What will a streamer add?

[Yippedidou]

I'll add my 2 cents here. Have a aurender n100 fully broken in with Wireworld Starlight platinum usb. Was hoping it would replace my 2009 Mac Mini with custom power supply and its fully optimized for audio. Mini is using air ethernet with AQ cinnamon Ethernet cable.

My hopes were to improve usability and have more convenience then running my Mac Mini headless. Sounded great but was just tired of the bugs and day to day headaches of just getting it fired up to play music. Was also hoping that getting a streamer would not only improve the day to day functionality but also improve upon the sound.

First off, the user interface of the Aurender is way better than the Mac solution. So easy to get music playing and the iPad app is amazing. Absolutely love it.

However, here is the problem. The Aurender clearly is more laid back with regards to sound quality. It's great but I'm definitely giving up detail, separation, and soundstage. It's great to walk in the room and have music playing within seconds from my NAS or Tidal. But if I want to sit down for some critical listening, the Mac Mini is better. This could be system dependent but just wanted to share my experience.

I have an Aurender X100, coming from a Mac Mini 2009 running with JRiver/JRemote. My experience is playing files from the internal HDD of the X100 which I find on par or better than the Mini set up. I find the X100 HDD playback more revealing than the Mini set up ( blacker background which means more details )

I dont use a NAS. As for streaming on the X100 with Tidal, the SQ is definitely not the best and is variable. Although Tidal claims all 16/44.1 playbak on the hifi set mode, I can hear compression (often) and even bad ripping (tics and even one cd that skips which means a bad rip over an unknown source). Therefore, Streaming is not part of my routine when I want to do serious listening. Streaming for background music is ok.

I'm not familiar with the N100. But the music that comes from the X100 HDD is irreprochable ( again depeding on the quality of the rip and cd it was taken from