Auralic Aries

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!

@rfnoise

Pleased to read the Monolith USB made a positive difference for you. You are very welcome, of course, but all credit to Duster over on Audio Asylum.

My reaction to the sound quality improvement with the Monolith was much like yours...it seemed to open things up. I can’t say I’ve heard a difference (certainly not anything major) between 1 meter and 1.5 or 2.0 meter lengths but I did want to be sure you were aware of potential issues associated with a short length. Some are very insistent about a minimum 1.5 meter length for best audio quality.

The value represented by the Monolith gives me an excuse to trot out my 3 rules of audio:
1) You can always spend more.
2) There’s always something better sounding out there.
3) Pursuing #1 does not guarantee arrival at #2.

Hope the Monolith keeps you satisfied for a long time.