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Auralic Aries Mini vs. Sonore microRendu vs. SOtM SMS-200 Listening Impressions


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Very good work austinpop. Looking forward to what comes next.

 

At the risk of complicating things, as an owner of an Aries (femto), it would be interesting to hear if you are isolating your Aries mini physically, e.g. what does it sit on?

 

The reason I ask is that last year I bit the bullet and dived into Barry Diament's long-recommended rollerball vibration isolation technique with my Aries. The result was like a really major hardware upgrade - music was better defined, smoother top to bottom, more open and easy on the ears, overall much more enjoyable.

 

Maybe an experiment for the future.

 

Thank you for your remarks.

 

As we know, system optimization is a multidimensional space that we intrepid CA'ers explore. In my case, on the physical isolation dimension, I am probably still near the origin!

 

My only foray so far has to be to get some Herbie products. My results are described here.

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f22-networking-networked-audio-and-streaming/overall-isolation-network-universal-serial-bus-industry-standard-cables-connectors-and-communications-protocols-between-computers-and-electronic-devices-and-power-29916/index35.html#post627790

 

I'm sure there is more to explore!

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Hi Austinpop,

 

I agree with your findings concerning the microRendu. It is very accurate, clean, and precise. Romantic colorations need not apply for sure! but it is a great piece of equipment. I use many of your tweaks for MicroRendu as well. (Curious USB, TP Link MC200CMS, Herbie's Tenderfeet, Baby Booties, Supersonic Stabilizers, LPS-1, and a couple that you don't, Aurios and most importantly, the PS Audio LAN Rover. ) They all have their place

and duties.

It's the LanRover that has really helped the microRendu shine. I have it connected after the microRendu and powered by the HDPLEX linear power supply. And what does the LAN Rover do for the microRendu? The microRendu hands off all the dynamics, clarity, bass articulation, pacing, and blackness and the LAN Rover adds depth, imaging, wide soundstage, and a touch of musicality. The LAN Rover has two boxes about the size of a TP link module. The first unit accepts USB in from the microRendu, converts it to Ethernet which connects to the second module, which then converts Ethernet back to USB and connects from USB into the DAC.

I'm curious to find what benefit if any the RUR or the Intona would bring to the party.

Today my LPS1 shipped which I'll use to power the LAN Rover and I have a battery setup that will arrive this week to power the TPLink MC200cms. I'm hoping for even better sound quality.

I'll report back this weekend.

 

Yes, I have my eye on the LANRover. It's good to hear your positive experience with it.

 

One thing that makes my head hurt is - so once you convert USB to Ethernet on the LEX, do you now have another Ethernet segment that needs FMCs or isolators?

 

[emoji848]

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Hi Rajiv,

 

I skim read this when you posted it, and I am now reading it in a more leisurely way.

 

This is a great piece of information, and so rarely included:

 

About 80% of my music listening is to classical music on DSD64. The rest is a mix of progressive and classic rock, acoustic jazz, and assorted, also either on DSD or high-res PCM. I listen to almost no 16/44.1 music unless I have to.

The HD800 and the Elear are complementary. The HD800 is unparalleled for classical, but can sound thin and harsh with brighter, less pristine recordings.

 

If I only listened to classical music I would have been satisfied with my system long since, it is the playing of those less pristine recordings which I find frustrating, but they are ones I love. In trying to get the best from these recordings my system has improved, but I find there is a fine balance where I can get more detail but lose tonal texture & increase digital edge.

 

I am glad you are undertaking this comparison. The issue with reading other opinions is that I am less than convinced that they have put in the required effort to ensure that the system has been properly optimised.

 

I will be following your efforts with interest. Thank you for your hard work.

 

M

 

Hi M,

 

Thanks for your kind words.

 

Yes, I felt it important to share that information about my musical and tonal preferences, because it is very necessary context! I realize some of my findings here on CA are contrarian, but perhaps this is one of the reasons.

 

Either way, I try to be scrupulous and unbiased, and don't jump to conclusions.

 

I'll have more to say about less than pristine recordings when I report on my experiences with HQPlayer. I have been familiarizing myself with it, and Roon, since these are modes that are enabled my the mR and the sms-200 that the Aries Mini does not do. It behooves me to look at these as areas of potentially further SQ advancement.

 

The SMS-200 should be in the house by the end of day, if FedEx is to be trusted! Can't wait.

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Hi AustinPop!

Thank you so much for doing all this testing and reporting your results. I am sure that I'm not the only one finding your testing extremely helpful...

I just loaded up Roon on my NAS as a trial, & do have MiniMServer up on it too, as well as LMS from a super new, amazingly fast, iMAC in the basement. I have only fired up miniMserver once, just to make sure that it works.

Your post was super helpful, - so Thanks again!!

 

You're welcome.

 

Careful running Roon on your NAS. It's a resource hog, so needs careful setup. See https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Server_on_NAS

 

I was hoping to live happily ever after, running Minim on my NAS, but with my findings, I am reluctantly moving to a PC.

