The "Official" Aurender Discussion Thread

[biosailor]

6 hours ago, jon2020 said:

 

 

From a medical standpoint,  this is a very interesting observation of human behavior amongst audiophiles........and I am so, so guilty as charged! 

 

I texted a big smiley to my local dealer upon listening to my returned unit at home for having saved 6+ grand for the non-upgrade.

Dopamine-triggered euphoria all the way!

 

The link to dopamine is interesting!!! Excess levels of dopamine is also discussed as the cause for schizophrenia. This truly reflects my situation: N100 or N10, N100 or N10, N100 or N10 ...

 

But for the moment, I stick to my N100H and try to steer my mind away from the N10

[jon2020]

19 minutes ago, Vincent1234 said:

Hahah, I'm really happy for you! Still, in the back of my head I'm wondering what the N10 might bring additionally to your system. But since I don't know your system and since you are very happy now, let's not talk about that anymore (for now...). ?

 

I can happily tell you what the N10 adds to my system ..... a smidgen less grain, a smidgen more refinement, a smidgen more analog ease and a smidgen larger soundstage. 

 

But my returned "new" N100H must have had some substantial upgrade in the power supply that it gets me to nearly 95% of the N10! 

 

My litmus test for upgrading now is to switch back to the lower tier component after listening to the upgrade for some time, and ask myself whether I miss the upgrade in any way. With the "new" N100H, I really don't miss the N10. 

[jon2020]

5 minutes ago, biosailor said:

The link to dopamine is interesting!!! Excess levels of dopamine is also discussed as the cause for schizophrenia. This truly reflects my situation: N100 or N10, N100 or N10, N100 or N10 ...

 

But for the moment, I stick to my N100H and try to steer my mind away from the N10

 

My last post will be music to your schizophrenic ears.

[biosailor]

2 minutes ago, jon2020 said:

 

My last post will be music to your schizophrenic ears.

Not just to my ears, but to my tormented mind! Thanks!!!

[jon2020]

 

BTW,  just an update. I have been quietly cooking the usb output to dac during non-listening hours over the past 72 hours just to see if anything changes. I did this because I simply refuse to accept that Aurender could have a design flaw where the designated output to dac would sound worse than the input. And just this morning, I switched the cable back to the usb output to listen and presto! More dopamine, more euphoria.....!

 

Looks like everyone in this thread is now very happy with what they have - whether it is W20, N10 or N100. Which is as it should be.  Life is good!

 

Enjoy the Music!

[dayworker]

The great DAC in the world. who gonna to beat it? nobody wins it.

[sidvee]

On 3/18/2018 at 10:05 PM, Vincent1234 said:

It's not needed to convert ISO's yourself as your Aurender will take care of extracting them to individual DSD tracks automatically. All you have to do is simply copy the ISO's to your Aurender and have a little patience. After a while they will be converted to invididual DSD tracks and you are ready to go.

Thanks a lot. That worked great.  Also I find that files from the internal hard drive are sounding better to me rather than from a connected USB HDD.That and some 2xdsd files are exhibiting dropouts and other anomalies. Perhaps my USB HDD is not getting adequate power from the USB connection of the n100h.

Cheers,

Sid

[Yippedidou]

Hi,

Do some of you use LAN Isolator like the Acoustic Revive, Pink Faun, WFS and others with your Aurender server? If so, do you find a difference with or without? What are the differences if any?

Thanks

[agladstone]

On 3/27/2018 at 3:31 PM, biosailor said:

Something else, doesn't involve upgrading : just downloaded The Modern Jazz Quratet's 'Pyramid' (super recording, super album, BTW) and transferred it onto my N100H as a wav file. The N100H displays it as an album, but it lists it as 'Unknown'. Tried re-transferring it with just 'Modern Jazz Quartet', but doesn't help, still displayed as 'Unknown'. Would anyone know the reason?

 

 

WAV (and DFF files ) cannot hold any tahs or meta data! 

Uou need to use dbpoweramp to convert the WAV file to either AIFF (Apples version of WAV, however AIFF can have tags and metadata) or FLAC. 

Once converted, then use DBPoweramp to edit the Tags / Metadata , add album art, etc. 

 

[STC]

20 minutes ago, agladstone said:

WAV (and DFF files ) cannot hold any tahs or meta data! 

Uou need to use dbpoweramp to convert the WAV file to either AIFF (Apples version of WAV, however AIFF can have tags and metadata) or FLAC. 

