Auralic Aries Mini

[pfed]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm planning to connect MINI to my old vintage dac 16/44.1 via SPDIF. Do you know if it is possible to downsample DoP to 44.1 or 48k sample rate?

 

Also, what is current situation with cue sheet support?

 

Thanks

[pfed]

Hi pfed

 

Seeing as you're planning on using a "vintage DAC" that presumably can't handle a DSD audio signal, what you actually mean is DSD to PCM conversion (at a 44.1kHz sample rate), rather than DoP (DSD over PCM) which is still DSD.

 

Also, bear in mind the Aries MINI is a UPnP streamer. This means it can only play music files by streaming the individual music file tracks from a UPnP media server. With the Aries models you have the option of streaming the music files from an external UPnP media server running on a networked device or from its internal built-in UPnP media server known as the Lightning Server. The Aries's Lightning Server can be configured with music files from network shared folders in addition to music files from a locally attached storage drive.

 

So, don't expect the Aries MINI nor any other UPnP streamer to support streaming of the actual cue sheet files. Cue sheet file support can only be handled by the UPnP media server. AFAIK the Aries's built-in Lightning Server doesn't support cue sheets, so you'll be forced to using the Aries with an external UPnP media server that does support them.

 

Also, the Aries doesn't currently support conversion to PCM output to an external DAC when streaming DSD files. You could instead use a UPnP media server that can transcode the DSD files to a PCM format, so convert them on the fly while streaming. I don't believe the Aries's Lightning Server has this transcoding ability, so (as for cue sheet support) you are going to need to use an external UPnP media server for this support.

 

John

 

Hi John,

 

Thanks a lot for explanation. Yes, I'm mistaken in terminology. I actually mean DSD to PCM conversion. I'm currently running pc with software player which converts DSD to PCM and sends it to my DAC.

So in short as I understand I'll get silence with A.MINI by playing DSD files to my DAC... ;(

 

My main idea is actually get rid of PC, so implementing additional UPnP purely for transcoding is not ideal

 

But at least in terms of downsampling hi-res PCM content (24/88 flacs for example) there shouldn't be issues, am I correct?