventually) forthcoming through a free Aurender update for Intel based units only.  The appearance on the Roon brand partners page will be updated with a list of specific compatible models.

[HifiVoice]

The Aurender page mentioning ROON is also back online (it was removed for a couple of weeks):
https://aurender.com/home/roon_ready/

 

I assume it still needs to come with a System Software update and a Conductor update before it will work. 

[DancingSea]

Yes, it says all Intel based N and ACS series are ready now, with A series to follow..

[Mazza]

So that’s it then, the future development of the Conductor App is screwed. A sad day for those of us with absolutely no interest in Roon. 

[DancingSea]

9 minutes ago, Mazza said:

So that’s it then, the future development of the Conductor App is screwed. A sad day for those of us with absolutely no interest in Roon. 

 

I wouldn't go that far without further evidence.  I assume Conductor development will continue along at its normal meandering pace.  And Aurenders will only be Roon Endpoints, not Roon Cores, a separate Roon Core will still be required (a computer or NUC type device), which puts Roon (presumably) at an inherent sound quality disadvantage in the Aurender ecosystem.

 

Roon is now an alternative to Conductor, not a replacement.

[HifiVoice]

34 minutes ago, Mazza said:

So that’s it then, the future development of the Conductor App is screwed. A sad day for those of us with absolutely no interest in Roon. 

 

You can also stream to an Aurender via Airplay, and still the Conductor App is running. So I wouldn't conclude this. 

 

Aurender states that Conductor is there for the best sound quality. In 3 other situations (Aurender, PC, Ayre EX-8)  we did compare ROON with other ways of streaming (Conductor, Airplay, JPlay, UPnP, ROON, Audinirvana), and ROON was mostly not amongst the best sound quality wise. ROON is a nice encyclopaedic discovery tool, and to me it is nice when I can see the cover art on the N200 when doing so. 

Another thing missing in the Aurender is a parametric EQ. I have a 30Hz bump in my room, and with ROON I can cancel it with a few mouse clicks. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, Mazza said:

So that’s it then, the future development of the Conductor App is screwed. A sad day for those of us with absolutely no interest in Roon. 

How on Earth did you come up with that?

[Mazza]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

How on Earth did you come up with that?

Supposition. Quote me in 2-years time and then tell me that I was wrong, meanwhile I will wager that by then it will all be about Roon and the development of Conductor will be stagnant. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 minutes ago, Mazza said:

Supposition. Quote me in 2-years time and then tell me that I was wrong, meanwhile I will wager that by then it will all be about Roon and the development of Conductor will be stagnant. 

History is the best predictor of the future. Plus, given that Samsung owns Roon, I don’t think any company would hitch its wagon to Roon as the sole interface. 

[Robifabs]

Hi all,

 

many of the above speculations and attempts to predict the future have been proven right in the past with many other closed systems.

I am currently struggling like hell to get my very very precious playlists from a 12TB ACS10 hosting 5.6TB of music (RAID mount), I have now owned for 5+ years, to a 6GB W20 I acquired second hand 2 months ago. All I am asking for in way, is to be able to access my playlist and all my metadata on the best of the two readers on my main system and for the last two months it has been a headache. With Roon, it would have been completely transparent.  Last email I sent Daniel @support was Friday night asking him if I could clone a 6TB « Disk 1 » from an ACS10 to two 3TB Disks « 1 » AND « 2 » on a W20 ? What matters most in the question is the « AND » !! Isn’t it a bit a 1980’s type of user experience !?! 
 

Even if I am a big fan of Aurender’s hardware and audiophile’s approach, the very poor user experience (not even close to being compensated by nonetheless, one of the best customer services I know in the industry…) has made me consider moving on to anything open and competitive and truly user friendly !!!

No way I will re-do my playlists like another Aurender user I know recently had to…

 

My experience with Roon Nucleus (country house system) is that sound quality is not as good (especially compared to W20) but so much more stable and overall easy. Still clinging to Aurender and to a string of hope but wanted to share my humble and frustrating experience for whatever it is worth…

 

Oh… one last thing: thanks to all for all the valuable info, insights and ideas I get from reading your posts ! 

 

 

[DancingSea]

47 minutes ago, Mazza said:

Supposition. Quote me in 2-years time and then tell me that I was wrong, meanwhile I will wager that by then it will all be about Roon and the development of Conductor will be stagnant. 

One could argue Conductor development has been like molasses with or without Roon. 
 

Nearly all companies now have Roon as an option, many for years and years.  They continue to have their own app outside of Roon, leaving Roon as an option. 
 

I have a lifetime Roon license and think it runs circles around Conductor for library management and user experience.  And yet I switched to an AMD Aurrender because Roon sound quality is lacking. 
 

Rumors of Conductor’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.  

[GJo]

Looking forward to the opportunity, freedom, and choice  of using Roon on my N30SA. 
 

Hallelujah!

 

Thank you, Aurender

[grubble]

On 2/4/2024 at 8:02 PM, DancingSea said:

I've had this persistent peculiarity with the Aurender's hard drive.  I'm not sure if it's the HD's fault or choice, but I experience this weirdness when I've mounted the Aurender's HD on my Mac.

 

The Aurender has declared my Boston Symphony Chamber's Player's box set as untouchable, saying I do not have permission.  It can't be copied or backed up to another hard drive.  It can't be deleted.  And it's not possible to change the permissions.

 

And then there are the 4 folders in the attached screenshot.  They cannot be deleted from the Aurender because I don't have permission, and it's not possible to change permissions.  They total 8kb and have nothing in them.  Yet they are somehow tied to 3 Dire Strait and one Miles Davis SACD.  No matter which folder on the Aurender those albums are located, they will appear in Conductor only in the folder where these 4 mystery folders reside.

 

Any ideas?

 

It's not a big deal, just one of these Aurender oddities.  The same album files behave perfectly normal in all places not Aurender.

 

Having the same problems with a newly formatted hard drive on my N20. I copied 4 folders of albums via my MBP (connected wirelessly on same network). It partially copied a 4th folder and was incomplete in copying all the files. There was a partially copied file while was terminated for some odd reason. I tried to delete that file and it says can't be completed due to not having permissions. I connected as the user I set to in Conductor app (which is the default user). Not sure if anyone else is experiencing this issue like DancingSea and myself. Odd.

 

-dave

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, grubble said:

 

Having the same problems with a newly formatted hard drive on my N20. I copied 4 folders of albums via my MBP (connected wirelessly on same network). It partially copied a 4th folder and was incomplete in copying all the files. There was a partially copied file while was terminated for some odd reason. I tried to delete that file and it says can't be completed due to not having permissions. I connected as the user I set to in Conductor app (which is the default user). Not sure if anyone else is experiencing this issue like DancingSea and myself. Odd.

 

-dave

Does the file have unique characters or a space at the end of the file name?

[grubble]

30 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Does the file have unique characters or a space at the end of the file name?

 

Nope, just spaces in between. I can't even rename the file on the Aurender so there's definitely some odd permissions issues that I'm not getting access to.

[DancingSea]

1 hour ago, grubble said:

 

Nope, just spaces in between. I can't even rename the file on the Aurender so there's definitely some odd permissions issues that I'm not getting access to.

 

It's some weird Aurender relationship with Mac permissions....  have been a Mac user for 40 years and have only seen these oddities with Conductor.