Стримеры — Aurender N150

The N150 is a network music server and streamer from Aurender of Seoul, South Korea, a brand that began with Widealab, founded by engineer Harry Lee in January 2010, which showed its first server, the S10, in 2011 and merged with the video monitor maker TVLogic in September 2012. Aurender calls the N150 the most accessible and economical entry point to its range. To reach that position it leaves out the large colour screens and the coaxial and balanced digital outputs found on costlier models and offers a single USB audio output. Its US price is USD 3,900, with a choice of black and silver chassis finish.

Key specs that matter

A low-power Intel dual-core processor runs the unit with 8 GB of RAM, and a 240 GB NVMe solid-state drive holds the system and the playback cache. One 2.5 inch compartment takes a user-installed HDD or SSD. The dedicated USB audio output carries PCM up to 32-bit and 768 kHz, DSD512 natively and DSD256 as DoP. Network access is through one double-isolated gigabit Ethernet port, and two USB 3.0 ports at the rear accept external drives. The machined aluminium chassis measures 215 x 63 x 353 mm, or 56 mm high without its feet, and weighs 5.3 kg, with a 3 inch AMOLED display on the front. Power draw is 12 W during playback, 32 W at peak and 4.2 W in standby.

Engineering and use context

When a track is selected, the N150 copies it to the NVMe cache and plays it from there, so a spinning hard disk can go to sleep and files from network storage play without the pauses that network delays can cause. The USB output board is physically and electrically isolated from the CPU board, keeping processor noise away from the audio connection, and the Ethernet port is double-isolated for the same reason. Power comes from a linear supply of 50 W for the CPU section, with a super-capacitor UPS that lets the unit shut down safely if mains power fails. A critical listening mode turns off the display and non-essential background tasks during playback. Playback is controlled with the Aurender Conductor app, with TIDAL, Qobuz and internet radio built in, Spotify Connect and AirPlay supported, Roon Ready status and an optional MQA core decoder upgrade. File formats include DSF, DFF, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC, M4A and APE.

Pairing

The N150 has no DAC or analogue output, so it needs a USB DAC or an amplifier with a USB audio input.

Alternatives

The Aurender N200 adds a quad-core processor, a coaxial S/PDIF output and a TCXO clock.