Auralic Aries Mini

bruny

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Hi all
was wondering if anyone owns/heard the Aries mini, I've been reading some discussion over on the CA forum and they seem to think it's a very good device. I've been looking at streamers for while now and can't seem to make a decision. The list I have is as follows.

Pioneer N50A
Maratnz NA8005
Cambridge Audio cxn
Auralic Aries Mini

at the moment I'm streaming from a nas to my yamaha av reciever. file types are mainly MP3, Flac and high res Flac, dsd. I'm going to add an Integrated stereo amp with HT bypass into the mix for stereo duties only. I know the apps on some of these are a bit flaky. Which is something I would need to be reliable. any advice on this set up and any of the above streamers would be much appreciated.

cheers Bruny
 
anyone
 
I had one on pre-order and was well pissed off with Auralic (total lack of communication about delays and prioritised US/Japan dealers over UK pre-orders). When it finally arrived I couldn't get it working - the app was horribly unstable, connections to to the device were flaky and I never actually got any music out of it. Back it went.

I've heard that lots of others have had good results with it and my issues MAY have been my network. However the support was hopeless and I don't want a device that relies on the network being configured in a very particular way. I want my family to be able to use this, not just the geeky one !

Would be interested to hear your experiences.
 
I bought one as well and have nothing but good things to say about it. I did have a couple of hiccups getting it connected but once I did it has been great. the app is very good, sure its not perfect but they are improving it with firmware updates. I use the dac on Aries mini to my AV amp and it sounds better than anything I've used before, not that I'm an expert or anything. with a decent stereo amp the sound would improve more for me. using the app I've had no problems, I would like to see a few things improved. after using JRiver for a couple of years I think I've been spoiled in that area.
 
I looked into buying the Aries mini...but was very disappointed to find out it only supports Apple products. You need an iphone/ipad/ipod to set it up and control various settings. Neither windows or android supported to do this.

I have no Apple products at home, and did not want to invest in one and their eco system just to get a streamer to work. In this day and age i am shocked at hi fi companies that sell products that only work with the Apple products when most folks use Android/Windows.
 
I agree hermano. I only got one as I already had Apple devices in my home. you only need an Iphone/Ipad/Ipod to do the initial set-up after that I have heard of people using various android apps to control the mini. Apparently they are working on a windows web app. see bottom of this review. manufacturers response. Audiophile-grade streaming with the AURALiC Aries Mini
 
Looks just like the device I am after !! ... was looking to build a CuBox i4 PC running J-River talking to an external DAC and pulling hi-res files from my NAS into my Arcam AV amp ... but this looks like it will do the biz in one box at a lower price !

Bruny - did you buy one with an HD or are you using a NAS ? ... I've got a SONOS system for all my CD rips but I would like a separate system for my HD rips (controlling from an iOS app is fine) ... did you get the upgraded power supply and/or usb plug - was it worth it ?

Jon
 
I had one on pre-order and was well pissed off with Auralic (total lack of communication about delays and prioritised US/Japan dealers over UK pre-orders). When it finally arrived I couldn't get it working - the app was horribly unstable, connections to to the device were flaky and I never actually got any music out of it. Back it went.

I've heard that lots of others have had good results with it and my issues MAY have been my network. However the support was hopeless and I don't want a device that relies on the network being configured in a very particular way. I want my family to be able to use this, not just the geeky one !

Would be interested to hear your experiences.

I have the full size Aries, it has worked faultlessly since the day I installed it. I have had an issue with the iOS app but Auralic got back to me within five hours.
It couldn't be easier to operate (all the family use it) and is sounds stunning via its USB output.
Slightly different view...
 
Looks just like the device I am after !! ... was looking to build a CuBox i4 PC running J-River talking to an external DAC and pulling hi-res files from my NAS into my Arcam AV amp ... but this looks like it will do the biz in one box at a lower price !

Bruny - did you buy one with an HD or are you using a NAS ? ... I've got a SONOS system for all my CD rips but I would like a separate system for my HD rips (controlling from an iOS app is fine) ... did you get the upgraded power supply and/or usb plug - was it worth it ?

