Ever since I heard rumors of Auralic’s new Aries DSD-capable streamer ($999/$1,599 with options) at AXPONA I’ve been eager to see it in action. At this year’s T.H.E. Show in Newport, CEO Xuanqian Wang had the whole product line spinning tunes through the Aries to the company’s outstanding VEGA DAC ($3,500). From there they even unitized the Taurus headphone amp/pre ($1,899) to kick things off before sending it out to the power amplifier.
A couple of things struck me about the Aries as Xuanqian took me through the paces. First, its not nearly as heavy as the VEGA. Even though the two are fashioned to have the same stylings and color on a shelf, the Aries is actually made of a plastic material to help jive properly with all the wifi connectivity it utilizes. Second, its not as big as I originally thought from the images I had seen online. While the VEGA is stable piece of hefty HiFi, the Aries is even more versatile and could be placed just about anywhere, like a wifi router. Just think about it is as an old Logitech Squeezebox on steroids.
The tablet interface looks pretty slick already and on demand streaming is in the works as well. Lets not forget this puppy will be able to stream double DSD from your computer should you like to partake in the actual ownership of hi rez files.
More of the fine details on this device are available from [the press release here].