Aurender A20 reference analog output network player Review

Adjusting the settings for superior results

One of the advantages of the A20 is the potential to adjust several settings to improve performance with any given set of ancillary gear. Specifically, for the USB digital output, the user can manually turn on or off DSD processing in the “Native” DSD output setting for an outboard DAC, as it also automatically turns off DSD if the external DAC does not support it. Per Ari Margolis of Aurender USA, “Even with the ‘Use Native DSD’ setting turned OFF, the system still outputs DSD in the DoP (DSD over PCM) format, which is absolutely not equivalent to ‘turning off DSD.’ oP is not synonymous with DSD to PCM conversion or transcoding. DoP is the standard protocol for transmitting unaltered DSD signals to compatible DACs.”

Upsampling can be adjusted manually, too. I tended to turn all Upsampling off, but I recommend that you try several, if not all, the settings provided to find what best suits your ears. Again, per Ari, upsampling applies only to A20’s internal DAC settings and not the USB digital output.

Aurender units with two options for user selectable voltage provide a secret weapon, an advantage not normally found in digital sources. Usually, a preamp’s output is set, and the user simply must work with it. Years ago, I found a substantial difference in the performance of DACs that allow rolling in discrete opamps. I also found the Gold Note PA-1175 MkII amplifier to have a nifty Damping Factor feature, which was a bonus for that amp. Similarly, the A20’s selectable output voltage is a highly advantageous feature. It can make the difference between a combo of gear that sounds okay or one that sounds splendid.

The user chooses the output voltage that best matches the input sensitivity of the amplifier. The RCA output can be set to either 2.0Vrms or 2.7Vrms, and the XLR output can be set to either 4.0Vrms or 5.4Vrms. Notice that the XLR output is double that of the RCA, which is typical. When I ran the RCA and XLR outputs concurrently to power different devices, there was no discernible variance such that the devices could not be handled by one source of attenuation, be it the A20’s volume control or external attenuation.

The presence of the selectable output voltage is not a minor point when considering the integrated functionality of the A20. While there may be advantages to owning a separate dedicated preamp, it may not outperform the A20’s preamplifier stage, and the selectable output is a significant reason why. The influence of altering the voltage output is considerable and should not be underestimated. It allows the A20 to operate as though one had two distinct preamps. One setting will assuredly match better than the other with any outboard amp. However, you may find that you adore the result of both settings with your favorite amp(s), which means you win twice!

To get a sense of what the output voltage feature does, think back to a time when you heard a comparison between two models of amplifier from the same manufacturer, perhaps a 100wpc model and a 200wpc model. If the amps were designed according to a similar topology and were made well, you should have experienced more control, depth and solidity to the images, higher resolution, more pronounced macrodynamics, perceptually quicker transients, and better tautness and deepness with the bass as the primary characteristics of the higher-powered amp. Putting those characteristics together often moves buyers to opt for the higher-power amplifier. All things being equal, I always opt for the higher-powered amplifier.

The output voltage feature has a similar effect as it is switched from the lower to the higher setting. It sonically magnifies the amplifier, pumping up the speakers to sound as if they were retooled to become a model higher. It is fabulous that an owner can make such adjustments. This feature is worth a lot of the asking price of an Aurender. It also protects against obsolescence should the owner decide to change amplifiers. I can envision a scenario where the enthusiast may wish to try a tube amp, but with a certain preamp having too high an output voltage it might not be ideal. With the A20’s selectable output voltage, such options have a higher chance of being successful.

Which of the settings should be used in any given system? Consider the auditory effect of the output voltage akin to a dimmer switch on a lightbulb. The lower voltage would make the light dimmer, and perceptually easier on the eyes. The higher voltage output would make the light brighter, showing more detail and intensity. Likewise, the music is more laid back and less in your face with the lower voltage, and it is more intense and forward with the higher voltage. I tend to use the higher voltage setting and tune the system with other settings of the A20, i.e., working with the upsampling setting or switching a power cord or interconnects.

The question then becomes, will either of the A20’s settings for the preamp allow it to outperform any given dedicated preamp? If you have read enough of my articles in the past, you will know the answer; no one can tell you. A comparison must be conducted to determine the most preferable arrangement of equipment in any given system. But the odds are better than average that with two settings, the A20 as streamer, DAC and preamp may end up the winner as opposed to using an outboard preamp and DAC or integrated DAC.  Perhaps it is not surprising that I could build highly engaging systems both ways.

