New Aurender N100H arrived today
 

It is exciting to anxiously wait for the FedEx truck to come up the drive and drop off a new audio toy. My new Aurender N100H 4TB music server in black arrived today, shipped over night by the dealer. Gotta love instant gratification.


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It did not take long to get the N100H installed in the living room system, paired to the iPad and network, and it is now playing wonderful music through my Wyred 4 Sound DAC2. The Aurender N100H replaced my Olive 04HD which was sold. Perfect timing for the N100H to show up so quick. My Aurender N10 is in the studio system where I do the majority of my serious listening, so the N100H will serve the living room sound system where music is usually listened to in a casual or background manner.


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I chose the 4TB model of the N100H so that the hard drive capacity would be equal to that of my Aurender N10. I have doubts I will ever use 4TB of storage for my music library, but if I should every need such capacity I will be able to maintain duplicate libraries on both the N10 and the N100H.

I like the size of the N100H. It allows me to install it on the same shelf as the Wyred 4 Sound DAC2. I am using Symposium Rollerblock Jr's to support the N100H. I like how the Rollerblock Jr's elevate the music server to mid-height with the DAC, although I may replace them with Stillpoints Ultra Mini's in black. The music server's power is backed up with an APC UPS-750. Both the W4S DAC2 and the Aurender N100H are powered with Wireworld Silver Electra power cords. The DAC and N100H are connected with a half meter Wireworld Platinum USB cable, and the interconnects from the DAC2 to the McIntosh C2300 preamplifier are balanced Wireworld Silver Eclipse.

The past few hours I have been transferring music files to the N100H from my external backup hard drive where I store my music library for safe keeping. I have stopped several times to go into the living room and listen to the music server. It is sounding excellent. As I log additional hours I will keep this thread abreast of what is happening.


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Very nice Dan! I bet it sounds fabulous. Is this the DAC-2 that was in your office?

Pete.......Yes, I moved the DAC2 to the living room system to support the Aurender N100H. In the office I now feed the Sennheiser HDVA 600 headphone amplifier direct from the Oppo BDP-83SE analog outputs.

The Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 sounds fabulous with the Aurender N100H via USB. It is impressive.

Congrats on your new Aurender addition Dan! :banana:

The rack and the system looks neat and tidy and the N100H and W4S are a good looking pair. :thumbsup:

Enjoy! :music:

Congrats Dan - more happy listening!

Serge.......That audio rack has seen its fair share of gear over the years. I went through a bit of downsizing the living room system this past year, but just can't seem to leave well enough alone. I think I'm good for awhile.

Jamie.......Thank you. Happy listening is a good thing for sure. . :thumbsup:

Congratulations Dan! I just got the same a little over a week ago.

Hmmm.. yeah, that's a new concept in this hobby of ours. :D


Define "a while" :D

Serge.......I've been struggling with that definition for a number of decades. It's no clearer now than it ever was. . :cool:

New Aurender N100H arrived today
 

2 Aurenders and a Partridge in a pear tree - enjoy!

I'm trying out the disciplined approach myself, I'll let you know how it works out. :lmao:
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Enjoy!!

Dan,
Congratulations on the new N100H. I really like the looks of Aurender in black. Beautiful component that fits right in with the rest of living room setup. I hope it brings you many years of musical enjoyment.

Terry.......I agree, the black looks super. I had the opportunity to purchase a trade-in N100H in silver a few months ago. The price was attractive but the music server did not have the 4TB hard drive upgrade and I wanted a black one to blend with the W4S DAC2 in the rack.

Black is the new silver. I love black. Was thinking about adding some more Bryston components after purchasing a preowned Bryston BHA-1 headphone amplifier (in black) and being thoroughly impressed with its performance.

Dan congratulations on the N100H, you know I’ve been very happy with mine. Look forward to your impressions

Congrats on the new addition ... I am really enjoying mine!

George

Hey Dan, simply can’t go wrong with Aurender! Enjoy more aurender =)

Hey Dan, looking forward to following your thread and impressions. It will be hard to compare to the N10 in the other room but that would be TRULY cool to get your take. :)

Timobi.......I have already given some thought to a direct comparison between the Aurender N10 and the N100H. I am curious how the N100H sounds through the Esoteric K-01X DAC. Once I have a few hundred hours on the N100H I will carry it to the studio to audition against the N10, both connected to the K-01X. Should be interesting. Right now I am still transferring music files to the N100H with some listening sessions in between. The N100H sounds excellent in the living room system. I suspect it will only get better with some break-in hours logged on it. This is a sweet sounding music server.

