Auralic Aries (Hardware) - Impressions and Information

[Hauser]

Hi I did the same and emailed Auralic. They gave me the info; remove the four screws on the power cord side. The back plate is connected to the inside of the box with the power loom; disconnect this. This frees the back plate and improves access. Looking into the box on the left hand side you'll see another connector with two looped black wires. Remove this; small fingers or a pair of pliers. Remove both the loops of black wire. You will have an empty connector with four slots. Replace one of the loops you removed into the middle two slots and replace the connector back into its location in the box. Replace the power loom and rescrew the back panel and you're good to go. So long as you don't stuff up my instructions you can now plug into 240V. Its worked for me.

 

Regards Martin.

[Hauser]

Sorry all, new here. The previous post was sent as reply to Crittertoo and Toast in regard to 110 to 240V conversion.

 

Regards Martin

[Hauser]

Good question... :-)

 

I've started Aries about half an hour ago from switched off. The screen continuously displays "Aries starting" but thats all. Everything worked fine last night. Anyone with a solution or suggestions ?

 

Thanks,

Martin.

[Hauser]

Back again, Seems to have sorted itself now.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

Firmware is what?

Firmware 1.6. Things have got worse.Device was recognised briefly after about forty minutes. I thought it may have been a router problem so I wired between router and aries. Then I got 'no device' and aries now displays 'apply setting'. Could firmware upgrade have something to do with this?

 

I have emailed auralic the symptoms but no reply yet.

 

Regards

Martin.

[Hauser]

Device firmware 1,11

 

Regards,

Martin.

[Hauser]

I'm in the US, is there anywhere to get a bit off the retail on the Aries? Sorry if this is not the right forum.

HI,

I've had success with group buy. Try the PS audio forum. Several members have organised purchases with worthwhile savings.

 

Regards Martin.

[Hauser]

I would also like to thank Auralic for their efforts in improving the sound from Aries. More detail, depth and less glare. Now a more natural and realistic sound. The best upgrade yet.

 

Martin

[Hauser]

After performing some tests, I have concluded that it does.

However, not the complete track unlike a track from a NAS.

 

Does this difference affect how the sources are replayed?

A question for Auralic, I think.

 

nb - test simply involved queuing a track and once playing, removing the Aries from the network.

 

According to Auralic, caching only occurs from tracks stored in memory. Anything streamed is not cached.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

I have just had a problem with Aries. Its been playing normally this evening and then mid-track stopped playing. The word 'buffering' came up on the Ipad. I tried playing another track but still no sound. Re-booted and just getting 'Aries Starting' on the display and that is as far as it will go. Also re-booted the router and still no change. Have messaged Auralic. Anyone having a similar experience or can offer suggestions to solve this?

 

Regards,

Martin.

[Hauser]

Thanks for the suggestions. Christian at Auralic has also suggested 'Resetting'. I've spent half a very frustrating day resetting and rebooting Aries, the router and the iPad. All without success. For some reason Aries won't connect to the network either by Wifi or cable. I suspect it is something internal as everything was playing normally for an hour and then for no reason music stopped playing mid-track. On the start-up sequence, the display never gets past 'Aries starting'. When connecting to the router by cable, the yellow light at the back of Aries doesn't change to green and the router port used doesn't light either. Switching off, display doesn't say 'goodbye' followed by a dim 'Auralic' but instead blinks six to two dots. Aries brain confused? Mine hurts. Only other odd behaviour occurred when updating old album art; changed art using 'Yate'. New art appears on the main page and when album is selected, but when I tap to full screen view, art reverts to previous version. Yate help say its an Auralic problem. Hoping to hear back from Auralic about initial issue.

 

Regards,

Martin.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Computer Audiophile

[Hauser]

Hi all,

 

Being a glutton for punishment and having the time, I decided to plug in Aries and see what would happen. The pleasant surprise was that it started up the way it always has as if nothing had ever happened. Despite having reset Aries at least five times, no setup was necessary, all the parts in the chain recognised each other and played nicely. I can't explain; the vagaries of CA. I'm expecting a very good upgrade of Lightning DS to make the weekend's frustration forgivable.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

Hi Jay Tee,

 

I have been having some reliability issues with my Aries recently. Its brain gets confused at times when connecting the USB hard drive. May I ask whether you have had similar issues prompting the service.

 

Regards,

Martin.

