Auralic Vega 1 vs Auralic Vega 2/2.1

Not sure if my experience would be useful, but I had an opportunity to listen Auralic Vega dac at friends home, on a system that I am quite familiar with.

At the time he had a Mccormack amp, Ayre preamp and Avalon speakers.The dac he had was Arcam fmj 33.

He took Auralic on try, as well as Ayre qb 9.I was curios to hear Auralic, as I have heard, or better said, read some nice reviews.

To cut the long story short, it turn out to be a major disppointment for everybody present. On all but one ’filter’ the sound was very ’artificial’ in lack of better term.

I would not state that in some other sytem the result could not be different, but if you are able to, do try to compare Auralic with some other dacs.

My frined kept the Arcam for a while (ut performed better than Vega) and than lately took Ayre qb 9 dsd.

As a former owner of the Aries + Vega 1 who upgraded to the Aries + Vega 2, I'd say both ranges are excellent products; however the 2 range benefits most from utilizing the Lightning Link to couple the two components.

I found that listening to the Aries + Vega 2 via my Transparent Reference USB the difference vs. the 1s was slight, but consistently noticeable (blacker backgrounds / less noise) but moving to the Audioquest Diamond HDMI as the Lightning Link cable took the 2s to another level.  I have not listened to the 2.1 range.