Bringing in the landscape system

A favorite alternative speaker system through the years has been the PureAudioProject Trio15 Speakers lofted onto custom Sound Anchor stands. Returning the Trio15 10” Coaxial to the listening room to be mated with the Perlisten subwoofers, I once again enjoyed the prodigious sound of what I call a super-monitor. Fans of big vintage JBL, Hartsfield, or Classic Audio Loudspeakers relish the ease and openness of those speakers. They have a scale and vividness that is addictive. While perhaps not on the same level as those speakers, the Trio15 10” Coaxial captures many of the same characteristics but at a much lower price.

With speakers having asymmetrical driver configuration, i.e. B/M/T or a D’Appolito configuration, raising and turning the speakers to be parallel to the ground creates unique dispersion patterns. You can see an example of it in my first attempt at landscape orientation with the Daedalus Ulysses Speakers. The primary goal in the project was to reorient the soundstage from emphasizing height to emphasizing width, which is particularly pleasing for live recordings because they sound more natural and more generously sized as to the location of the performers on the stage.

While a coaxial driver is unaffected by that reorientation, the bass drivers are affected. Elimination of the floor bounce and low propagation of the bass frequencies changes the experience of a speaker’s sound quite a bit. It may seem like a strange description, but the sense of the lofted speaker is that it is heard as being more direct, like a monitor, with the wave launch emanating from ear level. Normally, the bass hangs lower and feels like a substrate to the music, but with the landscape orientation, it floats at the same height as the midrange and treble. Especially when hearing bass guitar, the higher wave launch seems more natural to my ears, and it is easier to picture the bassist playing the instrument. I understand that it won’t make sense to most who have not heard the comparison. The location of the bass drivers is important, and when twin 15” woofers are heard floating 4’ in the air versus bouncing a wave off the floor, one begins to appreciate the cleanness of a landscape setup even for larger speakers!

The A20 continued along its trajectory of elevated performance as a source and gave the landscape operation of the PAP Trio15 10” Coax its best sound of any system I had prepared for them. Just after setting them up, I visited with a friend who has the Volti Alura Speakers and Border Patrol amplification. That setup had better micro dynamics and depth than what I had just built, and I thought about how to improve those parameters with this particular rig. Following my protocol of trying all settings, I returned to the Upsampling setting in the Advanced2 option of the A20’s Settings menu and engaged the highest non-DSD setting (705.6/768kHz), and in this instance I preferred that result. The change resulted in improved micro dynamics and depth of soundstage that I sought. It struck me as being uncannily like the friend’s system I had just heard. With the Wharfedale speakers no upsampling was preferred, but with the PAP speakers the highest upsampling setting was preferred. Never presume that the same settings will optimize all speakers.

Sarah Jarosz’s “Orange and Blue” and Vienna Teng’s “1br/1ba” were gloriously rich with both resolution and tonal ripeness. Their strength as niche vocalists came to the fore because of the degree of information retrieval possible with the A20 and the Trio15’s coaxial driver, which created a highly focused center image for their vocals. Both the midrange and bass improved with the Trio15 10” Coaxial, as might be expected. Chiefly, the midrange was fuller, more open, relaxed, and the bass had additional character to reveal nuances not easily heard from the Wharfedale’s 8” driver as it was colored by the presence of cabinet resonances typical of dynamic speakers.

The A20 delivered on my expectation that, just as it offered the best performance I had heard from the King III electrostatic speakers, it would do so with all genres of speakers. The Wharfedale Opus 2-M2 Bookshelf Speakers, which are dynamic, and the Trio15 10” Coaxial, which are open baffle, also were at their best with the A20, whether using the internal DAC or an outboard DAC. None of these speaker systems showed idiosyncrasies that demanded major reworking of the system to address sonic shortcomings as a result of being paired with the A20. Often with lesser sources I have had to spend considerable time recombining components and cables to elicit sound quality that checked off all the boxes, but I did not have to finagle with the systems built using the A20. That bodes well for integration into a wide number of systems. Essentially, I recreated on a smaller scale the phenomenon that was occurring at AXOPNA and reached the conclusion that many dealers and equipment manufacturers had, that an Aurender is going to make whatever gear they use sound very good.

