Auralic Aries


Since getting my DAC I’ve been using Tidal via my laptop as my primary source, but the noise from the PC usb connection has gotten to be insufferable. So I’ve been looking at some dedicated streamers. The Aurender and Lumin gear seemed to be pretty much out of my budget, so I turned my eye to the Auralic Aries, Cambridge CXN, and Pro-ject Streambox. The onboard DAC and automatic upsampling on the Cambridge didn’t appeal to me, and I had I hard time seeing myself paying over $800 for Pro-ject’s suped up rPi, whereas I’ve read nothing but good things about Auralic. So today I won an auction for a pre-owned Aries with linear power supply for $695 including shipping. How’d I do? Seemed like a reasonable price to me...

Anyone know of any known issues to look out for on a pre-owned unit?

rfnoise
@rfnoise .

Sure hearing more notes can be attributed to lowering the noise floor. But a lot of damage is done to the sound stage, imaging, and background long before the level of covering up actual musical notes occurs. For instance, in a symphony hall when the orchestra slowly fades out into absolute silence and you are left with this airy silence and cavernous quiet. If your system is reproducing this, the music fades but you are not drawn into this cavernous comfortable silence… that is the noice floor jacking you up… like an amp with the bias too high. It isn’t that you hear it directly, it is indirect… like undifferentiated pressure on your eardrums. A lack of being drawn into the silence.

@kmmd ‘’I mention costs on a component to help people get an idea of the category of component I am speaking about. People on this forum have greatly different exposure to audio components. Some low end some high end. So instead of making most of the readers look up some component it is offered as a convenient reference point… that I am not talking about cheap or highly exotic components. Yes, in general, you get what you pay for. Also in the case of the Sim components I think few people would know that they offer a power supply that is as sophisticated as the actual component. It is a shorthand. If every detail was carefully fleshed out such not to allow someone to find an opening to criticize, then every post would be pages long and no one would read them.

@Jond ..

Source component noise floors are critical because the rest of the chain is a series of amplifications. Even if the noise floor of the streamer is low, what noise is boosted and then added to the noise of the next component. Just like in analog the source is most critical in what is to follow.
@ghdprentice I appreciate the rather eloquent elaboration. That must be the “blacker blacks” I keep reading about. I have to admit, that must be some kind of power supply you’ve got. I bet when that baby hits 88mph you see some serious sh*t!

Seriously though, I really am pleased with the sound I’m getting. Compared to when I was hooking up my cell phone via 3.5” jack to my tired old Yamaha a-1000 driving Realistic Nova-8’s, my current setup is on another planet.


The Aries is a good streamer, with a great presentation and leagues ahead of cell phones, iPads and dozens of low and mid-FI streamers. It was never my intent to bash it. High FI has many levels of performance. Depending on your equipment you always want to match components that sound good together and to you. I simple related my experiences and finding in my system. .

The noise floor topic I think is very important and interesting as it took many long years to be able to really put my finger on what it is and how to articulate it. The other difficult one is rhythm and pace… 
@ghdprentice no worries, friend. I didn’t get the impression that you were aspersing the Aries; as a matter of fact I’ve found your input both thoughtful and informative, and I thank you for it. Pleasant change of pace from the vitriol and condescension I’ve seen in some other threads.
@ghosthouse So... my Monolith USB’s arrived today. It turns out that the 1m length cable was long enough, so that’s the one I hooked up. I sat down to give a skeptical listen and... WOW! The soundstage somehow seemed more focused, and more well defined spatially. Much more natural sounding presentation throughout the entire range. And this is with the cable fresh out of the box. If there’s any kind of “burn in” period, whereby the sound improves over time, I’m in for a treat.
I kept wondering if I was suffering confirmation bias, but I don’t see how that could be, as (no offense) I honestly wasn’t expecting anything out of a $15 cable other than mild disappointment.

Guess I’m officially in the “cables matter” camp. Thanks so much for the hot tip! Best $15 I ever spent!