Article: Review | AURALiC ARIES G2.1

[OldBigEars]

On 12/4/2020 at 12:51 AM, McNulty said:

A review without sonic comparisons to functionally similar products is no review IMO. 

 

It's an awkward situation for publishers.  Comparative reviews always have losers....meaning unhappy sponsors and advertisers.  It's a commercial predicament all reviewers face - Chris is no different.  One common practice is that some reviewers compare products with outlier brands, often products that would not realistically be main competitor(s) for the tested product.  It's a facade, but it at least gives some kind of reference point. Another one is to basically rank all the products in more or less in the same order as their prices - we can call this the "everyone wins" review. 

 

Obviously anyone reading this review would dearly appreciate an honest and qualified assessment of how it compares with other favorites - such as the Innuous Mk3 Statement or Sonore Signature, to name but two. Sadly this remains an elephant in the room. My take-away is that we're meant to use some kind of triangulation process to discover how this product really ranks, compared with similarly targeted products.

[OldBigEars]

9 hours ago, barrows said:

I prefer to use the term "Renderer" for devices like this Auralic, rather than "streamer".  To me the word streamer connotes content coming from the Internet (Qobuz/Tidal), but what these types of devices actually do is to Render audio file data for delivery to a DAC via typical DAC inputs (USB, AES/SPDIF).  The content can come from  an Internet based source (over Ethernet), or home based files from a NAS, server, or other attached storage medium (also Ethernet, or a directly attached local storage drive).

The benefits of Renderers, is that they can be built to deliver digital audio data to a DAC in the most perfect way, with the least amount of associated noise, and with the most perfect signal integrity (or not).  By having a well designed Renderer, one can achieve the best possible sound quality, without some of the limitations presented by commercial computer gear (hard drives, commercial MoBos, compromised power supply designs and clocking elements, etc).

 

So....in short....you're saying a "renderer" like, for example a Sonore product or this Auralic, produces better sound quality than a streamer?  Just making sure I got that....