spiritofmusic, you must be joking about your final upgrade
I just bought my Antipodes DX Gen2 and the Gen3 is already out, and I thought, that the Gen2 will last me at least a couple of years...
Anyway, in the 7K price range I would consider 2 options: Antipodes DX and Aurender N10. Both are excellent products with very reputable companies behind them with excellent support and the software that they keep constantly improving.
Here is a nice review of the Antipodes and comparison to the Aurender N10:
http://www.hifi-advice.com/blog/rev...ork-player-reviews/antipodes-dx-music-server/
According to the author, Aurender has somewhat gentler and more analog presentation, than the Antipodes, but he still preferred the Antipodes in his system due to its lower noise floor and more dynamic sound.
Here is another excellent source of information about both servers in this Audiogon thread:
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/absolute-top-tier-dac-for-standard-res-redbook-cd?page=69. Matt was very thorough in comparing both servers and in the end chose the Aurender due to its more organic presentation in his system. Although, he was testing the Gen 2 model, as the Gen 3 was not yet available.
So, as usual in our hobby, the best thing is to try both servers in your system and decide based on your own preferences. But it will take a lot of your time as I know from personal experience, that the Antipodes needs at least two weeks to reach its top performance.
Several other points to consider:
- Antipodes DX Gen 3 has USB output only, so if you need other output options, you have to go with the Gen 2 model.
- Antipodes has several sofware options including Roon, Squeezebox, MPD, Hqplayer and several others. All sound different. I prefer Roon, but even with Roon there are 2 main sub-options and I prefer one, and the guy, who did the review liked the other one. Go figure. Aurender have developed their own software, which is apparently very user friendly, but there are rumors they will move to Roon in the nearest future.
- Antipodes has a built in CD ripper. Aurender has not.
- Antipodes supports DSD up to 512, Aurender goes only to DSD128.
- Antipodes price rises rather steeply, when you add more SSD storage. I was unpleasantly surprised, when I found out a price of my 4TB model. So, make sure to get a quote for your chosen storage capacity in advance.
Good luck with your final upgrade!
Aziz