Auralic Aries Mini

[Miklaszewski]

Received mine with the linear psu a few days ago. Intial setup was pc, dedicated usb card, jitterbug, ipower usb, ilink, oyade coax, nad m51, primare pre + power 30, sonus faber grand piano domus & rel t7. Started with mini trough coax direct to nad, then tried with usb out trough ilink, to finally realize the aries mini dac sounds better than the nad m51. So than I tested the mini outs to the primare pre vs direct to the power amp. The final being the best sounding. Conlusion: simple is better and the mini is a great device.

[Miklaszewski]

I tried real hard to convince myself otherwise, been in love with the nad m51 since it came out, but I did some severe switching back and forth, even invited a friend over who's ears I trust as much as mine, and there was no way around it. Better dac, less devices, the reason I do not know, but the mini is producing a more defined sound and a more natural timbre.

[Miklaszewski]

You can always buy a linear psu in europe later on.

[Miklaszewski]

No, I meant it the other way . But I see now why you read it like this: I made a mistake. Sorry for that. I meant RRRega and not Vega.

 

The Wadia121 was (at that time in 2013) definitely better than the Rega Dac-R, Gold Note DAC7, Audiolab M-DAC and M2Tech Young. The latter is very good, but needed special drivers and I wasn't fond of that either (risk for compatibiliy).

 

I really would be keen to test drive the Aries Mini with a LPS. Could it beat or equal current DACs upto € 1.000,-!?

 

I had a NAD M51 and sold it immediatly after getting the Mini with the linear PSU.

[Miklaszewski]

I'm trying to figure that out - is the DAC better? Not sure yet. I can say this:

 

Aries Mini pulling Tidal or NAS files and DAC'ing them is better than

Oppo pulling Tidal or NAS files and DAC'ing them

 

Haven't tried yet Aries Mini pulling Tidal or NAS files -> Oppo105d for DAC vs Aries Mini for both.

 

I think the Aries DAC (DAC only section) may be better.

 

What I see on Oppo105d-only vs AriesMini only is better detail, and more importantly, less high-end sheen (noise?) on certain classical passages that really makes a big difference. Going back and forth it makes the Oppo105d hard to listen to. Example: Telarc 1. Piano Concerto No. 5 'Emperor' - Serkin/Ozawa. First 30 seconds. I mention it specifically because I can play 5 othe tracks and basically not hear a difference so it depends.

 

I think the DAC on the Aries may be a lot better than people think.

 

Made me sell my Nad M51.

[Miklaszewski]

double post, sorry

[Miklaszewski]

Hello everyone.I have checked a few of the Auralic posts on the site but I can't find the exact answer. So any help would be great. First of all. very excited about having the Auralic mini. I wanted something other than my MacBook Pro to play hi res files. I have a Chord Electronics DAVE DAC and some B & W 803 D speakers to play the music through however, I purchased it recently and i cannot get my files to load into the Auralic. So I connected it to my network, no problems. I have all of my Hi Res files on a Toshiba Canvio 3.0 external hard drive.So, first I plugged the Toshiba drive into the mini and selected “existing music library” from the app menu during set up. I then selected the USB drive option…. it then says there was an error.So. I went to my Mac and saw the Auralic under the “sharing” tab in the Mac finder details. I tried dumping the files from the toshiba into the Auralic… no success. Then I tried transferring all the files from the Toshiba onto the Mac and from the Mac onto the Auralic. It just won’t do it. Can anybody suggest something?It seems like a simple machine to workRegardsRob

 

try defragmenting the drive, has worked for me

[Miklaszewski]

Has anyone tried the beta firmware with a MQA dac? I use the mytek brooklyn and with the beta firmware, as it decodes via software, I cant get native mqa from tidal. Had to reverse to latest build. Is there a way to disable mqa software decoding on the beta firmware?