fire2368

I had a listen to my friends CAPS which was current about 1-2 years ago, I don't think the quality would have been improved by so much in a year or so. Probably not the best way to a judge a CAPS system. I was looking at iFi USB which is supposedly better than a battery in terms of quietness and I read on another forum that someone had great success attaching a linear PSU onto it which cleans it up even more. I just don't want to drop another $700-$1000 on power and cables if I'm going with a streamer becuase they're going to be junk if the streamer comes. