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Auralic Aries w NOS DAC

Hi folks,

I'm intrigued by the new Auralic Aries server/streamer device. I love the idea of streaming lossless digital content from Tidal, etc direct to my Red Wine Audio DAC, and I love its ability to pull music from a hard drive over wifi as well. But here's the thing: I have the NOS version of the Red Wine DAC and zero need/interest in upgrading to the high-res version, and the Auralic Aries seems very focused on enabling 192k DSD content. I get that, I admire it, but it's not relevant for me. Would the Aries be total overkill with the Red Wine NOS DAC? If so, does anyone know of a cheaper option with similar functionality and great sound quality? I know that Sonos basically offers this functionality, but I'm looking for true audiophile sound quality.

Thanks as always.
lousyreeds1
arh
366 posts
 
I use a Lenova laptop and stream from Spotify premium and Classicsonlinehd. I tried Tidal but they are missing a lot of classical albums. Classicsonlinehd has only classical albums but streams up to 24/192. I saw the Auralic at CES but the sound quality will still mainly be determined by your dac. If you like your dac I would not spend the money on the Auralic.
Alan
jl35
2,244 posts
 
I am also looking at the Auralic Aries to connect to DAC in my Aesthetix Romulus. I thought that having a good DAC made the Aries a good buy, not wanting to buy a streamer with it's own built in DAC.
hchilcoat
78 posts
 
I just received an Aries and have been playing mostly Ripped CDs since I don't have much of a Hi-Rez collection yet except for a few demos. And Tidal is CD resolution and the Aries plays Tidal wonderfully. So not sure if overkill but for me the sound quality exceeds playing CD through a transport. I think it is worth the investment.
eastein
82 posts
 
I purchases an Aries for sonos like functionality to replace a Mac Mini. It smoked the mini and elevated the sound quality of my nos DAC. I remain surprised by how much better it sounds in my system than the mini it replaced. Definitely worth auditioning.
mas1951
5 posts
 
Can suggest an alternative that works remarkably well for me. I too have a Red Wine NOS Dac that I do not plan to replace simply because the sound quality with Red Book playback is wonderful. I've been using Sonos as a transport, with FLAC files streamed from a NAS. I added a reclocker from empirical audio (Synco-mesh) and was amazed with the result. A dramatic transformation. When Deezer lossless streaming became available on Sonos, the switch from spotify is what I have been waiting for. You have to invest in two devices, Sonos and synco-mesh. The result, reclocking the stream from Sonos snaps everything into focus for the enormous soundstaging, warmth and tonal beauty thet the Red Wine NOS chip can deliver. All this and the elegant simplicity of the Sonos platform. You can add that to the variety of a lossless CD quality library music from Deezer.
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