Auralic Aires: Optimizing sound quality

[prot]

My personal improvements to better the SQ of the Aries:

 

The Aries sits, together with its psu and the dac, on a stand with sorbathene feet made of Nero Assoluto Granite by Vertex AQ (UK).

 

On top of the Aries there is a tailor-made plate (2 KG weight) of Nero Assoluto Granite with sorbathene feet to suck the vibrations out of the housing.

 

A Pico grounding block by Vertex AQ is connected to the PSU of the Aries and my Resonessence Concero HD dac.

 

The PSU of the Aries is connected to power via an Event power cable by Zuaudio and standing o a set of Tripods by Vertex AQ.

 

I replaced the wall wart 2 amps smps for the HD with a 5 amps non switching mode power supply, put a Zuaudio Birth power cable in front of it and set the phase right.

 

Also did I place my 4 TB WD-HD on a special support stand made of Nero Assoluto granite with sobathene feet under it.

 

The connection between the Aries and the dac is made with an Audioquest Diamond USB cable.

 

An Aubisque USB Filter by Ultrafi is situated between the USB cable and the dac.

 

The connection between the WD HD and the Aries is made with an Audioquest Diamond USB3 cable.

 

The original psu of my airport extreme is replaced by a 5 amps non switching mode power supply with a Zuaudio Bok power cable in front of it.

 

My Netgar NAS its situated on on a special support stand made of Nero Assoluto granite with sobathene feet under it. The original power Cable of the nas has been replaced by a Bok power cable by Zuaudiio.

 

The connections between the Nas and the Airport express as well as the Aries and the Airport express is established with Audioquest Diamond RJ 45 ethernet cables.

 

 

Cheers,

Matthias

 

Kinda speechless here. May I ask how much did you pay for those Nero Assoluto plates and the sorbathene feet?

[prot]

I got the sorbathene feet from Great Britain. They are 25 Pounds plus shipment for a set of four.

 

The Nero Assoluto base plates are between 80 and 300 Euros depending on their size plus the feet and a special glue to attach the feet to them.

 

Well, at least you did not pay super audiophile prices ... although brute Nero granit plates do cost about €40/qm and that's enough for your usecase. Btw, I use bluetack instead of any "special glue"...that stuff is the audiophile's duct tape

I'm impressed by the amount of work you put into that setup ... just not sure it's worth the effort in terms of soundQ... unless you do it for fun

[prot]

Before I got the Aries I have been playing my DSD files with Audirvana on a Macbook Pro i7 SSD using my Resonessence Concero HD dac.

 

I did a lot of SQ comparisons with multiple USB sticks, SSDs and 2,5" bus powered HDs.

 

The best sounding combination in my case was a 64 GB Micro SD card from Sandisk sitting in a Nifty drive.

 

With this solution the space for my music files was very limited because there is just one slot for the nifty drive in the Macbook Pro.

 

So, I did always have to change the content of the drive to be able to listen to my favourite tracks.

 

The second best choice was a 2,5" bus powered 1 TB My Passport slim drive from WD, that sounded even better than the internal original Apple SSD.

 

I did as well try several Samsung SSDs via the adapter that came with the SSDs without using a special housing for them.

 

The 2,5" bus powered My Passport slim drive from WD came out on top again.

 

I tried various USB-Sticks and bus powered 2,5" HDs and SSDs with the Aries, before I settled for the 4 TB MY Book Studio by WD that I am using right now.

 

I do like the comfort of being able to have ALL my music on one drive, as soon as the incompatibility issues with certain files using Lightning Server will have been solved.

 

Any whatsoever storing device using the Aries USB-port for powering altered the SQ to the bad side.

 

I did also try various external powered 3,5" HDs in housings by LaCie, Seagate and WD.

 

My experience was. If there is a fan and a PSU in the housing the performance is poor.

 

I put my fanless 4 TB My Book Studio WD HD on a special base and replaced the 2 Amp Wallwart SMPS with a 5 Amp linear PSU.

 

Those two changes bettered the SQ a lot.

 

ALL things said before are of course just my personal findings with my gear.

 

Experiences may vary with other persons ears and other gear, as always.

 

 

Things I did not try so far: externally powered SSDs and battery power for my 4TB WD HD.

 

 

Maybe someone on the forum can write about his experiences with this………

 

 

Cheers,

Matthias

 

This may become an annoying mantra, but may I ask how exactly did you test all those things? Any abx or blind testing?

PC storageX vs. storageY would be easy to do with the foobar abx plugin. But linn vs. auralic may get pretty ugly ... so, how exactly did you test that?