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Auralic Aries

Since getting my DAC I’ve been using Tidal via my laptop as my primary source, but the noise from the PC usb connection has gotten to be insufferable. So I’ve been looking at some dedicated streamers. The Aurender and Lumin gear seemed to be pretty much out of my budget, so I turned my eye to the Auralic Aries, Cambridge CXN, and Pro-ject Streambox. The onboard DAC and automatic upsampling on the Cambridge didn’t appeal to me, and I had I hard time seeing myself paying over $800 for Pro-ject’s suped up rPi, whereas I’ve read nothing but good things about Auralic. So today I won an auction for a pre-owned Aries with linear power supply for $695 including shipping. How’d I do? Seemed like a reasonable price to me...

Anyone know of any known issues to look out for on a pre-owned unit?

rfnoise
ghdprentice
6,380 posts
 
@mgrif104


I never directly compared the N100 with the Aries G2 on my large system (the Aurender N100 was on my headphone system, which is also very revealing). I inferred that it would win… it is very impressive for its cost. I was so impressed I didn’t think it was worth the trouble of swapping the Aurender into my main system. For a while I used both systems for evaluate components. In listening the N10 wins without any question in all aspects. Did you listen to the N10 before the power supply upgrade they did a couple years ago? I find power supplies really important. Also, the DAC you use. I had a Sim Moon 650D with the add on separate power supply… it really striped things naked and was dead quiet… so if you fed it a signal that was not pristine, you heard it. Ultimately the performance depends on the system the component is in. My systems are pretty revealing and a weakness is really obvious.
ghdprentice
6,380 posts
 
@rfnoisewell compared with a PC the Auralic is definitely a step up.
jond's avatar
jond
5,663 posts
 
No noise from my Aries Mini whatsoever.
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,789 posts
 
Brother hasAries Mini, LPS into a Lampizator Amber II… very nice

have fun
ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
4,280 posts
 
+whatever on Aries, @rfnoise.  Hope you enjoy yours for a long time.

I also have an Aries Mini. Blame jond. Bought soon after he did. Never a lick of trouble and NOT noisy. I run wirelessly and use an iFi power supply (with their proprietary noise reduction). Run the Aries Mini via USB to Schiit Eitr to Schiit Gungnir. Control is via their Lightning DS app using an ancient iPhone. Auralic has updated software (and firmware?) several times over the years. The only little eccentricity worth reporting is on graphics. I burn my CDs to an external hard drive in ALAC and when the CD is accompanied by artwork from Apple, the Aries won’t display it. BUT if I have gone on the ’net to find artwork that Apple could not, for whatever reason, the Aries does show that. Metadata is unaffected in those instances, shows just fine in either case.
Very satisfied with sound quality.

Having said all that, I am sore tempted by the Aries G1. But at nearly 5x what I spent on the Mini, I am resisting. Especially given that I suspect it will yield, at most, an incremental improvement over the Mini. Am ready to hear from others that made the jump and found otherwise. The other consideration is that gear in my modest system is not the limiter of music enjoyment. It’s the recording quality (assuming composition and performance are "worthwhile") that’s the biggest factor in that regard.
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