Colin,

Since the pandemic started and I have been home listening to my audio system much more I have been making incremental improvements which have resulted in significant improvements in the sound. After Sooloos would no longer work with Tidal I switched to Roon and purchased the Nucleus to use as my core. I like using Roon as my music management system. I was getting a bit frustrated with the Nucleus crashing often and decided I wanted to upgrade to a music server. I wanted a server that was Roon ready. I researched servers which were Roon certified, read the reviews and comments in the audio blogs and decided that Antipodes was the best server for my needs.

I communicated directly with Mark at Antipodes who was very responsive to my questions. The K50 was simple to set up and simple to use, it has two computers one for the server and one for the player and you have different options for streaming and playing apps. I use Roon to stream and Squeeze to play. Also the 75 ohm digital input to my Ultra DAC sounds much better than the ethernet. The overall improvement in physicality of the sound and articulation of harmonics was major.

I did not consider the Aurender N20 because it has its own music system. A quality server makes a huge difference in the sound, the music source is so important in the chain. My audio systems since the 70’s have always had an analog preamp. I have the VTL TL 7.5 iii as my preamp and LAMM LP2 and M1.2 as my phono preamp and amps, respectively. I still listen to vinyl but mainly digital music. If I only listened to digital I would certainly consider and demo using a DAC with a quality preamp stage and invest more in the DAC and the server. A quality preamp makes a huge difference in the sound. I had sent in my 7.5 for upgrade to the latest series iii version and was using a an up to date VTL TL 6.5 which sounded better than my older 7.5 in many respects. The updated 7.5 is night and day better.

Mark

Ultra DAC, Antipodes K50, Spiral Groove SG 1.2, Lamm LP2, T+A T1210R, VTL TL 7.5iii, Lamm M1.2, Wilson Alexia 1