Hey John,
Sorry for the late reply. Regarding the Mac Mini: I was able to do it pretty easily. I installed Minimserver on the Mac, with two FW ext. drives attached filled with music files which are basically my iTunes library. Had the Minimserver scan the library. Started up Lightning DS on the iPad, it found the Aries. I had to point it to the Minimserver library, it did it's own scan. This all takes a while if it's a large library. It's not as smooth an experience as I had with iTunes and Audirvana. You have to give it to Apple, iTunes is a pretty excellent front end.
I'm assuming the NAS will work pretty identically. How is it working and which NAS did you end up with? I'm a cheapskate and still looking for a good deal on a used NAS setup.
To update everyone, the Aries is settling in fairly well, but I had a really bad run around with it initially because I believe, I'm still not 100% sure, that the Aries is so good, it showed up a glaringly weak link in my system. It turned out to be my pre-amp. Ever since I put the pre-amp into my system about 4-5 months ago, I thought I detected a slight edge at certain frequencies, either a slight fiz, distortion or maybe just emphasis. It was so slight I doubted my perception. I decided to leave the unit in place and let it break in for a while. When I put the Aries in, the problem increased noticeably to the point of unpleasant. I heard more detail and better focus and many other attributes, but it was an unpleasant experience. For some reason I didn't suspect the pre-amp. In an attempt to solve the problem, I replaced my power conditioner, my active crossover, and the problem just got worse... much worse. It was a nightmare.
Finally I rolled everything back to the point before I put in the Aries and the problem settled down. But now I had developed an ear for it and I could still hear it and it was only then that I recognized it as that same slight problem I thought I was hearing with the pre-amp! I pulled the sucker out and put in a passive volume control, problem gone. One by one I added back the other new gear. The Aries was beautiful. The new crossover is still not right and I'm playing around with it. The power conditioner doesn't seem to be making a difference one way or the other, but time will tell with that. Adventures in audiophilia...