Sounds great Dan! Enjoy :) Can't wait to read your impressions.

Dan, You have a beautifully put together living room system.. Very nice!
Hope you really enjoy your new Aurender :thumbsup:

Very nice! I have mine on order from the local dealer - 2TB base model, in silver. I chose silver as I will be running it through my K-03.

I expect to have a bunch of newbie setup questions, but will start a separate thread on topic when I get there.

Looking forward to your thoughts in the meantime!


Cheers

Matt

Matt.......Congratulations on your new Aurender N100H. You are going to love it. Set up is simple and straight forward, but help is always just a post away.

I completed my music file transfers this afternoon. The Aurender N100H now holds 1368 CD's and 72 hi-res downloads for a total of 1440 albums. The music files are stored in bit-perfect FLAC format which has consumed 487 GB of the 4 TB hard drive. I used the drag and drop method to move files from my backup hard drive to the N100H rather than a straight copy of all the backup hard drive content because there are some music files I no longer listen to and don't want on the N10 or the N100H hard drives. There were some music files on the Aurender N10 that were not on my backup hard drive. Opening both the N10 and N100H hard drives on my desktop computer made simple work of dragging and dropping files between the two hard drives. It took about 28 hours total to complete the file transfer task doing the drag and drop by hand. Now it's all about listening to the Aurender N100H. It is a beautiful music server.


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Hey Dan,

Thats how I did the transfer of my music to the Sony HAP 1ZES. It allowed me a bit more control over what I wanted to have on the new drive.

I do have one question. Most of if not all my music was ripped using the ALAC format. Of course not DSD. Will the Aurenders allow that or must I convert it all to FLAC?

Timobi.......The Aurender music servers all support DSD (DSF, DFF), WAV, FLAC, ALAC, APE, AIFF, MP4 and other major formats at native bit sampling rates. Your files will play without any issues.

Rather than copying my files to my N100H , I had a back up on my Apple Time Capsule 2 TB HD and just pointed to it as a NAS. All my files play and my N100H HD is pretty much empty except for some hi res. music I dowloaded. Is there any advantage to putting the music I have on the internal HD of the N100H ?

None that I can think of. When you are listening/selecting music to listen to you are either copying it from either the internal HD of the Aurender or your Apple Time Capsule HD to the Solid State HD of the Aurender.

Bottom line wherever you store your music it gets played on the solid state HD of the Aurender.

Hope this helps. :smoking:

That's what I thought so I never did the transfer of music files

Thx Dan!

Timobi.......I have no doubt the Aurender N100H connected to your McIntosh D1100 DAC will produce amazing sound. I just finished a three hour listening session with my new N100H in the living room system. The sound was crystal clear, robust bass, excellent separation of instruments and voices, with quick dynamics and complete silence when there is no audio signal. The Aurender N100H is impressive. Its price point makes it extremely attractive. I am very pleased with my purchase of this music server.

Dan

Congrats on your new N100H. You and I both know that Aurender produces a fabulous, second to none product for streaming music.

I hope you really enjoy this.

Thx Dan! good to hear (pun intended) :music::D

Fantastic Dan!
Also looking forward to your comparison of your 2 Aurenders. :thumbsup:
Enjoy!!

Congrats. Best server in this price range and it's not close. You have to jump into the 8k plus range and then the N10 is the first and last stop for servers. My buddy has a thread on another board where he's done a shootout of servers. N10 right now is the best of any regardless of price. Just great products with great customer service.

Dan, congratulations on your new N100H!!!

Questions for Aurender owners:
If one has more than one Aurender server in the same network/Home, do they “talk” to each other? For example, say that I add an album to my library to one unit, does it automatically show in the other unit?
Also, do the Aurender communicate both ways with Tidal (if I add a favorite in Tidal it is automatically added to my Aurender library) and vice-versa if I use the Conductor App to add a favorite from Tidal to my library does it automatically add it to Tidal favorites?

nicoff.......I have the Auender N10 and the N100H. Both are connected to my home network. Each one is independent of the other. If you load a music files on one, those files are not automatically loaded to the other music server. What I do is load the files to each one from my desktop computer using drag and drop to the Aurender's respective hard drives. You can also open both hard drives on your desktop and drag and drop files from one Aurender to the other. It is simple and easy.

When using Tidal with either the N10 or the N100H, any album I save as Tidal Favorite appears on both players when I access Tidal no matter which music server I used when I saved the Tidal Favorite.