Media Server Reviews

Jason Victor Serinus wrote about the Aurender N10 in April 2019 (Vol.42 No.4):

John Atkinson reviewed Aurender's N10 music server ($8000, 4TB; add $500 for 8TB capacity) in the April 2016 issue. When he offered me his review sample to use in my review, in the March 2019 issue, of EMM Labs' DV2 DAC, I replied with an enthusiastic "Yes!" As I marveled about the beauty of the Aurender-EMM combo's smooth, warm, nonfatiguing sound, John proposed I write this Follow-Up.

Previously, the only Aurender product that had visited my reference system had been the A10 caching network music player/server ($5500), which I reviewed in January 2018. While I'd been impressed with the A10's music-server section, I'd questioned the quality of its internal DAC, whose sound, to my ears, was distinctly undistinguished. The N10 presented an opportunity to evaluate what Aurender seems to do best: design and make high-quality, user-friendly music servers.

As a bonus, JA offered to include all the music files he'd loaded onto the N10's two internal 2TB hard drives. Although thoughts of peering into my editor's music library brought back memories of the time, long ago, when I lifted the bottom liner of one of my father's dresser drawers and discovered an envelope full of porn, I'm happy to report that John's collection contains no aural embarrassments.

After placing the N10 on my Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, connecting it to my router via Ethernet, turning it on, and downloading Aurender's Conductor app to my iPad Pro, I opened the app's Settings and indicated that I wanted to upgrade the N10's firmware from the version JA had used many moons ago. No sooner had I done so than I received a notice informing me, more or less, that "Something has gone wrong with your download. You can continue, but doing so may erase your data." I say "more or less" because thoughts of wiping out John's library left me too panicked to take notes. Instead, between cries of "NO!" I invoked the disputably sacred names of Siri, Tim Cook, and Steve Jobs. I have no recollection of what happened next, but somehow, the firmware update successfully completed and John's files remained intact.

However, not everything in the updated firmware worked as promised. I had no problem following Aurender's easy online directions and loading the entire contents of three 256GB USB sticks that hold the music I use for review purposes into John's "Music Folder 1" (though for some reason, the N10 placed them in a new "Etc." subfolder, which allowed easy access), but I couldn't pick which among the many albums and tracks on those sticks I wanted to add. It was either all or nothing. The new Selective Addition feature of Aurender's latest app update simply refused to function.

A day after opening Conductor's Help function, and after sending simultaneous help requests to Aurender's Korea-based technical support team and to Ari Margolis, the company's extremely together, Colorado-based US support person, I learned via e-mail that Aurender had found and fixed a bug in its firmware. After the folks in Korea remotely loaded the fix into my unit, the app worked as promised, and the selective addition of files was easily accomplished. Nonetheless, I found it frustrating that Aurender's basic online manual for the N10 is so sketchy that one must contact tech support to get links to otherwise hard-to-find support pages that contain detailed information about everything the manual omits.

Revisiting Aurender Conductor a year after my A10 review proved painless. A special delight was discovering that the app no longer automatically begins to play files as soon as I've cached them on the N10's better-sounding 240GB SSD drive. What to listen to, and when, were entirely up to me.

When I spoke with Margolis by phone, he told me that Aurender intends to eventually issue "a completely new version of the Conductor app with a visually rich experience . . . and a better window into metadata." The redesigned app will include the ability to read a recording's liner notes, which is one of the many pluses of Roon Labs' music player. (The other major plus is that Roon sounds better than Audirvana, which I use on my laptops.)

Conductor now includes portals for Qobuz as well as Tidal; a portal for Spotify Connect may be available by the time you read this. Conductor can also perform a first-level (with playback up to 96kHz) unfold of MQA files streamed from Tidal or loaded into its music library, albeit for a onetime upgrade fee of $49. According to Margolis, that covers MQA's licensing fee, and charging separately for it means that users who don't want MQA don't have to pay for it.

Files played through the N10's USB port sounded more colorful and a bit more transparent than through the USB port of the 2017 MacBook Pro it replaced. After comparing the N10's sound through its various outputs, I felt that both AES/EBU and S/PDIF delivered more colorful and better-defined images than USB. Therefore, I did most of my listening through those outputs. Nonetheless, I kept wondering if the gray cast I heard in the silences between notes, and the lack of glow or of bright, fully saturated colors that I'm accustomed to hearing through my loaner reference dCS gear (a Rossini DAC, or a combination of Network Bridge and Vivaldi DAC), were inherent qualities of the DV2's sound, or if they originated with the N10.

The only way to find out was to compare the N10's sound to that of another music server while using the same DAC (EMM DV2), cables (Nordost Odin 2), and setup supports: first, Stein UltraNaturals, then a combination of Nordost Titanium and Bronze Sort Kones. The only choice available was the dCS Network Bridge ($4750). This is a very different animal from the Aurender N10. Not a music server per se, the dCS has no internal storage; instead, it serves as an interface between a digital music collection and a DAC. As with the N10, music can be sourced from USB sticks or external USB drives, NAS drives, and online streaming services. As the Network Bridge's own app is rather limited compared to Aurender's Conductor app, to play files in my reference system I use Ethernet to connect the Network Bridge to a Linux-based Intel NUC ($439 base price) loaded with a Roon Optimized Core Kit (ROCK).

Sending signals to the EMM Labs DV2 DAC via RCA, I first compared the NUC and N10 while reviewing the high-resolution recording of Teodor Currentzis conducting MusicAeterna in Mahler's Symphony 6 (24/96 WAV, Sony Classical 19075822952). Compared to the N10, the Network Bridge with Roon delivered more colorful images, and more silence between notes. Switching to music far more intimate, mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa and pianist Fazil Say performing "Le Chevelure," from Debussy's song cycle Chansons de Bilitis (24/96 WAV, Erato 564483), the N10's sound was somewhat grayer than the Network Bridge's. With Roon and the Network Bridge, colors were more substantial and horns fuller in Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra's recording of Mahler's Symphony 3 (DSD64, Channel Classics CCS SA 38817).

I hope someday to hear Aurender's flagship, battery-powered W20 music server in my system. Until then, I'll admire their N10 one-box server's ease of use and value its ability to connect to a DAC via USB.—Jason Victor Serinus