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AURALiC Aries price reduction

I have been considering ditching my "laptop as music server" setup I have been using for the past 7 years and purchasing the  AURALiC Aries music streamer.  Last week Audio Advisor dropped the price of the "full" version of this product to $1,279.99, a $319 savings.  Upscale Audio and HiFi Heaven have followed suit . Has anyone on this forum heard why the price drop?  Is AURALiC getting ready to release an update / upgrade / Aries II?  If so then I play the mind game of do I wait until the updated version is released, or purchase something at a reduced price that I was pretty close to sold on based on all the positive reviews.  

Any information would be appreciated.  Also, if you own one, what is your opinion?  If you upgraded from a Mac or PC to the Aries, was the sound upgrade worth the price of admission?  My biggest concern is if the Lightning DS will meet my needs.  I have invested a lot of time building my library and tags in Foobar 2000, which I will have jettison if I go with the Aries.  I am a TIdal HiFi subscriber, so I know the Aries will work well with that, and the Lightning DS interface would most likely be a step up from the Tidal interface..

Anyway, thank you for reading, and any constructive suggestions / opinions you have to offer.
exile_ken
mikhaelkuz
56 posts
 
exile_ken, yes now it is running Lightning server and LightningDS.
I have approximately 60,000 tracks from various sources (my different rips, tracks purchases, hdtracks downloads, etc) and library is very manageable. I did not measure, but it took less then an hour for sure to load and index it from my NAS (Synology 414 with 12G of drives). Integration with Tidal is pretty dicent (for example when I am search for track in my library search terms remains when I am click Tidal, which is very useful). Tidal sounds way better now then with OPPO app.
There are some quirks (not all album artwork shows up, I have to figure out why) and it is by no means a swiss-knife jriver (I have to try jriver+BubbleUpnp I used with OPPO) - but still not bad. I am running 5.1 beta, and having my CUE-based rips plays without pauses is great (OPPO could not).
I am running LightningDS on new ipad with 128G memory. As a convenience it worked I would say B- so far, but as playback quality concern - A+ (at least compared to my PC, OPPO or previous cheap streamers, which were even worse). Is it femto clock, is it AES/EBU vs coaх I do not know.

wharfy's avatar
wharfy
320 posts
 
Exile-Ken-I have both the Aurender and Aries. I originally purchased the Aries for my main system Audio Research components driving ProAc speakers and really liked the sound and user friendly features. Lightning DS is a great feature because I can use it on my iphone and ipad. Access to my music files is seamless also.

Then, visiting my local audio shop, I heard the Aurender played through my system and realized how much better it is in my system. The sound appeals to me because it is CD quality-dynamic, detailed, great extension top to bottom, front to back, side to side. Also, the conductor app is great. It sets up in a snap and there is very short wait time to access music files.

What I’ve learned having both of these is the following-
Aries is a great server at its price point if your music system/components are price point proportional. I kept the Aries, for now, and am using it in my bedroom system, which is a Cayin 50T driving a pair of Audio Physic speakers.

If you have spent a lot of money to assemble a system that has the most/best sound qualities you aspire for, then purchasing an Aurender is worth it. And as others have said the N100 does come up for sale for under 2K. And when they do, they sell quickly.

Hope my comments are helpful.
mikhaelkuz
56 posts
 
wharfy, from your perspective what is "price point proportional"? IMHO it is hard to justify (for me at least) price of a streamer to be the same as DAC/preamp.
Also comparing oranges to oranges - Auralic Aries femto used now runs 1000 or below, so there still a gap of ~1K. However I hope sound quality will justify the difference in price. Everyone I heard is very happy with Aurender, and apparently it is much less quirky then Aries. But Aries has coax and AES/EBU outputs, and some DACs do not have USB input (of sufficient quality at least) -so in those cases you will need an extra USB to SPDIF convertor, another piece in a puzzle, etc.
I tried to compare CD rip fed with Aries with CD played on the same player which is my DAC, and was not able to hear any difference. So it is hard to imagine how much better (for CD rips at least) Aurender can be. But I was wrong before, many times )).
wharfy's avatar
wharfy
320 posts
 
mikhaelkuz-Yes, you are correct; you added useful info about input/outputs and price point.

"Price point proportional"-I compared the Aurender sound quality on my bedroom system with my main system. What the Aurender does well, imo, isn't apparent in the bedroom set-up. The Aries mates well with this equipment. 
exile_ken OP
8 posts
 
Thank you both for your feedback.  Its good to know that Lightning can handle my library.  Hopefully it wont lose my tags (a lot of time and effort spent).  Wharfy I have what would be considered mid-fi system to most Hi End aficionados, and for me and my financial reality the Aries is about as high as I would go.  For the record my system is made up of the following:

Trenner & Friedl Art speakers
Forte Model 4 Amplifier (upgraded by John Soderberg)
Furutech ADL GT40 Preamp / DAC
Music Hall MMF 5.1 TT
Lenovo T430 / 8 GBs RAM / Windows 10 
Foobar 2000

All items except the Forte Model 4 and T430 purchased used on Audiogon.


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