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 is killer!

It sounds MUCH MUCH MUCH better than a computer or mac. I own them both. It actually destroys them really 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...

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...

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 :)

Hey Lalitk,

The Aurender products are very well liked and are excellent. I have heard the Aurender and it is very nice.

I have a friend that thinks their stuff is the very best. It is quite slick and offers a real hi-end feel and build.

This brand is Prob the best out there for looks and build. Sound wise there are some other good one's out there such as Antipodes and Baetis. Baetis has their special and great coax output that is killer.

If the money was similar these would all be preferable choices choices to the Aries but the price vs performance of the Aries really can't be touched. If you have extra money to roll these are great options and I am sure will sound a bit better.

On the Aries I am going to go with an upgraded Red Wine battery power supply but there is also an interesting company in Europe SBooster that make a great linear power supply upgrade for about $350.00 that is better than the one in the Extreme.

The Auralic Aries with Modwright Elyse DAC will be a great combo. Thanks for the kind words. I have been so impressed with the transport's ability to improve my Bricasti DAC sound quality that I even just took a chance and grabbed a W4S Recycle to use for my Cable Box. My System (2-Channel only and always) is hooked to my Panny Plasma GT60 so hoping maybe the TV sounds nicer. Maybe - maybe not but checking. I have heard good things about it and anything I can do to improve what goes into my DAC is worth IMO based on all the good results I have been getting.

Tbg LOL !!!

"I doubt that streaming will ever amount to much"

Oh man - Streaming is what the entire world is evolving too.

Not just for HI-FI but streaming is pretty much revolutionizing how we share information with everything.

Not too long in the future there will be no need for any physical media and it will all be streaming...

Lalitk - Great Choice !!! Those are sweet and you are going to love it.

Congrats!!!!

I love those! I am enjoying playing around with my Aries and improving it but I have my eye on either an Aurender or Antipodes and I am sure one of those will be on my short chase down and tackle list soon enough.

Awesome choice. I know for sure their sound is excellent and one of the best but they are hands down the best looking, best build and slickest units out there. Very cool...

Wisnon makes a good point about the Lampi's in that used price range for their DSD but I really like the DAC you were leaning toward already the Modwright Elyse DAC.

I like the Modwright stuff and I think it will be a fantastic match to your great transport choice!!!

I love the build concept of the Elyse and his approach to his power supply design. A power supply that uses the natural sounding tube rectification but ties it up tight with dual-discrete solid state voltage regulation. That is a nice approach to combo both strengths into one power fine supply. I like it.

Then he adds in the sweet Lundahl tranny coupled inputs which will tether up your transport the right way and then he doubles down with the Lundahl tranny coupled outputs so no preamp will be needed with his pure Class A / zero feedback implementation of the 6922 in the output stage. This tube which let you tailor your sound better than any other tube I know IMO. Love the 6922 who needs the super tube anyhow. Now you just need to get yourself a pair of Upscale / Platinum / Cryoed / Pitched Waist Amperex PQ's and a Mullard Blackburn Factory built circa mid 60's GZ34 rectifier Tube (get the Hammond organ labeled ones and save some scratch for exact same tube) and you are good to go. You will be first rate all the way!!! Congrats again and great choices ...

Wisnon - I totally agree DHT Tubes are the very best of the best. You get nothing but agreement here but those would prob match my system a lot better than Lalitk's. I love DHT - I have switched my "entire" system around and provided an entire and radical system refit so I can feature the DHT tubes. I live for my 2A3 custom amp so I am all in on that program. His system is a lot different with those great beasts of speakers.

Lalitk

Regardless what any one else even the designer tells you I promise you and you can write this down (lol...that's what I am doing) and put me on record saying if you buy the tubes I recommended and then you buy the ones he recommended you will listen and prefer my recommendation 10 to 1 min more like 100 to 1 but that's just my opinion but tubes are tubes.

The better tubes the better they sound and the combo I recommended is the best there is IMO. I know he will quote synergy but that's crap.

The pinched waist PQ Amperex will obliterate that Tungsram in any system any time any place IMO. The main reason anyone uses the Tungsram tubes is because it is super quiet and super clean. I own a few of them. They are dry, sterile, thin yet uber detailed and super duper clean and quite fast while ultra quiet but trust my word and anyone else will agree if you are getting the best platinum matched from upscale then the Tungsram will be like a NAD/Rotel/Adcom tube and the Amperex PQ is a Vitus/Bumester/Gryphon.

There is nothing a Philips 5R4GYS can do against a Mullard GZ34 IMO. But buy his recommended tubes and enjoy and then when some time goes by go get the ones I listed and when you plug them in and listen you will be wholly smokes.

Better tubes go a long - long - long way! Truly great tubes (i like the blue label 6201 Valvo's also just not as warm) are def worth the added expense IMO for sure!

Awesome stuff though. I am surprised that KWA150 SE bettered the those killer M600. I assume the M600 is warmer. Maybe the more warmth you like less. Either way the tubes I listed are better at everything in every regard but they will warmer than the Tungs so you could go with the blue label 6201 Valvo over white label PQ Amperex pinched waist 6922 either will be incredible and much better than the Tungs. Good luck !!!

Don't worry your computer won't be in the signal path at all you just need to keep it on your network preferable via Ethernet to manage your music and to keep running sever software in the background.

There are work arounds but this is the easiest way I know but are many others I am sure. I run my files via a solid state hard drive that is hard wired right to my aries via the aries usb out for hard drive hook up but it is all still driven by my JRiver dlna server. I have jriver set up via dlna and the solid state hard drive is what jriver is pointing at but its playing through the Auralic lightning app. The lighting app plays everything and nothing goes through my computer but the jriver manages it all nice and easy.

There are plenty of other server software solutions out there and jriver maybe overkill for how I use or how you will use it but it is simple and works great.

Yours will be the same except you have a built in hard drive so you don't have to worry about the usb solid state drive like I do but you will still need server softwhere to drive the aurender app. Too much money for them to create their own when 3rd party solutions like jriver will be perfect and it cost $25.00 and does tons.

One of the great things about jriver is the robust network server software. It will be a breeze to grab all the music on your olive and drop it onto your aurender via the jriver music dnla server software running your computer and then dump the olive.

You can copy all the music on the olive and dump it on the aurender and dump the olive. You see with jriver you can get at any and all music on your network on any storage device and move it to where ever you want. You could even play the music that's on your olive from your arender just by pointing at it via jriver. If you are not familiar with jriver you should get it and work at learning it.

There is a learning curve but its the best and allows so much. Its kinda like iTunes but works with everything not just apple stuff and sounds a zillion times better and does so much more and its a great server software.

There are plenty of others out there but its the one I know and use so its the only one I can speak to. If this sounds complicated its really not its actually real easy and they have tons of resources to help and they have a super active forum to support it. You always want a computer to manage any network but thats what you will be doing is managing your music via dnla server softwhere. You will want it to buy and download music and many other reasons to have a computer on any network but its just not playing the music it is doing other good work behind the scenes so you music server can do what it does and that's sound great playing music. It's why I like them better than say CAPs servers because they are not there to really do anything but a focused job and thats the best audio it can. The less a music player can do the better. My Aries is the same way. Does tons but lets the computers do the dirty work in the background out of the signal path. Hope this helps a bit and clears some things up for you.

Let me know I'm glad to help.

Hey Lalick,

No prob - glad to help. If you are going apple which is great to use and I agree for the reasons you stated and Jriver works well with them as well but there are other solutions that the apple folks like better than Jriver and others can speak to it but even with Apple I would go Jriver.

JCAT is part of JPlay which when I used a pc for source was great but it was pc based and not for Apple. The JCAT cable is made to go with their matching pc usb card pc which can be battery power driven which is good stuff for a pc source. If you are going to use a usb cable between aurender and modright Dac their are much better options IMO. I use a Tellarium Q Black Diamond USB cable I bought off the U.S. Distributor Fidelis in NH they are also US distributor for Harbeth speakers and Palmer tables. Great stuff. The Tellarium Q is more money but so much better than the JCAT cable. I like it better than the Locas Design Group Cynosure and the Light Harmonic Light speed single headed cable. I think of all the light harmonic is best if you go with double headed and have battery power to drive the power leg but for plug and the Tellurium is my choice. All of them will crush the JCAT but cost more but worth it. Thought to throw some ideas for you. The Wirewold Platinum and the Audioquest Diamond are common and more money and also better than the JCAT.

Lalitk,

Audience Au24SE cables are outstanding and you can't go wrong with that hi-fi staple of a brand.

I am sure their USB Cable is solid. They are solid and their audio cable design and manufacturing track record speaks for itself.

I could be wrong but I am of the opinion that the USB Digital Cable is very different than the rest of the analogue cable loom... They are a sort of a lone wolf cable that is unique and it takes a ton of focus, energy and commitment to really get it right. Many of the top cable OEM's make decent/solid USB cables but only a few have really nailed it.

It's just too different and presents numerous specific R&D challenges due to it's unique application and this does't allow the name sake OEM's to leverage their traditional economies of scale advantages they typically enjoy as it relates all their other analog cables in their looms.

I think some of the name sake OEM's are offering decent / competent USB cables just to fill out their line's but its not comparable to other top USB cables or even the rest of the loom. Cardas Clear comes to mind. Very nice high performing cable and a very good loom but the their USB cables although competent / decent is no where near the performer of their analog brethren in the line. Should really not have the Clear branding but to their credit its price is consumer-ate with its performance.

I have not heard the Audience AU24 USB Cable but the one's I mentioned above I personally know are outstanding but with some luck you can hear the AU24 or any others in your system before having to commit. If not I would go with one of the proven leaders. They have earned their status based in their USB cable performance and not based on their analog cable historical performance which in this case is outstanding.

I myself am close toward having the entire HiDiamond cable loom but I have never even considered switching to the HiDiamond USB Cable. The Terrarium Q Black Diamond is just too dam good.

Fidelis in Nashua NH ask for Bill. Tell him Frank sent you.

They are the best and he's great to deal with. I bought mine off them and like a year or so later maybe longer I changed DAC's and went from a PS Audio DirectStream to a Bricasti M1 and for some odd reason my USB cable wasn't being read by my Bricasti M1. The Fidelis guys are good friends with Brian from Bricasti.

So anyways I called Bill and told him my situation and he didn't bat an eye lash sent me right out another Brand New Tellurium Q Black Diamond no questions asked and I sent him mine back. That's the type of service we all want and deserve from our Hi-End dealers / distributors.

They regularly share audio show rooms with my bud and neighbor Vinnie Rossi from Red Wine Audio which is now Vinnie Rossi Audio with his amazing new LIO product line. If you haven't heard of his new line you should read about. Anyways just wanted you to know how awesome the Fidelis guys are... good luck keep us posted on how you make out...