Auralic Aries Mini vs Bluesound Node ll vs Sonos

@jond Are you using the built-in DAC? If so, let me spend your money by saying that you have significant upgrade potential with most external DACs. That dac isn't really up to the quality of the server portion of the Mini, nor to the rest of your gear. So if it sounds great now using the built-in dac, even bluer skies are ahead. Cheers,
Spencer

@sbank Not using the internal Dac it outputs to my Yamamoto YDA-1 Dac and sounds fantastic! Thanks Spencer it does sound great!

In looking to buy one this month but not sure when they may change the auralic mini. Which unit has the best sound quality in stock format blue sound or auralic mini, which has the best potential sound quality? I want to stream tidal through a streamer. My budget new or used is under $600. I have primaluna prologue 2 and omega 3xrs speakers. I have a Concero Jd and bel canto Dac 2. I love soundstage , imaging  and resolution. Female vocals acoustic guitar and piano are the instruments I like. I don't listen to much complicated music.

Aries mini. USB out to your own dac + 1 free year of Tidal. No contest.

You know, if Auralic just made a player that was compatible with Squeezelite we’d be done!

Squeezelite is an open source music player that runs on Linux and makes it behave like a Squeezebox. So many player appliances are based on Linux this is often rather easy to do.

It also makes it rather easy to turn a Rasbperry Pi 3 to an Asynch USB 2.0 source.

Best,


Erik