Once converted, then use DBPoweramp to edit the Tags / Metadata , add album art, etc. 

 

 

http://wavmetadata.blogspot.my/2013/10/wav-audio-files-can-hold-several.html

[biosailor]

1 hour ago, agladstone said:

WAV (and DFF files ) cannot hold any tahs or meta data! 

Uou need to use dbpoweramp to convert the WAV file to either AIFF (Apples version of WAV, however AIFF can have tags and metadata) or FLAC. 

Once converted, then use DBPoweramp to edit the Tags / Metadata , add album art, etc. 

 

Good to know that WAV files usually do not contain metadata, even though, at some occasions, wav files were recognized perfectly well on my N100H.

So, for Aurender, is it generally better to use AIFF files? I do not seem to have problems with the few wav files on my N100H.

For metadat editing, I use Metadatics. It's quite handy to use.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[Vincent1234]

On 5-4-2018 at 8:50 AM, biosailor said:

Good to know that WAV files usually do not contain metadata, even though, at some occasions, wav files were recognized perfectly well on my N100H.

So, for Aurender, is it generally better to use AIFF files? I do not seem to have problems with the few wav files on my N100H.

For metadat editing, I use Metadatics. It's quite handy to use.

Thanks for the tip!

 

As STC pointed out, @agladstone is not correct w.r.t. WAV files (he is correct w.r.t. DFF files; you need to convert those to DSF to attach metadata). You can add metadata to WAV files and I'm doing exactly that for years already. ? No need to use AIFF. By the way: WAV sounds slightly better than FLAC too, probably due to less processing needed for WAV. Try it out yourself. Obviously the audible difference will be system dependant.

[JS21]

New SW available. 

[Vincent1234]

46 minutes ago, JS21 said:

New SW available. 

Thanks for the notification. I just tried it and for MQA indeed the proper (fully unfolded) sample rate is shown in Conductor now. However, MQA files still show up as 32 bits files (W20) instead of the correct 24 bits. That's a little bit silly indeed when you think about Aurender testing their software before releasing an update..

[biosailor]

11 hours ago, Vincent1234 said:

As STC pointed out, @agladstone is not correct w.r.t. WAV files (he is correct w.r.t. DFF files; you need to convert those to DSF to attach metadata). You can add metadata to WAV files and I'm doing exactly that for years already. ? No need to use AIFF. By the way: WAV sounds slightly better than FLAC too, probably due to less processing needed for WAV. Try it out yourself. Obviously the audible difference will be system dependant.

Yes, that's why I downloaded the wav file. With the few I have, I constantly have the impression as if the wav files sound a tad better than the FLAC files. Not to a large extent, but just a bit. Also, the AIFF files tend to be a bit bright, but I am uncertain of it. For sure, I like the wav files very much!

[russellbobby]

Wav files to me have always sounded better. Much larger file though. That's whats nice about the A10 . 4 tb of storage so plenty of room!!

[biosailor]

10 hours ago, russellbobby said:

Wav files to me have always sounded better. Much larger file though. That's whats nice about the A10 . 4 tb of storage so plenty of room!!

 

Yes, wav files are large, particularly high-resolution files. When I bought my N100H, the dealer was about to equip it with a 5 TB HDD, but somehow he couldn't get hold of the HDD. I might want to contact him again to see if I can get an upgraded HDD.

[Vincent1234]

3 hours ago, biosailor said:

 

Yes, wav files are large, particularly high-resolution files. When I bought my N100H, the dealer was about to equip it with a 5 TB HDD, but somehow he couldn't get hold of the HDD. I might want to contact him again to see if I can get an upgraded HDD.

Storage is so cheap these days that I would always go for the maximum quality. WAV sounds better than FLAC so for any critical album it's a no brainer for me. The W20 even has 12Tb, but I really wouldn't know how to get it filled, especially since Tidal/MQA is becoming a more and more important source for me.

[biosailor]

1 hour ago, Vincent1234 said:

Storage is so cheap these days that I would always go for the maximum quality. WAV sounds better than FLAC so for any critical album it's a no brainer for me. The W20 even has 12Tb, but I really wouldn't know how to get it filled, especially since Tidal/MQA is becoming a more and more important source for me.

So, despite all controversies being discussed about MQA on CA, how does an MQA file streamed via Tidal compare to a wav file played from the local HDD?