 

It's a slippery slope now. Next, I've been advised to try AO -Audiophile Optimizer, and then who knows. It never ends!

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Thanks for setting me at ease with not trying HQplayer. I stick to Minimstreamer on my new Synology ds116 and not using a pc in my setup.

Upgrading from ds112 to ds116 proved a big step up in SQ. The ds112 must have been to busy with transcoding.

 

Synology NAS, LPS-1, microRendu, Job INTegrated, Penaudio Cenya.

 

I hope you registered the caveats - in my system, with my DAC, with my music tastes! The answer may be different for you. Or not.

 

Just wanted to make sure people don't treat my findings as generally applicable.

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Hi austinpop,

I've seen that you've been using many isolation tweaks in your setup (FMC, Intonna and Vbus). Does it work well with all the stuffs? Do we really need to add Intonna and Vbus more?

Thanks.

No, you do not need this stuff. I already had these tweaks, so retained them for all the comparisons.

 

The only way to know is to try them in your own system. If it helps, great - if not, move on.

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I understand the higher the upsample the better HQPlayer's engine can work on the file, but is the difference between let's say DSD256 vs DSD512 really magical or the difference is similar to your findings between NAA vs DLNA?

 

I don't have a DSD512 capable DAC, so I don't actually have experience with this.

 

Someone who's done this should answer.

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Austinpop - I was wondering if you had thought of trying the sMS-200 playing direct from a USB drive or similar? There has been much talk recently of the improved sound quality derived from direct Ethernet connection, but what is the music files skipped the Ethernet bit altogether? This might be an interesting thing to try?

 

No, I did not, because that brings USB drive noise right into the SMS. Everything I've read so far has strongly discouraged the practice of attaching USB drives to an endpoint/renderer.

 

Remember, the network is not your enemy but your friend. In addition to enabling much richer functionality, it is providing an isolation barrier to noise as well.

 

Another question I have. You did a good job describing the difference between the mR and sMS-200. I get the impression that the difference is quite small, so would you say the difference is maybe on the limit of what could be discerned in a blind test? It's always hard to equate someone else's words with your own listening experiences.

 

I don't do blind tests, since I don't have another person here with the patience to conduct them! I am pretty confident I could tell them apart. The differences are not huge, but definitely consistent.

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Hi, just wondering where you receive the info of an enhanced sMS-200 on the work? And is there more info you can share? I'm on the edge of purchasing an sMS-200 and wondering if I should wait. Thanks!

 

Reported in this post: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/novel-way-massively-improve-sq-sms-200-and-microrendu-31110/index21.html#post629749

 

and this post: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/novel-way-massively-improve-sq-sms-200-and-microrendu-31110/index23.html#post633011

 

I've also asked May Park about it, and she confirmed they are working on an sMS-200Ultra, which should be available in a couple of months, but no info on pricing.

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In this installment, I'll cover my listening experiences with Audiophile Optimizer. While this may, on the surface, appear orthogonal to the comparisons between the 3 endpoints, there is a unifying theme.

 

Having discovered the benefit of network bridging and running the music server on the bridged Windows machine, I was urged to take it one step further and optimize my Windows environment using Audiophile Optimizer. Given the glowing accounts from CA'ers I trust, I decided to just take the plunge and buy it. They do offer a trial, but it's tied to using an evaluation copy of Windows, and I didn't want to bother with another Windows install as a dual boot.

 

Thanks to some detailed guidance from @clipper, setup and install was a snap. Thanks also to @lmitche , who pointed me to this thread - http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/windows-10-optimization-script-community-effort-25361/ - from which I found some registry tweaks, additional services to disable, and the idea to run my music server at realtime priority.

 

The result is quite outstanding! Initially, I didn't think much had improved, but using the sMS-200, I just browsed around my library and listened to familiar music at random. Another big step up in detail, coherence, air, and a smoother, more relaxed feel.

 

AO is truly a worthwhile upgrade. Yes, it's not free, but the results are indisputably worth it. And I haven't yet got to the best part. AudioPhil has provided a couple of tuning "knobs" called Sound Signature (values 1-4) and Digital Filters (A-D). The details are proprietary, but change the way the operating systems handles the running tasks and their priorities as they relate to the operational state of the CPU.

This is where things get interesting, as it relates to the comparisons. I found that the optimal settings for these filters were different between the 3 endpoints. @romaz described his experience in this post - http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f10-music-servers/novel-way-massively-improve-sq-sms-200-and-microrendu-31110/index23.html#post633005 - and I can confirm his findings.

 

I found that the higher resolution and detailed sMS-200 sounded best with a setting of 3C, while with the mR, I liked 2C. The Aries Mini sounded best to me at 2B. These different settings do tend to reduce the perceived differences between these endpoints, although not quite. While the lower values tend to "goose" the tone a little brighter, it also flattens the soundstage, while the higher values are mellower, but more holographic.

