Here are the basics: the Mini pulls music from the cloud and/or home-based data storage and sends it onward to an existing DAC or amplifier. Optional low noise linear PSU for US$299.įorget about the streaming service connection for a moment. Whilst the Aries Mini can fetch content from a UPnP/DLNA-serving network node, the client-server relationship isn’t an exclusive one. The Aries Mini – she’s free to see other people like Messrs Bluetooth and Airplay. It’s an Airplay DAC it’s a Bluetooth DAC. The Aries Mini’s key drawcard is self-sufficiency. How so? 1) Hook an external hard drive full of tunes into its second rear-panelled USB port or 2) install a 2.5” SSD/HHD into its hull and it becomes its own independent twofer music server and playback client running on a single device. One Mini can even stream to another Mini or any other UPnP-capable network device for that matter. In this context, the Aries Mini is a WiFi-able NAS drive. (Pro tip: add your music AFTER installing the drive). On internal fit out AURALiC have specified an almost identical Tesla hardware platform to the original Aries (US$1599) and Aries LE (US$999): quad-core 1GHz ARM Coretex-A9 processor but with 512Mb RAM instead of the forerunners’ full Gb. A customised Linux operating system takes the digital audio stream from input to output. Network connectivity comes via Ethernet or WiFi. However, the key to the Aries Mini’s multi-role magic isn’t attributable to its hardware (fixed in place) as much as it is the software/firmware that enjoys manufacturer updates over the air.ĪURALiC’s Lightning DS (LDS) platform is used to set up and configure the unit as well as control song selection and playback. Initially it came to market as an iPad-only proposition with the promise of more, soon…only to meet with its fair share of ups and downs. Proving an insurmountable challenge for AURALiC’s, the Android control app was nixed last year leaving Samsung-ers and HTC-ers to twist in the wind. On the other side of the smartphone divide, a heavily reworked interface heralded the arrival to the App Store of an iPhone-compatible LDS in January 2016. It’s AURALiC’s most intuitive, stable, feature rich and speedy remote control app to date. With the iPad, forum chatter pegs the Aries Mini’s setup as a somewhat of hit and miss affair. It’s flawless for some, less so for others. The iPad LDS has seen but a handful of spontaneous self-quits since October and almost all occurred whilst browsing the local library on a remote server.
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