Jon

Hi Jon, I'm not using an internal HD, been thinking about adding one but it streams seamlessly from my NAS. not sure whether the extra outlay would be worth it. I did get an upgraded power supply. this is the one I got. Sbooster BOTW P&P ECO. got it from here 15V Volt Linear Power Supply for Auralic Aries LE/Femto/Mini Streamer. To my ears and in my system I found it improved the sound quality quite alot, I think it was worth it. Apparently it's more beneficial to have the upgraded power supply if you use the Aries mini internal DAC. Which I do. YMMV. you can get the Auralic power supply here. AURALiC PSU. review of power supply here Audio Ramblings - The Auralic Aries and SBooster Linear Power Supply - Positive Feedback There is a decent thread dedicated to the mini over here Auralic Aries Mini
 
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I have a aries mini with a 960gb ssd inside and connected to a synology nas as well, I have flac and dsd files on the internal and everything else on the nas. I had a few problems to start with but auralic cust services sorted them very quickly . I cant fault the playback it blows away the naim unitiserve i used to have and the app on the ipad is brilliant
 
Celsius - do you run analogue audio out of your Aries or digital to another DAC ?
 
So mine arrived last week and hooked into the AVR550 over Easter - easy setup via the app and sees all my HD music of all formats - using the Aries onboard DAC to send analogue audio to the cd inputs an listening through CD Direct mode (i.e. no Dirac processing) ... great sound - will need to do some proper listening when I get a few hours peace and quiet !
 
Slight amend to above post ... seems Aries can't process dvd-audio .iso files ... will email the support guys and see what can/is being done about it ...
 
Update - got quick feedback from support guys - seems can't see/use .iso files (and no plans at the moment to change that) so will just have to extract separate files into folders - no real problem ... found iso2dsd programme for OSX which works great on the sacd iso's - just hunting for a similar dvd-a one :)
 
In order for the Aries (or any other UPnP music file streamer for that matter) to support the streaming of SACD & dvd-audio .iso files, the individual music file tracks need to be separated out so that the UPnP controller app can be used in the normal way for the user to build a playlist. Under UPnP, the music file tracks are (individually) made available to the controller app and the streamer by the UPnP/DLNA media server.

So it would be the UPnP/DLNA media server that would need to support the SACD & dvd-audio .iso files (and not the UPnP streamer nor the UPnP controller app), by separating them out into their constituent DSD & WAV file tracks respectively. This could be implemented in the UPnP media server's transcoder (ie, converting in memory on the fly while streaming), so avoid you having to manually convert the .iso files yourself, offline and of course leave the original .iso files untouched.

Having said all that, the Auralic Aries is rather unique for a purpose built UPnP music file streamer in that it also runs an internal UPnP media server in its firmware, known as the Lightning Server. So strictly speaking the Aries could be made to support these .iso files, or more precisely, its Lightning Server UPnP media server could be made to.

The only UPnP/DLNA media server that I know of, that is supposed to be able to transcode SACD and dvd-audio .iso's into their constituent music file tracks is the one that comes with the Foobar2000 music file player Windows application (requires the foo_upnp, foo_sacd_input & foo_input_dvda plugins).

I believe the JRiver Media Center application's UPnP/DLNA media server can do something similar for SACD .iso files, but not dvd-audio ones.
 
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Cebolla - useful post - I was hoping that the Lightning DS streamer software could handle .iso's but it doesn't at the moment ... so I'm splitting them out into individual tracks that it can handle ... the reason I went for the Aries mini was so I didn't have to run a pc box and a DAC - it's no biggie in the scheme of things - just would / will have been nice ;-)
 
Feeling quite torn between this and something like Sonos. Just trying to weight up how important multiroom sync'd playback actually is for me!
 
Am still getting used to the Aries mini and the app as have only had the weekend to play but it seems to work quite well ... cover art display bit like iTunes is easy to see but seem to only be able to apply one filter, eg artist or album title, whereas iTunes does allow Artist and then by release date as a sub filter to keep them organised sensibly - maybe this will come ...

Nice to see file sample data/etc in the top pane ...

My main issue now is how to add/edit the metadata/tags for the tracks - there is quite a mixture of file formats, track titles and can't seem to find a way of telling it about compilation discs (like iTunes) where it doesn't split the tracks up ! ... all good fun though !
 
Feeling quite torn between this and something like Sonos. Just trying to weight up how important multiroom sync'd playback actually is for me!
Blimey, the Aries is in a different league to Sonos. The problem with Sonos is that it doesn't do Hi-Res.
 

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