19-Mar-2015, 12:02
(This post was last modified: 19-Mar-2015, 12:06 by Rufus McDufus.)
(19-Mar-2015, 11:48)EricDH Wrote: Very interesting review, thank you both very much for sharing your impressions. Although you are clearly blown away by the N1Z, it seems to me that the N1A is a very good piece of equipment also. Especially at its price point, it may give the Auralic Aries a run for its money. Hence, suggestions for future comparisons could be:
Melco N1A vs Auralic Aries (and maybe also Aurender N100, but that one is more expensive)
Melco N1Z vs Aurender X100 or W20 (of course I realize that amabrok compared the N1Z and X100 (I was there with him), but impressions from more people would be interesting)
I really think only that Melco shall provide a high quality dedicated app, with the main streaming providers (the likes of Tidal and Qobuz) integrated. Streaming really should be as simple as the (oldfashioned) CD player: buy - connect - play.
Melco vs Aurender is probably the significant one. I realise I might be in a bit of a minority here because they seem to sell bucket-loads of them, but I don't actually like the Aries that much! It's fairly big and impressive in terms of soundstage but I find it a little compressed, but more importantly it's not very involving musically for me. Again this was on Guillaume's system and it may sound quite different on mine or someone else's. From listening on that one system and not doing a direct comparison and with 6 months between listenings, my impression is still that the N1A is in a different league to the Aries.
Quite agree about internet streaming... I think there will be a step change in the way most of us listen to music in the next few years towards streaming direct from high-res providers. I personally still like my local storage as I tend to like collecting different masters of recordings, which the internet streaming model doesn't really provide. Perhaps a hybrid local storage/internet streaming will be the likely scenario for most.