Digital at a higher level

Decades ago, as a novice, I read reviews and pretended my low end HiFi rig was just as good as the expensive gear. I thought reviewers were exaggerating or outright lying about sources, cables, amplification or speakers varying greatly. Becoming a reviewer and handling better gear showed me they were not lying, and I am not lying when I say that the Aurender experience is holistically superior to my previous digital streaming and file playback sources.

Streaming and server components are getting better over time and these systems and comparisons have shown me that the quality of digital music is much better than even five years ago. Over the years I have seen and heard advances in cables, power supplies, DACs, pre-amplification, and amplification, so why would digital sources not also advance? If the A20 is representative of what can be done for streaming music, then I am a most blessed man to live in an age where there is such an abundance of music at my fingertips and so well rendered!

What’s being served?

When families go out to eat, in making a choice of which restaurant to dine at they consider such things as the amount of time they have, the style of food, and its quality. Hoping not to stretch the analogy too far, equipment manufacturers are like restaurants, sources of their own brand of a sonic meal, and the audiophile assesses how much money they wish to pay, the feature set of the models available, and the claimed sonic attributes. With a digital source like the A20 the music is literally being served, prepared by a streaming kitchen such as Qobuz or Tidal, and brought to the listener by a server, the equivalent of a waiter or waitress.

When my wife and I eat out on Friday evenings, we have several choices nearby that range from fast food to supper clubs. We can eat a patently unhealthy but quick meal, or we can have a leisurely and hopefully more nutritious supper. The names of the establishments give a clue to what is to be expected. A different experience would be expected from Taco Bell, Longhorn Steak House, or Sandra’s (supper club).

In terms of the sound quality, smoothness of integration of the software and hardware, and build quality of the Aurender A20, it is like the supper club rather than the fast-food restaurant. Having owned the fast-food version of a server (the Mac Mini), and used the equivalent of a fine chain restaurant (the SMG/SONORE setup), the A20 is qualitatively different, and the experience is genuinely elevated.

When someone visits an unfamiliar restaurant for the first time, they may be pleasantly surprised or turned off by the experience. When approaching the purchase of a component, it’s not fun to enter the transaction blindly. Is there some way to know beforehand what the experience will be like when purchasing a component? Only on a limited basis. There exists an enormous range of performance potential due to the combination of gear to which it is paired, and no one knows that outcome. There are very few parameters of performance that can be said to be absolute. Because the system — everything from cables to amplification — affects tonality, dynamics, and sound staging, the only characteristic that I have found to be absolute is resolution, or definition, so that is the first and foremost aspect of performance that I listen for when assessing an unfamiliar product.

Here, then, is where the A20 distinguishes itself. It simply has a high degree of information retrieval and that means more of the nuances of the performance are heard and appreciated. It means transients are sharper, images are better resolved, and the soundstage is more discernable. Because of its flexibility in setup the user has several ways to achieve pleasing coloration or tonality. A great deal of the dynamics and soundstaging of the system are controlled by the amplification.

Having used the N20 for several weeks as I embark on a follow-up review, I can answer the question definitively whether it has even more information retrieval than the A20. The answer is yes, it is a large step up in terms of broadening the Aurender experience. The A20 is Longhorn Steakhouse and the N20 is Sandra’s supper club. If you are willing to pay the premium, the meal being served is upscale.

Note the following well if your goal is to improve your digital front end. Forget trying to get a server to be “musical” or to have this or that tonality. Stop trying to seek one with a good soundstage. These are all functions of the system, not just a server/streamer. Look for one thing in particular, resolution or definition. You can adjust all those other parameters through the system, but you cannot recover lost resolution in the digital source by manipulating the downstream components.

Having said that, I have found a strong correlation between a server that has higher resolution and other parameters of sound quality. As I moved through other digital sources and the resolution rose, the tonality, soundstaging, transients, dynamics — everything seemed to improve. Experiencing that through four changes of digital sources, I suspect it is a universal phenomenon. Now, with the first few weeks of experiencing the N20, along with the resolution these other characteristics have benefitted as well.

Conclusion

The A20 has a lovely balance between system setup flexibility and a high degree of resolution. As such it is a compelling choice for those who have system configurations that require flexibility in setup, or those who wish to explore with system configurations, yet achieve a distinct improvement holistically in digital playback.

