I think the best option is to have the ability to have both music on a server/drive and the ability to stream from Tidal, Qobuz etc. Whatever product you have should be capable of both.

Agree, +1

A new baby arrived : An Aurender W20 to feed my Denafrips Terminator R2R DAC. I went to Germany to collect this used W20.

Now I will have to test what is the best connection between them : USB, AES or Coax ! And what best brand for the selected connection .... (Shunyata Sigma is on my short list)

Lot of cable to try...lot of fun !


Booth DAC & Server are now waiting to be brought back in my house south of France.

And... please do not make fun about the wodden top of the 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 Elekttonik and on the Column Wood compensator, all to Reduce Vibration and Mikrophonie. Everything is easily removeabale without any damage and the Original top can Mount. (see picture. It looks funny isn’t it :wink:. —> Have you heard of this strange top optimized ?

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/u...ddd0b81636.jpg

Well, now the Aurender W20 is installed at home above the Denafrips Terminator R2R DAC and under the BHSE amp & the EC445 Amp.

I installed them on cones made of lava to decouple them from the furniture which is definitively not a dedicated HiFi rack. A new home made power filter/distributor is also used.

Ah... I also removed the strange W20's wooden top to replace it by the factory top :smirk:

I ordered on loan 3 digital cables from the same company (Hificables.fr) so that next week I will be able to compare USB, EAS and Coax connections and decide which is best...

--> What best super TOL USB or AES cable can you recommend ?

Some High quality power cables are also coming soon to test (some home made and some from Hificables.fr).

https://cdn.head-fi.org/a/10179378.jpg

https://cdn.head-fi.org/a/10179377.jpg

OK, I have completed my tests for best connexion between my Aurender W20 and my Denafrips Terminator R2R DAC.

- First I compared the 3 connections ( AES, Coax and USB) with 3 cables from the same manufacturer (HifiCables.fr) using the same topology/technology.

Against all odds, the USB was the winner ! sound stage was wider than with coax nor AES. This is un-expected since Aurender recommend AES rather than USB (the result can be very different with another Source/DAC combinaison)



- Then, since USB was apparently the best connection (for my set-up) I tested 3 different USB cables : the "Aucharm" a low cost very good Chineese cable (50$), the HifiCable's "Super Ultimate USB" (290 €), and a very expensive Synergetic research Galileo LE USB ( 2500 $) that use a separate transformer and other (marketing ??) gimics.


Again, the results were quite surprising: I found that the HifiCable lacked some musicality (it was precise, but something was missing reducing the possibility to "get lost into the music") while the 2 others provided a very engaging experience and... I had a very hard time to differentiate them. I guess that with a HP system the difference will have been obvious but with headphone the 50€ is super close to the 2500€ cable ! this may be due because a « headphone » system do not offer the « spatial » criteria that can make the difference between a good cable and a very good cable. So, I returned the 2500 € cable and... kept the 50 € cable.



- next step: I will test soon the "Curious cable" and also I will have made for me a specific Coax cable to give the SPDIF Coax connection a second chance against USB.