Top music streamer for 2019? Aurender N10’s?

Hey guys what do you think about dCS and esoteric ????

We have sold both Esoteric and DCS in the past. 

Personally we feel that Esoteric's products are very good but are being surpassed by things like Lumin's awesome X1 which is a reference class streamer/dac which is $6k cheaper then the Esoteric version and the Lumin still sounds better.

DCS is a sound which some people like others don't they don't sound particularly liquid the DCS sound is clean, quick, and very detailed. 

In terms of Dac's we are very fond of the Aqua Hifi Dacs for a number of reasons:

1: They are very liquid and analog like
2: They are the most up-gradable dacs on the market they are both FPGA based with R2R ladders and the dacs are built on all discrete cards for every function of the dac: analog boards, power supply boards, incomming data boards, outgoing dac boards, 

if you look at the $8k Lascala XHD it has a total of 7 individual replaceable boards, this allows the entire unit to morph into an entirely new product over time as the Aqua engineers figure out new tricks to boost sound quality.

Our ultimate flagship dac the $32k Light Harmonic Davinci is also upgradble and we have had clients upgrade the older Dual Dac to the ew MK II Dual dac for a nominal charge.

It ultimately comes down to the sound quality and feature set you are looking for, all products in this discussion are excellent it will come down to personal preference.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Aqua, Lumin, Light Harmonic dealers

Thanks Nyev, we do a lot of evaluation on a lot of different products and tweeks. 

Roon supplanted Jriver as being a better more user friendly platform with a supeior user experience. 

The nice thing about Roon is that the product keeps on evolving, hopefully that will gain Spotify, we would also love to see XM radio intergration one can only hope.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Thanks for response, I’m fan of accuphase nothing will change my mind, but what streamer would you recommend for accuphase dac , I’m using vault 2 right now.???? Thanks 

Pop you have a few choices:

1: Aurender No Roon, no native CD ripper, priced from $2700-$16k

2: Innous: Roon Server, CD Ripper, suberb sound quality from $1,200-$13k approx. The new Statement is one of the finest digital servers on the market today expensive but mind blowing

We sell a lot of the Zenith the $4300 model because of its fantastic sound qality and price point.

3: Nad M50.2 good streamer with back up raid drive but not a huge upgrade from a Vault.

4: Lumin  U series from $2200 to $6k fantastic OS, no native storrage very good sound quality if you want to run Roon you need another device

5: Auralic Streamers: good OS, good sound quality, does not hold Roon so again you need another device. 

6: Antipods and Wolf: we don't know enough about these units to make a good assesment.

7: Baetis servers: can be expensive very good sound quality Roon servers and CD rippers

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ Innous, Batis, NAD, Lumin dealers