aliaswolf

You´re welcome!

Sorry John, I'm not a technical guy. The only thing I know is that the new bridge works in any setup used by the beta tester group in gapless mode. Many of the testers are using upnp software as e.g. Jriver. I also tested a setup with minimserver on the NAS and mconnectHD as the control app. It's also playing gapless. So no need to set the bridge to open home mode. This is only needed if you want to use OH control apps like Kazoo.

As I said earlier, the new bridge is still in beta phase and is scheduled to be on sale as of summer this year. I'm not employed by PSA but I volunteer as a member in the beta test team. A stand alone solution is also planned, but I have no information about the status of that project. i think that even the information about the internal bridge is useful given the fact that there are thousands of PWD and DS sold and many of the users are currently going for a third party solution because of the weaknesses of the old bridge.

Gapless was a real issue of the bridge. PSA tried to solve this by different software approaches, but none of them really worked. Of course the new bridge offers gapless with any resolution. The only issue (currently, but remember, we are still in beta phase) is a 12sec delay before the bridge switches to a track of another file. In other words, the bridge preloads 12 sec of every track while playing. With this buffer it is able to work gapless. So if you are listening e.g. to DSOTM, you'll here no gap between the tracks. But if you decide to switch to e.g. "WYWH" before DSOTM ended, there will be a time delay of 12 seconds before WYWH starts. So yes, it's gapless now. And it sounds great!

Last week I sold my Aries. I run a PS Audio Direct Stream and actually PSA managed to develop a streaming bridge that supports all resolutions from redbook to DSD and allows Tidal streaming (if bubbleUpnpserver provides an open home renderer for the bridge and Linn Kazoo app is used as the control point). The advantage of the PSA bridge is, that it is plugged into the chassis of the DS. So no need for extra power supply or additional cables. The bridge uses an internal I2S connection which allows for less converting/reconverting. I made a direct comparison between the Aries and the bridge. For me it was a dead race, although they didn't sound the same. This shows the superior SQ of the Aries as a stand alone solution. But PSA owners are better served with the fully integrated solution. I believe that the new bridge will be on display latest this summer (I'm actually a beta tester using a 0-series version).

I can't see any notice or intended SQ change for FW2.2. For 2.1 you're right, SQ was one topic out of other tweaks and fixes. Again, I can fully understand that one want to have the option to stay with a particular FW or roll back to a former FW if the SQ with the new FW is worse. I like that option too. But I can understand that this leads to an increase of complexity which might cause its own problems.

Although I appreciate the approach of PS Audio to distribute new FW via download from their website, copy it to a SD card and stick that into the DAC (which gives you the option to roll back), I can understand that other companies don't go that way. The support is way easier if you know what FW is running on the device, because there is only one current FW. If you want access to new features you need to switch to new FW anyway. One can't expect that a (small) company serves multiple FW parallel. I don't think that many users will stay away from new features because of (slight) differences in the sound quality. I believe that the changes in SQ were not intended by Auralic; they do happen in certain setups by accident. These changes are not predictable by Auralic. But what a FW change can do to the SQ if the developer concentrates on this change is shown by PSA with their latest FW distribution (Pikes peak) for the DS. But that's another story...

Danke / Thank you. The best new feature for me is the samba thing. Now the NAS can synchronize automatically with the HDD attached to the Aries. Very convenient.

Does anybody know about the changes that came with current FW 2.2? My Aries did the update, but I don't know where to find the change log.

Great! I just added the wimp playlist to my account. Thanks!

@zyberguran: did you receive any advise from wimp how to use the tidal playlist in wimp? I'm located in Germany, so I have no access to tidal either...

Although I attended the Munich HighEnd (some say the most important HiFi show in the world) some years back, I feel like a complete newbie concerning HiFi shows. This year I decided to visit Axpona. My 20y old son will accompany me, and after the three days in Chicago we will stay four days in NYC just for the fun. Why did I decide to make the effort to fly from Germany to Chicago? In fact, there is no specific reason despite that it's my only hobby and I felt it was time to get my own impression of an US audio show. I will concentrate on companies that don't sell in Germany so far. There is e.g. Legacy Audio, a producer of speakers for >30y, who gets great test results in US magazines. I got in contact with their sales manager and made an appointment to meet for lunch on the first day of the show. Very easy and friendly contact, so I'm really curious to meet these people personally. There is Blue Circle, a small Canadian company, which never sold in Europe; but I'm lucky to have some old amps from BC, which were imported directly by the previous owner. I had a severe issue some month ago (four of six transistors of one amp went up in smoke). I emailed the owner of BC, Mr Gilbert Yeung, and he helped me out by sending new boards and transistors to me (I paid for it, of course!). I will take the time at Axpona to thank him personally for that service. So my main concern is to get in contact with the persons "behind" the products. One of the most positive side effects of the HiFi hobby for me is to get in contact with interesting people. Sometimes I have the chance to meet them personally, most of the times it is "only" a contact by mail or in certain forums (as CA). If you like to roam around with me a while at Axpona, send me a pm. I'll stay at the Westin O'Hare from Thursday 'till Sunday afternoon. So there will be plenty of time to get some common listening experience and maybe share some impression afterwards.

One more thing concerning the genre tagging via jRiver: as far as I know jRiver doesn't write the tags into the files, but stores them in the program. That's why these tags are only working within jRiver and not with other progs. I'm using dbPoweramp for tagging purpose. Just go to the folder, choose all files, than right click on "edit ID-Tag" and choose the proper genre from the table or add a new one. Click on "save" and you're done. These tags are now written to the files itself and e.g. Lighting server can work with it. P.S.: you're right, it's a bit of extra work to store new files on the external HDD. But since I store everything on my NAS I only have to connect the HDD via USB3 to my NAS and let the NAS do the update. That takes usually only some seconds per folder, so I'm done within minutes. Alternatively I could use minimserver on my NAS to stream to the Aries.

Hi Murrayb, I'm also using the PSA DS and went through all the hassle with the bridge. I also build myself a "silent PC" with jRiver and controlled it via jRemote. I don't want to bore you with all the steps I made in between. Actually I have a 2,5" HDD (2TB) connected directly to the Aries. The DS is connected via a jCat USB cable. And I'm using the Lightning DS app. That's all you need and everything works fine, incl. Tidal (or wimp in my case). I just checked the "genre" issue. Out of 2.300 albums about 100 are in a folder called "unknown". Although I never use this option, I believe there is something wrong with your way of tagging if all of your files show up as "unknown". So my advice would be to get rid of all PC/NAS/jRiver/minimserver etc and relay on the Lightning server and the Lightning DS app. It works stable and smooth and will be improved even further.

Front end: PSA PWT and DS. Amps: Blue Circle AG 3000 pre, Audyssey sub equalizer, Blue Circle AG 8000 power amp, Genesis bass amp. Speaker: Genesis 2.5.