Aurender W20 vs my hot-rodded PC server

joeinid said:
I have a Lumin U1, but honestly have not hooked it up yet. Now that I have the QX5 Twenty, it is an easier way to use my QX5. I need to play with it and let you know how it is. I already love the Lumin interface.

Mike has recommended an Aurender (N10?) to me because it is already certified to play MQA titles (which I desperately want), has built in storage and I can continue to use my QX5 with it and switch between the dacs at will. I like the Aurender idea, but that would duplicate dacs for me and be an expense above and beyond what I already have. At least the Lumin U1 would just feed my current dac.

So much gear, so little time.
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Thank you Joe. So unfair Jay Z doesn't let Tidal work in VN yet :-(
I will do auditions again with N10 and tmrw with S1. You're right: too much gear, too little time :-)
 
I agree. My only gripe with Tidal is, in my opinion, too much focus on rap/hip-hop. At least there's a lot of other music there too.

VNladyaudiophile said:
Thank you Joe. So unfair Jay Z doesn't let Tidal work in VN yet :-(
I will do auditions again with N10 and tmrw with S1. You're right: too much gear, too little time :-)
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audio.bill said:
Hi Chau, and a belated warm welcome to AudioShark! I wouldn't speak for Mike but I'd strongly encourage you to check out either the Lumin U1 or Aurender N10 to use as a server with your fine Vitus DAC. They are both of excellent quality and have very well designed control apps to efficiently access your digital music library.
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Dear Audio.bill, thank you very much for the recommendation and warm welcome :-)
I am awaiting for try out the U1. I have tried N10 but the setup the dealer had done was so bad that I quit after 5 songs. In Vietnam the Aurender's dealer should be changed. I hope the Aurender guys are here to listen to customers.

Lumin dealer in VN is very good so high chance I go with Lumin just for the full support I receive and ease to work with.
Audioshark and their members are great! So helpful! Thank you ALL.
 
Chau

If I were in your position I would look at the U-1 as the best option unless you are willing to wait until the Fall to see what the Auralic Aries G2 has to offer. In addition to the U-1 being a great digital transport by all reports you have access to Peter and Mike to help you along the way. While the Aurender may be a contender in reality if you can't get a reasonable audition and service I would move on.
 
Jack said:
Chau

If I were in your position I would look at the U-1 as the best option unless you are willing to wait until the Fall to see what the Auralic Aries G2 has to offer. In addition to the U-1 being a great digital transport by all reports you have access to Peter and Mike to help you along the way. While the Aurender may be a contender in reality if you can't get a reasonable audition and service I would move on.
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Dear Jack, thank you very much for strengthening my preference for U1. As for Auralic we don't have dealer yet in Vietnam so I can't have chance with it. Cheers.
 
The W20 is 5 years old, which is... very old by digital standards ! are there any rumors about a successor to the W20 ?
 
I have heard them before Munich from Aurender dealer ... but nothing materialised so far.
 
Interesting.... could you please elaborate why you choosed LUMIN ?

Is it only based on sound quality or also on the LUMIN software interface that you prefered to the Aurender’s conductor App ?
 
I purchased a used Aurender N10 for a very good price back in April and it just didn’t sound right connected to my system and PS Audio Direcstream DAC. Thin sounding, loose bass, poor imaging, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps system synergy reared it’s ugly head. I know the Aurender N10 is highly rated and many people are very happy with it so take my opinion for what it is worth.

Prior to purchasing the N10 I had purchased a used Lumin S1 and it sounded fantastic, but it had an internal DAC (very good one to my ears and budget) and for the money I had paid for it I came to the conclusion it didn’t make sense to have a streamer with a built in DAC since I already have a pretty decent DAC. Fortunately I was able to sell the N10 and S1 and make a few bucks so I didn’t lose any money. Now I was back to using my Bridge II Card in the Directstream DAC. Not an optimal experience (unless you use Roon). The Bridge II experience has some issues of its own although to my ears it sounds pretty good.

A couple of other notes regarding the N10, it came with 8TB of storage, which I didn’t use or need since I like to store my music on a NAS. Another thing about the N10 that bothered me was the display. The display panel is actually comprised of two small displays; one on the left and one on the right of the front panel. The color tone of the text of these two displays didn’t match. The right side of the display had white text and the one on the left had white text with a bluish tint. Also, the two displays didn’t line up. The left displays text was slightly higher than the right. This just cheapened the experience, again especially for the price paid.

Having said all that, I liked the Lumin S1 sound much more than the N10 in my system, and I believe the Lumin application works better for me. The Aurender app would often lock up or crash, and when starting the application it would usually take 10-15 seconds to start up. Perhaps it was a delay in starting up the hard drives. The Lumin app starts much faster and when you hit play it begins to play instantly. Very nice!

Like I said the Lumin App is much faster, and while the Aurender app has more features, the Lumin app just works without issue. FYI...I have an iPad Air2.

Long story I know, but after selling them both I still longed for another Lumin. A couple of months ago a used U1 became available and I jumped on the deal. It is connected to the PS Audio Directstream DAC and sounds wonderful. I’m happy with my the U1, just don’t want to repeat the process of how I got it in my system.

Needless to say I’m a big Lumin Fan!
 
Projectman said:
I purchased a used Aurender N10 for a very good price back in April and it just didn’t sound right connected to my system and PS Audio Direcstream DAC. Thin sounding, loose bass, poor imaging, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps system synergy reared it’s ugly head. I know the Aurender N10 is highly rated and many people are very happy with it so take my opinion for what it is worth.

