Auralic Aries (Hardware) - Impressions and Information

[Morph]

26 minutes ago, Darock said:

@Morph

It would be very interesting to get your views on the differencies between Auralics decoding vs Mytek Brooklyn's hardware decoding.

 

Darock

@ Darock

 

I'll get down to some serious listening later and post my thoughts. 

 

Morph

[erikd]

21 minutes ago, Leeuwarden said:

 

 

+1! Very happy!

mee too, Happ happy

[Darock]

1 minute ago, Morph said:

@ Darock

 

I'll get down to some serious listening later and post my thoughts. 

 

Morph

Thanks!

Looking forward to hear your thoughts.

I'm very very happy with the overall SQ of the new firmware.

What a great Easter gift from Auralic :-)

 

Darock

 

[michaelg]

Testing with my Mini - things work just fine. I'm pondering that AURALiC - given enough time -  has a quite good  track record of actually implementing the ideas/features they come up with -- up/resampling, Roon, memory playback etc. They  haven't delivered room correction yet  but I won't be surprised if it arrives some day. 

[JbJordan]

Fantastic!

[George Hincapie]

I have a Mini and a Femto Aries; when will the non-beta version of this update be released?

[pl_svn]

... when beta testing stage is over

[George Hincapie]

I hate you 

[michaelg]

12 minutes ago, George Hincapie said:

I have a Mini and a Femto Aries; when will the non-beta version of this update be released?

 

I saw this on http://www.digitalaudioreview.net:

 

“The typical time period between first beta version and final release is a month. We are expecting a much shorter time period for this update as we have already done a lot of internal testing”, says Wang.

[George Hincapie]

Thank you Michael. Appreciated.

[2string1]

With the update can you use windows web browser like chrome or do you still have to use the ipad?

[michaelg]

1 minute ago, 2string1 said:

With the update can you use windows web browser like chrome or do you still have to use the ipad?

Works fine in Chrome on my Windows 10 PC.

[Morph]

22 minutes ago, George Hincapie said:

I have a Mini and a Femto Aries; when will the non-beta version of this update be released?

@George Hincapie

 

Hi George

 

Out of interest how do you rate the Mini against the Femto? Is there a huge step up in SQ etc?

I ask because I have the Mini and have held back on getting the Femto due to the imminent release of the Aries MK2. Just interested to see the opinion of someone who has both.

 

Morph

 

[2string1]

5 minutes ago, michaelg said:

Works fine in Chrome on my Windows 10 PC.

where is the download for Lightning DS

[Leeuwarden]

In the app store 

[michaelg]

1 minute ago, 2string1 said:

where is the download for Lightning DS

There's not yet an non-beta, new release of LDS. The web interface requires no software installation. One gets the IP adress of the streamer, either using LDS or from one's router and then direct the browser to e.g. http://a.b.c.d where "a.b.c.d"  is the IP address found. 

[George Hincapie]

18 minutes ago, Morph said:

@George Hincapie

 

Hi George

 

Out of interest how do you rate the Mini against the Femto? Is there a huge step up in SQ etc?

I ask because I have the Mini and have held back on getting the Femto due to the imminent release of the Aries MK2. Just interested to see the opinion of someone who has both.

 

Morph

 

 

There is a real and noticeable improvement in SQ with the Aries Femto, but whether it's worth 3 times the cost of the Mini is a choice only you can decide. I suspect for most people, the Mini would be sufficient.

[Morph]

1 minute ago, George Hincapie said:

 

There is a real and noticeable improvement in SQ with the Aries Femto, but whether it's worth 3 times the cost of the Mini is a choice only you can decide. I suspect for most people, the Mini would be sufficient.

 

Interesting. I'm hedging my bets and hoping/assuming that the Mark 2 ( which Mr Wang has stated previously will be a marked step up in SQ over the original ) will be a huge step up on the Mini. It's my intention to stop spending all of my money on hifi and hopefully the Mark 2 will fulfill my expectations!

 

Morph

[pl_svn]

ok... found what the issue with SMB shares is: if you have set a user/password on the NAS and password contains "&"... the Aries does actually mount it (at least according to both Lightning DS and web UI) but scanning for music files miserably fails 

 

changed the password and all is fine now 

[Anthro]

Have you guys successfully upscaled 44khz to, for example, 352 kHz? For some reason its not working for me.

[mfalcon]

At this point are most people using lightning server with there Nas or do some still use Minimserver.  I've been using Minimserver the whole time and really have no complaints so I've been hesitant to change.

[Doak]

1 hour ago, Anthro said:

Have you guys successfully upscaled 44khz to, for example, 352 kHz? For some reason its not working for me.

 

Does your DAC normally do DXD (24/352.8) OK?

My Lampizator does not, so now I can upsample it to 24/384 and all is copacetic. 

Pretty cool!

[michaelg]

2 hours ago, mfalcon said:

At this point are most people using lightning server with there Nas or do some still use Minimserver.  I've been using Minimserver the whole time and really have no complaints so I've been hesitant to change.

 

When  you're happy with Minim server, just stay with it. Lightning Server gives a few extra features like showing albums in the order they were updated on your NAS (e.g. bought). And sort after sample rate, I think.

[Anthro]

4 hours ago, Doak said:

 

Does your DAC normally do DXD (24/352.8) OK?

My Lampizator does not, so now I can upsample it to 24/384 and all is copacetic. 

Pretty cool!

Yeah i have the Chord 2Qute. It can output 352.8 just fine as i have succes upsampling to this frequency using Roon. To be more exact using the beta firmware i am unable to upsample to any other frequency then the original input frequency.

[Morph]

10 hours ago, Darock said:

Thanks!

Looking forward to hear your thoughts.

I'm very very happy with the overall SQ of the new firmware.

What a great Easter gift from Auralic :-)

 

Darock

 

@Darock 

 

Well I've had a good listen to both Tidal MQA and Auralic's new offering and frankly can't discern any difference between them. I'll keep at it but it seems all good to my ears.