[Hauser]

15 hours ago, 2string1 said:

Can someone tell me how to get the Album art work back again? I lost it

It happens occasionally.  Try rescan.  If that doesn't work, close LDS and reopen.  Either or have worked for me in the past.

[Hauser]

15 minutes ago, mikey8811 said:

It's done now. Took over an hour.

 

It now picks up single FLAC, APE and Wavpack files with a cue and splits them into constituent tracks which is a nice thing.

 

Some off the cuff remarks - after doing the entire rescan for about 1.5 hours for a 2 Tb SMB drive and a little longer to initialise the music library, it then decided the drive was not mounted and the Music Library it saw was greyed out. Restarting fixed it. I don't know if this dropping of a recognised library happens often and is part of the new code.

 

The web interface looks like it is only for settings? That's what I have seen so far. I can't see a playback screen or access to music library like you can from other software like LMS, from there.

 

If I am using a preamp, do I disable the Volume Control under Streamer Setup? The default is enabled.

 

I left the Decoding Method under MQA Playback Setup to Auto which was the default.

 

What did you guys do with the Sampling Rate settings under Resampling Configuration in Processor Setup?

 

 

 

 

You can keep Volume Control selected.  If you want to use your pre amp volume control, just slide the Streamer one to zero on the iPad.

[Hauser]

I noticed Beta 5 says where albums have multiple discs, these will be combined into one album.  I have rescanned a couple of times, the 'The' has been ignored in albums but I still have multi disc albums with each disc displayed with its own art.  Anyone had successful aggregation?

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

16 minutes ago, mjb said:

 

Not sure if I'm imagining it, but I'm sure it sounds better with the volume control disabled, versus enabled and set to 100%.

I have found Dac volume control sounds better than  Aries  but if enabled and set to zero has no detrimental effect on sound.  Aries volume control is more for convenience when the Dac remote isn't handy.

[Hauser]

8 hours ago, mikey8811 said:

Disabling the volume control stuffs up your iPhone's audio output - it mutes it for other purposes and you then have to turn up the volume with the iPhone volume buttons.

 

Hopefully Auralic will make the disabling of volume control ONLY for Lightning DS control purposes.

You are comparatively lucky.  I disabled volume control via the web interface and it disconnected Aries.  Haven't been able to get Aries past 'Aries starting' despite reboots, resets, wired or wireless to router.  Hopefully Auralic can sort.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

25 minutes ago, 2string1 said:

How would one check the Vega to see if it is actually upsampling.I'm extremely green when it comes to this. 

Vega does not upsample/downsample.  Streamer does this.  Vega plays sample rate given and this is enumerated on display.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

12 minutes ago, alice said:

I just got my Aries today but reading through the thread it seems people have said they found a drop in quality.

I was asking because au want to make sure I don't update if it's not refined.

I'm afraid you will be out of luck with that.  Once the beta phase is over, all products are updated automatically.  There is no opt out.  Having said that, to me, all updates have been an improvement.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

Firmware updates just happen.  No intervention required.  The only option available is participation in beta testing.

 

Martin

[Hauser]

I've noticed with the change to version 5 that I now hear more base and treble.  I was going to try modifying the sound on the web interface by selecting the various DSP options.  These no longer appear available.  Have Auralic pulled this feature as being to taxing on Aries processor or am I not looking in the right place?

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

13 hours ago, mikey8811 said:

It's the latest 5.0 firmware still beta

That seems strange; my Aries changed from Beta to full ver.5 on June 7th.  I'd be surprised anyone was still on Beta firmware.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

19 hours ago, mikey8811 said:

That 5.0 is still a beta according to Mr Wang. They only changed the name. It will be a beta for a long time to come.

I've always assumed that Beta versions are opt in- opt out whereas full versions are compulsory.

 

Martin.

[Hauser]

13 hours ago, Doak said:

According to Auralic support page, 5.0 is now current firmware on all but Aries. Must assume there is a very good reason for this - as some of us have directly experienced.  See link:

Current Device Firmware

Thats interesting.  When the first Beta came out, I tried changing settings using the web interface.  As soon as I set volume control to off, Aries wouldn't re-boot or reset.  Fix involved Aries vacation to the dealer; came back refreshed and been woking fine since.  So if I'm still in Beta, I'm surprised that the DSP options have been removed but thinking Aries brain can't cope with the additional work.  I just looked at the Lightning settings and firmware says Ver.5, no mention of beta; seems contradictory to the link.  Possibly Mr Wang could clarify the confusion.

 

Martin.