Brief review of my new W20

[docmd2010]

I received my W20 4 days ago, after a 2 week wait. My friendly dealer sent it to me ASAP. It arrived extremely well packed. Double boxed with the unit wrapped up in a cloth sleeve.

I connected my 4 meter WW silver electra power cord to it. 2 WW Platinum starlight 7 AES/EBU digital cables went from the W20 to the Esoteric D02X. I uploaded all of my music onto it; and three days later, everything was ready to go.

I literally was waiting to come home from work today and listen to the W20 all day.
I also connected my N10 next to it so I could do A/B comparisons.

For those of you that are unfamiliar, here are the major differences between the two units:

1. The Aurender W20 is the world's first music player to completely eliminate noise from AC power supplies and AC mains through the use of LiFePO4 batteries to power audio components. This takes the unit off the power grid. The batteries power the unit when it is playing. Also, if there is power outage, the W20 is protected and quietly powers down. The N10 does not have a battery backup.
2. Dual AES/EBU connections. This completely separates outputs into left and right channels. The N10 only supports 1 AES/EBU
3. The ability to connect an external master clock
4. There are additional outputs on the back of the W20 as well.


On to the music:

The first word out of my mouth was “wow”. Truthfully, I was not expecting a susbstantial difference. My impressions were that the major differences between the N10 and W20 would become clear when a master clock was connected.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The soundstage significantly, SIGNIFICANTLY increased in depth. Even my non-audiophile wife, who can never hear differences when I make major component changes indicated that the soundstage was significantly deeper. There was three dimensionality that I had never experienced before. The stage became much more black with a tremendously low noise floor. I was hearing very subtle nuances in music. It was like the performers were now floating. Female vocalists are so much more embodied and real. Details are just pouring out of musical performances.

I auditioned the N100 when I got the N10 and was blown away at how much better the N10 sounded. In fact, I have even stated in several previous posts that the N10 is the “sweet spot” in the line. Well, I was proven wrong.

When I compared both these units side by side today, everything I stated above was present but to a much smaller degree. The difference between these two units is profound, and I would even state that the performance gain going from the N10 to the W20 was much greater than going from the N100 to the N10.

Really what this exemplifies is how important taking care of power really is. Taking the W20 off of the grid makes a world of a difference. Now, I’m sure that adding a dual AES/EBU connection has added quite a bit as well.

I am so happy with this purchase. Congratulations to Aurender on a truly magnificent product.

Please see pics below!