Has anyone compared an Aurender N20 stream to a Roon Nucleus stream?

Audio Gear Talk
41

i think the caching is a significant factor as well. I have noticed a difference in SQ between streaming to my A1000 via Roon, and Qobuz Connect. i haven’t done any serious comparison yet, so not prepared to say one is better that the other.

but they are different, and it’s easy to hear.

42

JRiver has been doing that for years you can cache a track or even the whole album.

I have bee set up on track for a long time

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43

Those who argue that ‘bits are bits’ overlook a crucial fact: while it’s true the data remains unchanged, the digital signal always carries noise from clocks, power supplies, interfaces, and processing. That noise affects the DAC’s timing and analog stages, and that can and does influence sound quality.

Aurender pays a great deal of attention to quieting this noise, which makes me happy I chose the N20.

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44

Use Toslink if you have these kinds of noise issues. Poorly implemented Toslink can show some jitter, but it’s pretty rare among contemporary, good-measuring DACs.

45

quote=“ExUnoPlura, post:44, topic:310239”]
Use Toslink if you have these kinds of noise issues. Poorly implemented Toslink can show some jitter, but it’s pretty rare among contemporary, good-measuring DACs
[/quote]

I’ve always heard Toslink is not the best choice for SQ.
Toslink is great for stopping ground noise. I just didn’t think it handles the noise that comes from inside the streamer itself — power supplies, processors, etc. That part still reaches the DAC’s timing

46

Ummm, no. You can take a PC/Mac and turn it into a Roon Server (or buy a Nucleus). Connect via ethernet to an edge node (Pi with Digi Hat, Fiio SR11, Wiim Pro) and optical out to a DAC. No streamer noise reaches the DAC.

All of this for a few hundred $$$ to get SOTA.

48

I’m not going to get into personal attacks. My original point was simply that noise exists in more places than Toslink can eliminate.

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49

Was there ugliness? How improper!

But, no, if Toslink connects to the DAC then none of the hypothesized processing noise can make it to the DAC. That’s all that matters and bit-perfect remains bit-perfect.

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