 

If I stream files, I stream them via Qobuz, that offers up to 24/192 FLAC files. I guess this depends on the recording in question, but would there be a noticeable difference between a high-resolution FLAC compared to an MQA file? I guess no definitive answer can be given.

[Vincent1234]

2 hours ago, biosailor said:

So, despite all controversies being discussed about MQA on CA, how does an MQA file streamed via Tidal compare to a wav file played from the local HDD?

 

If I stream files, I stream them via Qobuz, that offers up to 24/192 FLAC files. I guess this depends on the recording in question, but would there be a noticeable difference between a high-resolution FLAC compared to an MQA file? I guess no definitive answer can be given.

I think you are right that there's no real definitive answer to that, as indeed it depends on the specific recording. Gaucho from Steely Dan for instance sounds better as an SACD rip (or indeed on vinyl!) than in MQA, but MQA still sounds very impressive in general (spacious, subtle, tonally very rich) and certainly way better than non-MQA Redbook streaming FLAC. I think more gains can be achieved when playing MQA files locally from the internal HDD, but haven't tried that yet. 

[Mazza]

3 hours ago, biosailor said:

If I stream files, I stream them via Qobuz, that offers up to 24/192 FLAC files. I guess this depends on the recording in question, but would there be a noticeable difference between a high-resolution FLAC compared to an MQA file? I guess no definitive answer can be given.

 

I don’t wish to open up the whole MQA debate but as a general rule anything I stream from Tidal or Qobuz, whether MQA or not, Hirez or not, has a much much  lesser SQ than the equivalent rip or Hirez download played from my HDD (W20).

 

Depends on the album version of course and when there are multiple copies to stream, typically one will sound  better than the others much. The amount of variety in SQ continuously surprises me

 

so I tend to use the streaming for sampling to decide if I want to buy the download

[Vincent1234]

1 hour ago, Mazza said:

 

I don’t wish to open up the whole MQA debate but as a general rule anything I stream from Tidal or Qobuz, whether MQA or not, Hirez or not, has a much much  lesser SQ than the equivalent rip or Hirez download played from my HDD (W20).

 

Depends on the album version of course and when there are multiple copies to stream, typically one will sound  better than the others much. The amount of variety in SQ continuously surprises me

 

so I tend to use the streaming for sampling to decide if I want to buy the download

As you said: it all depends on the albums you listen to and also on the quality of your Ethernet cabling and connection. In general I'm pretty impressed with MQA through my W20, especially with classical music.

[biosailor]

2 hours ago, Mazza said:

 

I don’t wish to open up the whole MQA debate but as a general rule anything I stream from Tidal or Qobuz, whether MQA or not, Hirez or not, has a much much  lesser SQ than the equivalent rip or Hirez download played from my HDD (W20).

 

Depends on the album version of course and when there are multiple copies to stream, typically one will sound  better than the others much. The amount of variety in SQ continuously surprises me

 

so I tend to use the streaming for sampling to decide if I want to buy the download

I too, store my music files locally on the N100H. Qobuz comes in handy when I want to see what's new. Just before the MQA upgrade for Aurender was released, I terminated my Tidal account, because I so much preferred Qobuz over Tidal. Might want to re-consider a subscription just to check out MQA on my Aurender. 

[Mazza]

14 hours ago, biosailor said:

I too, store my music files locally on the N100H. Qobuz comes in handy when I want to see what's new. Just before the MQA upgrade for Aurender was released, I terminated my Tidal account, because I so much preferred Qobuz over Tidal. Might want to re-consider a subscription just to check out MQA on my Aurender. 

 

I had both too (Qobuz on trial) but went the other way and cancelled the Qobuz account and kept Tidal. For me the reasons were:

 

- greater library choice on Tidal

- seem to be more hires files on Tidal inc MQA

- Tidal is cheaper!

 

i really wanted to go with Qobuz because that is where I buy my downloads and you can do the auto upload thing to the Aurender, but there you go!

[biosailor]

2 hours ago, Mazza said:

 

I had both too (Qobuz on trial) but went the other way and cancelled the Qobuz account and kept Tidal. For me the reasons were:

 

- greater library choice on Tidal

- seem to be more hires files on Tidal inc MQA

- Tidal is cheaper!

 

i really wanted to go with Qobuz because that is where I buy my downloads and you can do the auto upload thing to the Aurender, but there you go!

Auto upload thing? Can you explain? Sorry, but this option never occurred to me.