REVIEW: Comparison of 5 High End Digital Music Servers - Aurender N10, CAD CAT server, TotalDac d1-Server, Auralic Aries, Audiophile Vortex Box

[Topspin70]

I took your advice and got an extender. Amazing. I'm connected! You're a life safer.

You can also just use most modern routers as a wireless or wired bridge. I had a free one that did this while the one I bought, I kept for main router duties.

In the end I just ran cables though.

I'm renting a place so no wiring option though that is undoubtedly better.

 

[Liu Junyuan]

Well, I am in with the microRendu. I look forward to the improvements!

 

[romaz]

  Yes, thank you romaz. Very helpful as always.
 
I have the mR on order, so I'll be trying it no matter what )
I still think it's a shame though that the mR simply must have a router in order to function at all. Maybe something for the designers to consider a simple default option that allows for a fixed IP address or whatever?
 
I tried Tidal last year and didn't extend the free trial because:
 
1. It was severely lacking in the the particular (non-mainstream) artists or Special Edition albums I was interested in at the time
2. My villlage has very poor internet speeds and bandwidth. E.g. at certain times of day, if I (or seemingly anyone else in the village) downloads anything, my internet radio stutters
3. I was annoyed that the UK subscription price was considerably higher than that in the US.
 
Now, eventually at least the first 2 points will get better in time, so I can visualise me being a Roon+Tidal user sometime, but right now I just want to connect my laptop to my DAC )

I agree, the Tidal library is limited compared to something like iTunes or Spotify but here in the U.S., it's still the only place to stream lossless music and their library is growing by the month. It's unfortunate they charge more for it over there.  Ultimately, cost is a moot point if you don't have adequate bandwidth but as you have stated, it should be just a matter of time before the bandwidth is there.
 
If this is your situation, purchase any basic wi-fi router, plug it straight into your wall without concern about fancy cables or power supplies and position it between your laptop and mR.  If you will be running HQ Player off your laptop, make sure you run the mR in mode 4.  It should be as simple as that and should take literally 10 minutes to be up and running.  If you have problems, Sonore provides good support or else you can PM me.

 

[prot]

.

..
Obviously, this amounted to thousands of dollars of money not just for specialized parts but also the labor required to apply all of these measures and while this setup very easily bested a basic Mac or PC, the mR I have now utilizing a $50 iFi power supply and stripped of any fancy cabling still sounds better than my highly optimized CAD CAT ever did.  
...

Basically you spent years and tens of thousands testing the "best" devices only to learn that people on dyiaudio playing with $50 RPi-like devices had better sound the whole time.
No reason to believe that the mRE is a bad device but it's also nothing more than a $30 RPi .. let's say $60 cause it comes with a nice case. The rest is just the good old "audiophile tax".

And BTW, before you spend another year and $10k, here's an advice: get rid of USB!
There's nothing wrong with it but most audio engineers simply don't know enough about computers to use it right. And it's an useless detour in the path of audio bytes between HDD and DAC chip. Those Arm SOCs can output I2S or you can use an ethernet2iis device. There are at least two threads in computer audio who deal with those simple, cheap and very effective solutions

 

[Johnny Moondog]

Mr. Darko on the Antipodes DX 2nd Generation.
 
And from the Latest News “Antipodes & Roon”:
 
“We have fully integrated both Roon Server and RoonReady in Antipodes 2, and Roon can be used in three key ways: use Roon direct to a DAC via USB, S/PDIF, AES3 or TOSLINK; use Roon Server conventionally to serve music to RoonReady and Bridge devices on your network; and use just RoonReady to turn an Antipodes server into the ultimate endpoint.”

 

[romaz]

 
Mr. Darko on the Antipodes DX 2nd Generation.
 
And from the Latest News “Antipodes & Roon”:
 
“We have fully integrated both Roon Server and RoonReady in Antipodes 2, and Roon can be used in three key ways: use Roon direct to a DAC via USB, S/PDIF, AES3 or TOSLINK; use Roon Server conventionally to serve music to RoonReady and Bridge devices on your network; and use just RoonReady to turn an Antipodes server into the ultimate endpoint.”

I have seen this report and my curiosity is piqued.  I know Mark Jenkins has been working on this revision for awhile and it could be better than the mR in some ways but the value benchmark that the mR has set will probably make this unit a tough sell for many.  For those looking at an Aurender W20 or a Baetis Reference III, this could be a very competitive alternative, especially for those who desire Roon.

 

[Articnoise]

 

 

Have you had any chance to try Singxer SU-1 or Focusrite D16?

