Aurrender N10 vs Auralic Aries G2 Sound differences

[George Prentice]

Originally Posted by rob725

George, I'm curious; what were you streaming: local file, network file or a streaming service?

Tidal. I guess I should have been clear on that. I have a couple thousand vinyl albums and a couple thousand CDs. I would prefer to access all digital through Tidal, or if something else comes up better. I am not interested in storing my CD library or buying hider stuff and storing.

[JBT]

Lumin U1 is an excellent alternative.



http://www.luminmusic.com/lumin-u1.html

[George Prentice]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Here are my two cents, FWIW:

If you are happy with how it sounds, and my understanding is it sounds superb, why worry about other gear? Sit back and enjoy it.

Well, audiophilia is disease I have had for decades. Virtually every major box upgrade has resulted in a notable improvement in sound. I am putting a case together that says, “but this time it is different.” That doesn’t feel right. Every time in the past I have been rewarded regardless of the fact I couldn’t see how it should be better.

[George Prentice]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Actually, I'm of the view they are equally important for reasons I won't elaborate here.

Oh come on. Please elaborate. That is the kind of info / point of view I am interested in.

[rob725]

Originally Posted by George Prentice

Tidal. I guess I should have been clear on that. I have a couple thousand vinyl albums and a couple thousand CDs. I would prefer to access all digital through Tidal, or if something else comes up better. I am not interested in storing my CD library or buying hider stuff and storing.

Got it. I assume then that you don't have the 2TB SSD option in your aries g2? I'm guessing you're streaming direct from TIDAL to your aries, as opposed to using roon, yes?

Also, have you tried connecting the aries to your dac via AES or spdif instead of usb, which may sound more akin to your CD transort? The aries has very good clocks for a streamer.

[rob725]

Originally Posted by George Prentice

Oh come on. Please elaborate. That is the kind of info / point of view I am interested in.

This can be a pretty deep rabbit hole and possibly worthy of its own thread, which I think he's trying to skip here as he's pretty confident you have all the streamer you need, which I agree with and will tell you why.

While I do not agree that the streamer is as important as the DAC, since it is upstream to the dac. a streamer that cannot do its job correctly, or that does not play well with your dac, or that introduces sufficient noise to either pollute the dac or render it unable to find the signal (1s and 0s) correctly, or has a crappy interface will definitely affect your experience.

But, any streamer that can deliver the right bits at the right time to your dac without noise, will sound identical.

But those are big ifs. And much of the Aries design is directed at making sure the bits are there when needed and that it can move them along without noise.

I assume, but don't know, that the aries communicates with TIDAL similar to the roon core, via TCP. This means, that nothing upstream should make a difference to SQ, so long as it can keep up. The bits are transmitted to the streamer with error correction and computers transfer bits much faster than is needed. However, as we've all seen with netflix, the internet can slow down at times. Fortunately, the aries has a good size memory buffer, so it can read ahead to make sure it can deliver on time. The aries then has good clocks to help it deliver on time and has taken care to reduce vibration and
to reduce noise by galvanically isolating it's outputs.

When I wrote the post above, I did not realize the aries did not have a USB output, so sorry for the stupid question.

In my case, I am using a roon nucleus server. It communicates with TIDAL via TCP, so error free. It then communicates with roon bridge software running on my little dedicated intel nuc "streamer." The roon core and the roon bridge also communicate using TCP, so error corrected. So my little nuc get's the same information as the aries. I'm fairly certain roon buffers, but am not sure if it does so at the core, the bridge or both. My streamer, does not take great care to galvanically isolate anything and does not have an impressive clock. However, it communicates with my dac using async usb, which means the timing is controlled by the dac. For noise, I use a shunyata sigma USB cable. Not sure it's necessary, but it's the last line of digital defense in front of my dac. Whether async USB can/does sound as good as a properly timed spdif are aes output is its own bit of controversy.

I have a lot of hi-rez dsd. In order to play that natively over roon, my dac needs its windows driver, so the aries was not an option. Since your just streaming TIDAL, you have no need for dsd, making the aries a really good choice.

Dacs on the other hand vary widely. Leaving protocols and formats aside, they use different chips, algorithms, timing strategies, clocks, circuits, FPGAs in order to generate an audio signal. And then they have their analog side, which good ones work hard to protect from any noise generated on the digital side. Additionally, there are many ways to do the analog side, which is why all pre-amps and amps don't sound the same. My D1100 sounds far better than than did the c53/da2, which uses a more capable newer generation of the same dac chip. But the analog section of the d1100 is far superior and so sounds much better even though it uses a slighly inferior dac chip.

So, while the streamer can make a difference, if it does its job right, it will deliver the same product to the dac as any other capable streamer. It has no audio circuits; its a computer. Dacs on the other hand pretty much have to be heard to be evaluated (excepting formats/ features/ ins & out...), as the numbers simply don't tell the story.

[rob725]

I did not mean to infer above that the aries was not a good choice for dsd; it is and works well with roon. Just not with my dac and roon, which is a mcintosh/roon issue.

[doggiehowser]

I’m not sure which Aries you are using but I’m pretty sure the Aries G1 and G2 both have USB audio out.

[JMD]

The Aries G series both have one USB out and one USB in.

[rob725]

I had thought so, but may have just gotten confused looking at their promotional stuff. I was looking at a pic of the back and couldn't find it, so I may have just missed it. Duh. Just looked again. It was labeled dac! I was surprised as I thought it strange. Thanks for the correction!

So George, the question still stands: if you were using the usb interface, have you tried the AES or spdif?