I have a very nice Aries Extreme with all the bells, whistles and femto clock goodness, that hasn't seen more than a few days use since I purchased it. Its in fine condition and I can't recall any physical blemishes. Looks great, works great, sounds great.
MSRP is $1600 save some money and take mine for $old.
The set-up model with two individualFemtoClocks for both USB audio host and digital outputs, low noise internal design to eliminate jitter andAURALiC Purer‐Power™ based 10uV low noise external linear PSU.
The ARIES serves as a “bridge” between music files on network storage or high quality online streaming services and the consumers’ DAC — enabling DACsfor the first time to stream high-resolution music quickly and wirelessly in virtually any sampling rate, including DSD, Double-Rate DSD and DXD.
The inputs of ARIES include Dual-Band high-speed WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0 port. The outputs are USB audio host buffered by AURALiC’s patentedActiveUSB™ technology; low jitter digital audio outputs: AES/EBU, Coaxial and TOSLINK. The USB audio host can deliver PCM from 44.1 to 384 KHz at 16-, 24- and 32-bit resolutions as well as DSD, Double-Rate DSD for compatible USB DAC. The other digital outputs are limited to 192 KHz at 24-bit in maximum according to S/PDIF standard.
ARIES is bundled with AURALiC’s Lightning DS App. The App has the capability to fully control ARIES to browse your music libraries on your network-attached storage (NAS), to steam high quality music content from service providers like Qobuz and WiMP, to control the playback and to select the hardware settings such as output channel and WiFi network, etc. The App also supports Songcast, a music distribution service that allows users to map computer’s sound to any Lightning-equipped system and to map sound between different Lightning systems in the house and streaming sound though Apple AirPlay.
AURALiC Tesla Platform
ARIES is powered by AURALiC's proprietary Tesla hardware platform that includes a Quad-Core ARMCoretex-A9 processor running at 1GHz, 1GB DDR3onboard memory and 4GB internal storage. The Tesla platform has a calculation ability of 25,000 MIPS, more than enough to decode a vast spectrum of audio formats, including AAC, AIFF, ALAC, APE, DIFF,DSF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, WV and WMA.AURALiC has chose this platform for a long term supporting consideration, the feature planned includeDSD upsampling, room acoustic treatment and other acoustic DSP function.
Gapless, Multiple Room Solution
By using OpenHome structure which is adopted by U.K-based streaming solution manufacturer Linn, ARIES as well as all other Lightning based products support several advanced functions such as on-device playlist that allow control software to turn off during play and complete supporting of multi-room, multiple control points — functions that are not part of the legacy standards of the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA).
Dual Femto Clock
The ARIES with two individual Femto clocks for both USB audio host and digital outputs: the clock used for digital outputs are in charge of generate master clock of digital signal to ensure lowest jitter performance for all digital outputs. Accordingly to our measurement, the USB controller's master clock can also effect sound quality as it effect USB interrupt timing when joint use with real time system, to maximum sound quality, ARIES also equipped with another Femtoclock for USB controller.
Low Noise Linear PSU
Excepting for low noise internal power supply design, ARIES also comes with an external low noise linear power supply unit. This PSU is based on AURALiCPurer‐Power™ technology with advanced AC filter and very low noise circuit design. The actual measurement shows only 10uV cross 20Hz-20KHz range.
