Auralic Aries

@paulcreed 

I found Auralic actually plays fine with Roon.  However, as I noted in an earlier post in this thread, Lighting DS (“LDS”), sounds significantly better than Roon whether streaming Qobuz or playing a file on a NAS. I’m not the only user with this view.  If you want the user interface, go Roon and be happy - it still sounds good over Auralic units.  If you want the best sonics available from the unit, go LDS and be happy as it works just fine as a library management system as well.  

With respect to Auralic vs any number of streaming transports - there’s a fair amount of differing opinions.  My takeaway is that they’re all pretty good and they get better as you go up the food chain within each line. That’s certainly been my experience.  

As you stated, it’s not night and day difference, but those differences do reveal themselves mostly via more spatial information, particularly depth, and to a lessor extent, more detail. 

I was also well rewarded with network tweaks and cable upgrades.  You may find the G1 rewards such efforts as well.

Best,

It’s kind of funny that I went this route, as my primary interest lies in analog. Unfortunately, due to space concerns in my current housing arrangement, I figured I’d get the most mileage out of a DAC/Streamer combo. No point in shelling out for a hifi turntable if it’s just going to sit next to my Technics in storage.

@mgrif104 I’m running the Aries via WiFi, which is what Auralic recommends in the manual. Experimenting with an Ethernet connection isn’t really in the cards, unfortunately,  as it would probably be at least a 30 foot run from the router to to the room I have my stereo in.

Roon isn’t really something I’m interested in pursuing, as I’m extremely impressed with the LightningDS interface. Especially the Tidal integration, which was a concern I had while shopping for a streamer.

I love analog as well. The Aries was the first major step for me to realize sound that was equally satisfying compared to analog.

A simple trick if you want to plug in the Aries, or any streamer, when you are not next to the router. You buy a wifi extender… that plugs in like a wall wart near your streamer (really easy to configure, just push two buttons… and it’s done). The extender has an Ethernet port on it. Works great. One of the reasons I bought my Aries was because it had the ability to put itself on the wifi, as my router was upstairs. All my streamers are on using extenders, sound great. 

@ghdprentice Thanks! I’ll look into that! Any particular brand you’d recommend?

@rfnoise - I personally use a google WiFi mesh system with 3 waypoints, plugging the primary unit into my initial router, (which I have completely locked down for security purposes and have turned off WiFi broadcasting),  In essence, I can have two distinct WiFi networks if I wanted.  In any case, the WiFi points connect to the primary and create a much more stable signal across the house.  And, each provides the ability to plug devices in via an Ethernet cable. So, it solves two problems - eliminating poor and uneven coverage across my three floors, and providing a secure, stable and fast short connection for my streaming transport.  There are other mesh units you can get, but google’s works fairly well for a modest price.