Aurender products are not cheap, but neither are they cheaply made. Most importantly, they do not sound cheap. The sound I am getting in my room reminds me of some of the finest systems I have heard at shows and dealerships. I have matured as an audiophile, so today I have no delusion that my rig is at the level of SOTA (state of the art) systems and a direct comparison would likely confirm it. But one either experiences what they feel is a premium sound or not. The Aurender A20 is giving me a premium sound experience. The interface is first rate and works well with Tidal and Qobuz. It is a high-end music ecosystem experience.

Five years ago, when I heard the sonicTransporter and the Signature Rendu SE, I knew that my CD collection would be used less. Now, with the Aurender A20, I don’t even think of reaching for a silver disc. The day has come that I consider CD dead and streaming to have won the war of digital sources. With this kind of sound quality there is little point in my putting serious money into an analog front end. Glancing at the albums for sale at Walmart as I passed that section on the way to the sporting goods, I noted the average price was about $25. Can you imagine what it would cost to build a library of esoteric vinyl albums? A fortune!

The truth is that I have the money and could pursue analog, but the sound quality advantage is not worth it for me. For most real-world listeners it is not a wise investment. I’m sure all the analog-associated businesses in the industry will love me for saying such things. Don’t get me started on the topic of how analog sources are given a pass by being assessed almost entirely by subjective criteria. If you are entering the hobby, do yourself a favor and do not start cheap with digital. Of course, analog will sound far better when compared to a cheap digital front end. It won’t sound far better when compared to an Aurender properly set up in one’s system.

Once again, I am vindicated that I did not spend tens of thousands of dollars on a turntable setup and a huge collection of media. I literally have the musical world at my beckoning and a premium digital source as a cornerstone of system building. Thank goodness that I don’t have to think, “What will I do with all this (turntable setup and albums) in the future,” every time I sit down to listen. I don’t have to worry that my wife or kids will be saddled with all the audio stuff I thought was so important but that they don’t care about. That is not an unimportant aspect of enjoyment of the hobby for someone entering their sixth decade of life. I want carefree listening in every respect, and Aurender is assuring I can obtain it.

There are well-regarded competitors to the Aurender way, and I cannot comment about them as I have not used them. What I can assert is that the Aurender A20 has upscaled my digital listening massively, and I will not surrender that upscaled streaming experience. For now, an Aurender in some form is going to be my source for both personal and reviewing purposes, maybe for the next five years!

Associated Components:

Digital Source: Small Green Computer sonicTransporter and SONORE Signature Rendu SE with systemOptique; Wireworld Starlight CAT-8 Ethernet Cable

Analog Sources: Realistic LAB 400 Turntable with Schiit Audio Mani Phono; Nakamichi CR-1A Cassette Deck

Streaming Music Service: Tidal

Interface: ROON

DAC:  COS Engineering D1 DAC Plus Pre-Amplifier; Eastern Electric Minimax DSD DAC Supreme with Burson, Dexa NewClassD or Sparkos Labs discrete opamps; Exogal Comet DAC and PLUS power supply

Preamp: Kinki Studio EX-M1+ Integrated Amp in dedicated Preamp mode

Amps: Legacy Audio i.V4 Ultra; Kinki Studio EX-M1+ Integrated in dedicated Amplifier mode; Exogal Ion PowerDAC (used exclusively with Comet DAC)

Integrated: Redgum Audio Articulata; Kinki Studio EX-M1+

Speakers: Legacy Audio DSW Clarity Edition; Kings Audio King III electrostatic speakers; Pure Audio Project Trio15 10” Coaxial version and Horn1 version; Kings Audio King Tower omnidirectional; Aspen Acoustics Grand Aspen; Wharfedale Opus 2-M2 Monitors

Subwoofers: Perlisten D212s Subwoofers

IC’s: Iconoclast RCA and XLR Generation 2 with Ultra-Pure Ohno Continuous Cast Copper conductors; TEO Liquid Splash-Rs and Splash-Rc; TEO Liquid Standard MkII; Clarity Cable Organic RCA

Speaker Cables: TEO Cable Standard Speaker; Snake River Audio Signature Series Speaker Cables;

Digital Cables: Clarity Cable Organic Digital; Snake River Audio Boomslang

USB: Clarity Cable Supernatural 1m;

Power Cables: Clarity Cable Vortex; Snake River Audio Signature Series; Belden BAV Power Cord

Power Conditioning: Wireworld Matrix Power Cord Extender; Tice Audio Solo

Copy editor: Dan Rubin