Prior to purchasing the N10 I had purchased a used Lumin S1 and it sounded fantastic, but it had an internal DAC (very good one to my ears and budget) and for the money I had paid for it I came to the conclusion it didn’t make sense to have a streamer with a built in DAC since I already have a pretty decent DAC. Fortunately I was able to sell the N10 and S1 and make a few bucks so I didn’t lose any money. Now I was back to using my Bridge II Card in the Directstream DAC. Not an optimal experience (unless you use Roon). The Bridge II experience has some issues of its own although to my ears it sounds pretty good.

A couple of other notes regarding the N10, it came with 8TB of storage, which I didn’t use or need since I like to store my music on a NAS. Another thing about the N10 that bothered me was the display. The display panel is actually comprised of two small displays; one on the left and one on the right of the front panel. The color tone of the text of these two displays didn’t match. The right side of the display had white text and the one on the left had white text with a bluish tint. Also, the two displays didn’t line up. The left displays text was slightly higher than the right. This just cheapened the experience, again especially for the price paid.

Having said all that, I liked the Lumin S1 sound much more than the N10 in my system, and I believe the Lumin application works better for me. The Aurender app would often lock up or crash, and when starting the application it would usually take 10-15 seconds to start up. Perhaps it was a delay in starting up the hard drives. The Lumin app starts much faster and when you hit play it begins to play instantly. Very nice!

Like I said the Lumin App is much faster, and while the Aurender app has more features, the Lumin app just works without issue. FYI...I have an iPad Air2.

Long story I know, but after selling them both I still longed for another Lumin. A couple of months ago a used U1 became available and I jumped on the deal. It is connected to the PS Audio Directstream DAC and sounds wonderful. I’m happy with my the U1, just don’t want to repeat the process of how I got it in my system.

Needless to say I’m a big Lumin Fan!
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Thank you very much for your explanations. I am sorry to hear that you had such problems with Aurender. May be your N10 was defective or it's firmware corrupted ?
 
bmichels said:
Thank you very much for your explanations. I am sorry to hear that you had such problems with Aurender. May be your N10 was defective or it's firmware corrupted ?
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Or sometimes when you buy used, the “deal” is not really a deal after all.

I’ve been on a string recently where the guy bought a used Lumin, the previous owner f’d with the power supply, got it back to working, but not properly seated, and now it doesn’t work again. He’s trying to get LUMIN to fix it under warranty. Not happening. It’s been purposely monkeyed with by the previous owner. Buyer beware.
 
That's a big risk owners take by having equipment modified or by trying to modify it themselves, as unauthorized modifications will void most manufacturer's warranties. They also tend to negatively impact potential resale value, as you rarely get back money spent on most mods and sometimes the resulting product is worth less than it would have been in unmodified condition. Buyer beware definitely applies!
 
audio.bill said:
That's a big risk owners take by having equipment modified or by trying to modify it themselves, as unauthorized modifications will void most manufacturer's warranties. They also tend to negatively impact potential resale value, as you rarely get back money spent on most mods and sometimes the resulting product is worth less than it would have been in unmodified condition. Buyer beware definitely applies!
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And you don’t know until it’s too late. I had a client modify his Pass amps!


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Great news (for me). I finally bought a used W20, and it is at my home already. 

I already tried it with my friends NAGRA HD DAC and with my own Denafrips Terminator R2R DAC. With booth the W20 sound much better than my previous server (Auralic Aries). So I am a new happy member of the family now.

My tests were done with USB, and also a cheap coax, but now I look for a good AES or Coax cable since I understood it could sound better than USB.

It looks like the most raved digital cables are now Transparent Reference and Shunyata SIGMA ! correct ?

but... should I use COAX or AES/EBU with my Aurender W20 ? (of course I can try booth, but... where I am it will be hard to get booth on loan, so if someone has compared Coax and AES/EBU with his Aurender, I will be happy to hear the results).


PS: during my initial tests, I had the impression that I could play DSD Ok with USB but not with the Coax connection ! is it normal or did I configured something wrong ? Will AES have the same limitation for DSD than Coax ?
 
For weeks, I was hoping for a W20 successor, but now that I have bought a W20... I hope the successor will not come soon ! funny isn't it ?

And please do not make fun about the wodden top of my W20: in addition to the original top, the vendor also supplied me with this strange « wood top » made by Mr. Rudolf (A Capella) that is supposed to provide Optimization with Woodcolumn in Holes in the top which are standing on some Parts of the Electronic and on the Column Wood compensator, all to Reduce Vibration and Mikrophonie. Everything is easily removebal whitout any damage and the Original top can Mount. (see picture. It looks funny isn’t it ;-).
—> Has anyone heard of this strange top optimized ? It indeed sound a little better... I tested ! ! :satisfying:
 
bmichels.......Forgive my bluntness but that piece of plywood screwed to the top of your Aurender W20 looks hideous. I doubt removing the extruded aluminum top cover designed by Aurender's engineers has any positive sonic benefit, not to mention you now have a flammable cover should anything ever go wrong with the batteries inside the W20. I suspect you have also negatively impacted the W20's heat dissipation and shielding. In my opinion the Aurender W20 is at a performance level that should not be altered by such nonsensical things as a piece of plywood replacing the original top cover. Suit yourself of course, but that's my take.
 
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