Aurender n100 vs auralic Aries
 

So which is preferable?

I own the Aries, no experience with the Aurender.

Streaming from Tidal only, I went from a Bluesound Node to a Aries and noticed improved SQ.

On the negative side, no iPhone App (although expected in 2014..), and the App you use can be a bit buggy.
Sometimes tracks won't play, sometimes it just skips, sometimes when you choose a song it plays the first second 5 times before playing the song ...

They do seem to spend a lot of time upgrading firmware, and some of them even comes with "improved sound quality", which is nice.

My biggest beef is that I use the USB connection to my C2500 and my preamp locks up all the time when changing album, but thats another story.

I use an Aries also and am not having any issues. I listen to Tidal and an outboard hard drive thru USB into an Aurilac DAC. The sound seems great especially the DSD downloads. Much better than my Olive O4HD thru coax to the same DAC.

How is your aries connected to your DAC? USB?

Aurender's software is much more polished. It is joy to use. The new 'N' models with linear PSU also sound much better than the Aries.

I use a WireWorld Silver Starlight cable supplied by Masterlu.
I've never even seen an Aurender but the Lightning DS app for the Aries works well and looks very nice. All of the reviews I've read about it are positive. Aurender could be better I'm not sure. The Aurilac help is the best I've ever experienced. They say that I might be able to get better sound streaming from a Nas system. I haven't tried that yet but .....?

Slimbo..

I use a WW Plat starlight USB.

If you use Tidal, you don't get any of these problems I have when using Tidal?
(Problems are periodic).

- Selecting an album sometimes does not start, until I press it in the playlist it created.
- Pausing a song, then unpausing it causes it to play 10-20 seconds, then skipping to next song by itself.
- When selecting a song or an album the first track plays the first 1 second of the first song, then restarts about 3-7 times before playing the song normally.

No gain in using wired over wireless.
Setting DAC Delay on 1-5 seconds doesn't help either.

Looking forward hearing your experiences!

For me the Aries is a real bargain. I've got mine with the Femto Clock for 1279 €. It's connected with an Kimber KS-1236 to the DAC at my Accuphase DP-550. I'm using Tidal as well as Internet radio and an external Samsung SSD.
With the Ligning DS App its running without problems.

I've read excellent reviews about Aurender, but I've never had the opportunity to test one. I don't care about the prices, but they are more expensive.

initially I had some problems with streaming tidal but the Aurilac help people had me change to the 5 GHz band on my apple router just about perfect since then.

Depends :D
Aurender is a robust, all-in-one solution. Even their lower-end models sound smoother, more fleshed out than the Aries.
But the Aries has a lot of positives too. Its sound has more edge, more bite. And it's a true network streamer (UPNP/OpenHome), but you can also plug that USB drive in. It has a full complement of digital outputs (USB, coax, Toslink), while the Aurenders have USB out by default, and coax/AES only on the higher-end models. Another plus for the Aries is that it has an incredibly solid Wifi, so you don't need any network cabling around it.
I'm in the minority I guess, but I don't like the Aurender app. It's more stable, yes, but it's ugly and cluttered. And it's not nearly as "smart" as Auralic's. With the Auralic, you just plug your drive in, and the app will scan it, find artwork, metadata, etc. Not so with the Aurender, where you rely on a computer app to do that...
The Aries is $1000 cheaper than the cheaper Aurender, so there's also that...
Either one is a great choice. If you want simplicity, you can't beat the Aurender, although it's not the cheapest. If you want to put up with some work (network or external USB drive), the Aries will work great.