Aurender N150 Review: there are no small things in the sound

Listening to music on an expensive audio system from a laptop or smartphone is a common thing. But the audiophile capabilities of such a tandem, to put it mildly, are doubtful. The role of the sound source is very important, and here you can not do without a serious device. Which one? Read in our review.

A new brand for a new life

The Aurender company was founded in South Korea in 2011, that is, exactly when physical music media began to actively lose ground. Someone has already looked closely at streaming services, but the vast majority of music lovers downloaded tracks from online portals of varying degrees of legality. And already at that time, advanced users realized that the musical capabilities of smartphones and laptops were very limited — such gadgets could not compete with high-end acoustics.

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South Korean electronics engineers decided to take up truly audiophile computers. Their technique quickly gained popularity and spread all over the world in a couple of years. Today, the Aurender range consists of seventeen models: from a compact USB DAC to a megacombine that combines a server, a streamer, a CD ripper, a DAC and a headphone amplifier




N150 came to our review — a music server that is not overloaded with side functions, but has everything you need to work with popular content sources. The device can independently receive high-resolution streams from Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify and online radio stations. File playback, of course, is also there. To do this, you can configure access to storage on a local network, connect a USB drive or insert a hard disk inside the server.

A digit and nothing but a digit

The device looks discreet, but at the same time aristocratic and expensive. The case is assembled from thick aluminum panels, perfectly fitted to each other. Large logos are milled with jewelry precision — they do not catch the eye, but they are clearly distinguishable even from a considerable distance. There are few buttons. Only one of them, which starts the server loading, is highlighted with a calm blue light. The ribs of massive radiators are noticeable on the sides, and at the bottom there are legs with dampers made of natural cork.



By design, the N150, like the rest of the Aurender equipment, is close to Apple technology. In a modern interior, the server looks great, especially paired with a modern DAC like Mytek Brooklyn DOC+.

Switching on the back panel does not allow us to forget that we still have a computer in front of us, even if it is hardcore audiophile. There are as many as three USB ports. A pair of high-speed (v. 3.0) is designed to connect external drives. The power supply on them is enough to connect a portable hard drive. The third socket is used to send a digital stream to an external decoder, and therefore complies with the USB Audio Class 2.0 specification. It is also supplied with a voltage of 5 V, and has undergone additional filtering. It is intended for DACs that do not have their own power supply.



The connection to the local network is wired, the RJ-45 connector with double galvanic isolation is responsible for it. Neither Wi-Fi nor Bluetooth are provided, because wireless networks aggressively create interference. Analog circuits are also missing, and this is very correct. After all, the task of the Aurender N150 is to form a digital stream in perfect quality and send it to an external converter. Ideally, it should be of the same quality.

By the way, despite the fully digital circuitry, the power supply in the server is not pulsed, but linear, on a high-end toroidal transformer. The reason is the same — the fight against noise and leads.

The Battle for Sound

The device is built on a dual-core Intel processor with reduced power consumption. This made it possible to dispense with a passive cooling system, which is important for the audiophile component. The server is absolutely quiet, does not get clogged with dust during operation and does not risk overheating in case of fan failure.

The operating system is Linux. It is remarkable in that it is not overloaded with internal services that consume CPU resources. This means that nothing prevents the system from doing the most important task — playing music. The main system disk is solid—state - a 240 GB SSD running on the advanced NVMe protocol. Its main advantages: extremely low latency and high-speed parallel data transmission. Which is especially important in our case, since the disk is used for caching music files.



Wherever the content is stored (home NAS, USB flash drive or streaming service), first it will be overwritten on the SSD, and then it will be played from it. This approach helps to minimize jitter and insure against any interference and failures.

Another interesting solution is supercapacitors operating in the mode of an uninterruptible power supply. If electricity is lost in the network, their energy will be enough to automatically terminate programs and correctly save all data.



The server is armed with a built-in 2.5-inch disk, which turns it into a fully autonomous storage for audio collections. There are two options available — a 4 TB SSD, or a classic 2 TB hard drive.

By the way, our hero is distinguished from the previous model N100 (NC/C/H) by supercapacitors, a quick-removable hard drive, as well as a new noise-proof gigabit port, USB v connectors.3.0 and doubled the amount of RAM and system SSD. The list is more than impressive!

One-touch game

For testing, we connected the Aurender N150 to the Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ DAC, and that to the Schiit Vidar amplifier with Martin Logan ElectroMotion ESL speakers. This acoustics is equipped with electrostatic radiators with a height of 34 inches and classic 8-inch low-frequency speakers.

Managing the music library through the N150 turned out to be easier than ever. To do this, it is enough to install the Aurender Conductor application on a smartphone or tablet, available on Android and Apple iOS. It is arranged very logically: select the source of the music, enable sorting by tags, click on the desired track in the album. Songs are added to the playlist, which, of course, can be saved. And it does not matter at all that the first song is played in it from a flash drive, and the second from Tidal. Just press Play, and the selection plays.



The server turned out to be omnivorous: it understands WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, M4A and APE files with a resolution up to 32 bits / 384 kHz. DSD is also supported, and even in the highest-frequency version of DSD512 (22.4 MHz). MQA streams are decoded in full resolution. Up to 96 kHz, they will be able to be reproduced through an unlicensed DAC. However, the MQA software codec needs to be purchased and downloaded separately. There is no support for Roon and CUE files. On the other hand, why cross a self-sufficient high-class setup with a different ecosystem? And CUE markup, invented for the convenience of working with CD images, is clearly a thing of the past.

Silver Day

Martin Logan electrostats, like Mytek DACs, are known for outstanding musical resolution, which allowed us to properly analyze the operation of our source.

To begin with, the Hi-Res version of Diana Krall's album Glad Rag Doll was included. Through the light salon flair, artfully recreated during recording, both fleeting touches to the strings of an acoustic guitar and the subtlest intonations of Diana herself were easily read. But the main thing is that the scene was built with downright fantastic authenticity. The location of the musicians, the scale of the instruments and the general emotional atmosphere were easily transferred to a private club at the beginning of the last century. Such spatial characteristics speak of a truly flawless flow structure with a minimum level of jitter.



Then Gary Clark Jr. launched This Land. Hard guitar blues-rock is far from the most refined genre, but the presentation of the Aurender N150 also had an extremely positive effect on it. The audio was filled with sharp dynamics, but at the same time remained plastic and legible.

The setup played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in such a way that it could arouse interest in classical music even among radical hip-hopers. Dynamic contrasts did not fade either in the most powerful sections or in the refined fragments. Each instrument sounded clear and recognizable, but did not fall out of the overall musical monolith.

Results

The Aurender N150 is not just a server, but a high—end audiophile component. With such a device, you don't have to think about codecs or sampling rates. As befits a real Hi-End, the device simply dissolves into the space between the listener and the music.