 

Here again, I found I ultimately liked the sMS-200 at 3C just a bit more than the others, because of the organic mix of inherent resolution with the mellowing effect of the AO filter at 3C.

 

All in all, a very interesting experiment. I may experiment with further optimizations like Process Lasso and Fidelizer, but not sure when.

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My Aries Mini had been powered down for the last several days while I was focusing on the mR and SMS-200 listening impressions, so when I listened to it for the AO experiments, it had been a while.

 

I must say, even though my findings about the mR and sMS-200 being just a slight bit "better" still hold, I have to say, I still love the musicality of the Aries Mini, even if it lacks that extra resolution of the others. And with the direct connect and AO mods, I was struck by how lovely it was sounding in my system.

 

Yes, I will eventually upgrade to a "better" endpoint, but as I mentioned in Parts 1 and 2, if you already own one, you shouldn't feel at all deprived! It is an outstanding piece of kit, and it scales like a champ with any number of tweaks you throw at it.

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Thanks for the heads-up Rajiv! :)

 

I especially appreciate your honest approach.

 

The pc path is something that I have left behind after many years of optimizing with scripts, Filderlizer Pro, Process Lasso, Jplay and other countless enhancements. I am not going back using a pc in my setup even if it might improve things. However, if you want to explore that path I would recommend that you visit the Jplay forum where many are using both AO and Jplay together with good results. You will surely recognize many of them from CA, but not all of them.

 

I actually started out with my Auralic Aries Mini connected to my optimized W10 Pro pc, but quite quickly realized that I want to concentrate all my efforts to get the best possible SQ with on cloud content like Tidal via a OpenHome media protocol.

 

I have got a much better SQ since then but have made countless tweaks & experiments on that path as well as you might have noticed. Summing it all up I have come to the same conclution as many others that isolation is the key to success. However, by far the best improvements is done by galvanicly isolating the AC mains. The Peaktech 2240 tech style isolation transformer made a huge difference to my system and lately when I powered my router with a galvanicly isolated lab psu (Voltcraft FSP-1134) I was amazed by the improvements.

 

Another thing. For the only purpose of trying to hide my 10m fuchsia coloured fiber-optical cable running through my appartment I connected a TP-Link RE450 range extender in wireless bridge mode ten times closer to my audio rig. I added the FMCs between the RE450 and my Aries Mini with the same 10m F-O cable and expected a change for the worse. Surpricingly not at all. It actually sounds smoother and more relaxed without loosing in any other parameter. Nothing that I can explain why, but surely a fact in my own setup.

 

Hi Micael,

 

Appreciate your kind words. Yes, I have had my honesty tested with my recent experiments, because the results were actually contrary to what I had hoped!

 

Unlike you, I never even got into the whole mess of tweaking PCs. I preferred the elegance and simplicity of running Minim on my NAS, directly consumed by a renderer like the SBT, and then the Aries Mini. As you well know, I focused my attention of isolation in many dimensions, including AC and DC power.

 

But two findings in recent times, have drawn me, kicking and screaming, into the PC tuning space. First was the Romaz Result - that attaching the endpoint to a PC directly, avoiding a switch led to increased SQ. We still don't know why. The second finding was that running MinimServer on the bridged PC sounded much more coherent and better than Minim running on the NAS. Even though the data in both cases lives on the NAS! Again, a very perplexing result, although perhaps at least conceivably related to OS implementation, and HW resources.

 

Essentially, my hope with the isolation approach was that by isolating as many dimensions immediately upstream of the DAC at the renderer, it would be immune to everything upstream. Sadly that appears to not be true. Which opened Pandora's box. :)

 

At this point, I am at a crossroads. Yes, I could now go down the long and deep rabbit hole of PC tweaking - mobo's, cards, chassis's, LPSU's blah blah. It just makes me ill. Or I will wait for someone to build a "bridged Roon server appliance" - a micro Roon-du if you will ;) - and go with that.

 

Did I mention? It's an exciting time to be a computer audiophile!

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As mentioned before Cornan I purchased a Voltcraft (the FSP 1132 in my case) on your glowing praise. This has to be one of the best deals that I've added to my system for cost to benefit, only £43 + shipping. I had trouble initially as the barrel connector on my router is not a standard one. I've set up a temp connection as I want to add silver wire for the DC cable. Suffice to say the Voltcraft is a significant addition. More detail and depth, more sparkle and richness but not bright or harsh in any way. Thanks for the heads up a real find as other 'audiophile' LPS options can run into the £100's.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Very exciting find, indeed. I recently picked up a used HDPlex, and am using 3 of its 4 taps to power my bits and bobs of network gear up in my closet: my broadband modem, router, and a switch - basically everything connected to the router, or in the path to my audio gear.

 

Except my NAS. Not sure I want to spend a lot for a high current LPS there.

 

I have to say, the improvement was quite modest, but noticeable. Of course, the HDPlex does not claim (or at least isn't) galvanically isolating.

 

Further discussion on this topic should probably head back to the isolation thread!

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