Computer Audio..Stream or download?

Auralic Aries Extreme w/Duel Femto Clocks and Proprietary Linear Power Supply USB into my Bricasti M1 DAC is heaven.

It's excellent and only costs $1,599.00 and it steams Tidal over their iPad Lightning App and sounds Fantastic.

Auralic were one of the early adopters of Tidal and they do a great job with it. The app has gotten "much" better and is stable it keeps improving. I find it excellent and have only had it for a few weeks but this is still early in the game for this product and it will keep getting better and better as they keep supporting and updating it.

For speed and ease of use I set up my Tidal playlists and favorites and such on my lap top and they are all instantly on my iPad.

It sounds MUCH MUCH MUCH better than a computer or mac. I own them both. It actually is not even close and for the price that is rather extraordinary really.

I have listened to the same albums on Tidal that I own as Hi-Rez downloads from HD tracks and they are quite close. Too close to even bother with my downloads really but I still do of course ;).

This streamer is an excellent unit and it only cost a bit more than my USB cable. Very reasonable for the excellent quality and versatility.

Another very cool thing is solid SQ quality bump you can get from thinking outside the box a bit by employing a solid state external hard drive, a split / duel headed USB cable and a portable USB 5V Battery cell phone charger.

The Auralic Aries has 2 - USB outs.

1.) for your music that I hook into my Bricasti and the other

2.) for an external Solid State Hard drive.

For hooking the external hard drive I went with a split / double headed USB cable.

Hook the single end into the Aries and hook the end with two ends: 1.) The DATA leg into the External Solid State HD and the other 2.) The POWER leg into the USB port on the portable battery Cell Phone charger.

The external hard drive is now powered fully by nice and clean battery power. It offers a nice and relaxed yet fuller and bolder sound. Nice improvement actually to what was already a very good sounding unit. Heck it even sounds great running via WI-FI even though I use an Ethernet cable to hard wire.

Tidal is excellent and is nothing like Pandora or any of the other mainstream mp3 services. Tidal is like NETFLIX but with music for audiophiles. A must have and for this short money dump your pc or mac and try one. Trust me you will be happy you did.

The better the DAC or the system the better but that goes the other way also. If you have a reasonably priced DAC it will sound like a great one. This really surprised me how much improvement there is over a computer or mac.

Man I had no idea how important the transport really is but I sure now...

For a few years I've been thinking about the basic Aurender server, to replace my Macbook loaded with Amarra. But I haven't really heard anyone say that there is a clear winner.

"Auralic Aries Extreme w/Duel Femto Clocks and Proprietary Linear Power Supply USB into my Bricasti M1 DAC is heaven"

I wonder why do you need spend extra $600 bucks for Aries w/Duel Femto clock when all of your data and clock buffering are handled within your DAC insuring the lowest possible jitter levels?

Lalitk

Great Question: Here is why - we really have no clue about how our brains / hearing works and what makes something sound better. We measure jitter and distortion and linearity but we are throwing darts and totally guessing if that is what's actually making it sound better. More so with digital.

We are now making some huge strides. Just a year or ago or maybe a bit longer the pc or mac was the way to go. It was better or as good than a good cd player and way easier and def more convenient but the pc / mac in any modded form is old hat now.

Just like that bamm... Extinct - obsolete... Next please...

We have moved onto streaming and dedicated transports that are realty just specialized / focused computers optimized for sound but are SO MUCH better.

Guys I can not overstate the improvement over a pc / computer.

I am sure a base model Auralic Aries will be great also but def not as good.

I can tell you the type of USB Cable used with this combo still really matters, the type of footers and clamping / damping mods for it REALLY matters.

I think when you really dial your system in to the point where it is very resolving it gives you this sort of microscopic view into your chain and it is this where the weak like is really exposed and all the different tweaking comes into view. I can tell you when I went with just going with batteries powering my external hard drive that was a nice upgrade.

Here it is in nutshell. I love my Bricasti M1 and learning a lot about it and how it can be improved but my opinions are evolving via first hand experience. The transport and its abilities are maybe even more important than the DAC, maybe not but I never fully appreciated how important their role was until not that long ago.

Going with my Bricasti M1 and a computer / mac to my Aries was a bigger improvement than getting the Bricasti itself.

I am still amazed at the level of improvement this $1,599 is I am sure you will love the $999 one also.

I love mine so much that I am having Vinni Rossi from Red Wine audio now of Vinne Rossi audio with his all new LIO line build me a custome battery power supply with duel batteries that can provide pure battery power to replace the linear power supply and drive both the USB cables on the ?Aries for both the music USB and solid state hard drive.

I am hoping this makes it legit compete with the 10k-15k transports because I can't afford one of those but knowing now about how much improvement is to be had from the transport i'm drinking the mod and improve transport koolaid :)

Lalitk

Great Question: Here is why - we really have no clue about how our brains / hearing works and what makes something sound better. We measure jitter and distortion and linearity but we are throwing darts and totally guessing if that is what's actually making it sound better. More so with digital.

We are now making some huge strides. Just a year or ago or maybe a bit longer the pc or mac was the way to go. It was better or as good than a good cd player and way easier and def more convenient but the pc / mac in any modded form is old hat now.

Just like that bamm... Extinct - obsolete... Next please...

We have moved onto streaming and dedicated transports that are realty just specialized / focused computers optimized for sound but are SO MUCH better.

Guys I can not overstate the improvement over a pc / computer.

I am sure a base model Auralic Aries will be great also but def not as good.

I can tell you the type of USB Cable used with this combo still really matters, the type of footers and clamping / damping mods for it REALLY matters.

I think when you really dial your system in to the point where it is very resolving it gives you this sort of microscopic view into your chain and it is this where the weak like is really exposed and all the different tweaking comes into view. I can tell you when I went with just going with batteries powering my external hard drive that was a nice upgrade.

Here it is in nutshell. I love my Bricasti M1 and learning a lot about it and how it can be improved but my opinions are evolving via first hand experience. The transport and its abilities are maybe even more important than the DAC, maybe not but I never fully appreciated how important their role was until not that long ago.

Going with my Bricasti M1 and a computer / mac to my Aries was a bigger improvement than getting the Bricasti itself.

I am still amazed at the level of improvement this $1,599 is I am sure you will love the $999 one also.

I love mine so much that I am having Vinni Rossi from Red Wine audio now of Vinne Rossi audio with his all new LIO line build me a custome battery power supply with duel batteries that can provide pure battery power to replace the linear power supply and drive both the USB cables on the ?Aries for both the music USB and solid state hard drive.

I am hoping this makes it legit compete with the 10k-15k transports because I can't afford one of those but knowing now about how much improvement is to be had from the transport i'm drinking the mod and improve transport koolaid :)