 

Appears quit promising as do the new Empirical Audio Offramp, which is going to have an Ethernet renderer and i2s, AES and SPDIF out.   

 

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=141373.0 

 

[romaz]

   

Have you had any chance to try Singxer SU-1 or Focusrite D16?

 

Appears quit promising as do the new Empirical Audio Offramp, which is going to have an Ethernet renderer and i2s, AES and SPDIF out.   

 

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=141373.0 

I haven't heard these things, Abbe.  It looks like these renderers/converters/reclockers have become very popular.  Obviously, it would be one way to port something like the mR to your non-USB DAC.  The best ethernet renderer to AES reclocker I know is the TotalDac d1-Server and I understand Vincent just improved it to where it may now be as good or better than the mR according to @Paul79.  

 

[yellowblue]

Got the MCRU power supply for the mRendu today and got already really impressive results. More to come in the next days.

 

[cat6man]

  I haven't heard these things, Abbe.  It looks like these renderers/converters/reclockers have become very popular.  Obviously, it would be one way to port something like the mR to your non-USB DAC.  The best ethernet renderer to AES reclocker I know is the TotalDac d1-Server and I understand Vincent just improved it to where it may now be as good or better than the mR according to @Paul79.  

 
i've just gotten my uRendu and will be testing with a D1-dual dac.  i'm looking  forward to combining the uRendu with the SOtM dX-USB-HD w/super clock (current setup has sms-100 feeding aes/ebu reclocker) and seeing  if that outperforms the uRendu usb into the D1-dual.

 

[romaz]

   
i've just gotten my uRendu and will be testing with a D1-dual dac.  i'm looking  forward to combining the uRendu with the SOtM dX-USB-HD w/super clock (current setup has sms-100 feeding aes/ebu reclocker) and seeing  if that outperforms the uRendu usb into the D1-dual.

Yes, please report back.  There are others with the TotalDacs who are now also comparing the mR against the TotalDac Server.

 

[jelt2359]

Sounds like a wealth of info incoming!

 

[yellowblue]

I compared the MCRU power supply (with silver cable and fuse upgrade and 30 hours on it) with the Ifi iPower - using the mRendu with my Chord Dave. I used my HD800 (with Superdupont mod) and I am glad that I used this extremely resolving headphones which even reveal every hint of brightness. 
 
One thing struck me right away when switching from the iPower to the MCRU: All music I played was less bright sounding (even those songs I never thought were bright sounding before).
 
I like Laura Marlings songs a lot. But her voice was always somewhat bright sounding to me, overshadowing all the nice instrumental work with guitars and percussion. With her voice sounding much more natural and less bright I heard more details from the other instruments. Everything sounded more refined and detailed. The treble was a little more sweet sounding, less splashy, but with the same amount of energy. I got the feeling that the music became "calmer" (I mean that in a positive way), voices got more room to breathe. Every instrument got the a more exact place in the room, with better instrument separation.
 
This was just the other thing that stuck me, the improvement of soundstage. Going from Sonicorbiter to the mRendu I feel that as the most important improvement was the soundstage getting wider, much deeper and more accurate. The MCRU is boosting this effect a lot. Elje Oues recordings on Reference Recordings (via Tidal) got an unbelievable huge soundstage - which became a fantastic "out of the head" experience which I never had before with any headphone. The HD800 ability to produce a holgraphic experience is increased by a large margin - first due to the mRendu but secondly due to the MCRU (I would say another 50% compared with the mRendu effect).
I didn´t notice any difference with the MCRU concerning bass or overall dynamics. Maybe the bass gets a little tighter.
 
I am really satisfied with the MCRU and switching back to the iPower showed me immediately that there is no way back. The iPower itself was slightly better than the Teradak U9 power supply which i also proved, so it can´t be that bad.
 
There are two drawbacks though. Firstly the MCRU has no on/off switch (David wrote that the MCRU sounded worse with switch). For me things turn a little complicated when I must draw the power cable every time to switch off the MCRU.
 
The other drawback became clear when listening with my Ether C (and even with other headphones by the way). The improvement that the MCRU can bring to the system becomes much less obvious because the Ether C is less resolving and has a smaller soundstage than the (modded) HD800. I presume that the experience of improvement will vary a lot depending on your chain. I am lucky to have one of the most transparent chains which can reveal what the MCRU can do to the sound.

 

[Articnoise]

 

 

Nice impressions!

 

IME LPS need some burn in before sounding their best. My Teddy took maybe one week.

 

Why do you want to switch it off?

 

[106099]

Does the microRendu runs cooler using the MCRU vs iFi Power?
(can someone post a link to MCRU?)
 
paul