Adam Bernardi

Agreed! USB was never designed for this and it seems you have to do so much to compensate. AES is solid as a rock and been around forever.

I use the Aries with a Schiit Yggdrasil and tried all the interfaces. The AES was significantly better. Tighter timing was the most noticeable thing. Packs a wallop!

Thanks guys, yeah, that's what I figured. I don't think they have a trade-in program either.... or do you Jeff

Sorry if this has already been covered, I haven't had time to sift through the whole thread. Is it possible to upgrade an Aries LE to the femto clock version or do you have to buy a whole new box? I contacted Auralic, but I got a vague response. They said I could buy a linear power supply directly from them, but I don't think that includes the other features of the higher end model. THANKS!

I'm at a similar crossroads. Right now I'm invested in two 3TB 3.5" external drives using USB into my Mac-Mini. After much research I'm finding that this is probably degrading the sound quality. The most solid advice I've gotten so far is to switch over to the Oyen Minipro 2.5" external drive with FW800 and the latest Oxford bridge chipset. The problem seems to be that any 3.5" external drive pulls more juice which can negatively affect SQ. I'm not sure how, I can only guess it has something to do with sending garbage into the audio somehow. Also, the Oxford chipset is considered the cleanest for audio and even the Oyen FW supplied cable is supposed to be excellent. They're built like tanks and they come in sizes up to 2TB. And considering the 2.5" format, the price is good. And these drives also have USB3. These particular drives don't do eSata, but I noticed they do sell a model that does eSata and USB, but it looks like a different chipset, and I haven't heard anything about them. HOWEVER, they also sell a 3TB RAID w/ eSata, USB & FW and the Oxford chipset. I haven't been able to find ANY feedback from our audiophile community on these drives. My only concern is you'd have two platters spinning up at the same time pulling more power and I don't know if the fan noise would be objectionable. Anyone here have any experience with this? I don't want to reinvest in all new hard drives, I was hoping to find a 3.5" solution and use my old drives, but I'm also being advised to make my library all AIFF. Currently I'm in Apple Lossless, and if I go to AIFF, I'll need a lot more disk space, so I suppose I could justify the Oyen's and use the old drives for backup....