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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
 
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
315 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.


Post removed 
mikhaelkuz
56 posts
 
Exile_ken, given modest system I believe it will be hard to justify expense for an expensive streamer such as auralic or aurender.
Perhaps simple device as oppo 103 (or better 105), which is streamer/dac/player/preamp will serve you better. Jriver is $50 and will handle absolutely everything you throw into it, and many times more powerful then LightingDS. The only loss being playback without pause and lack of Tidal integration (you can still play Tidal on oppo). 
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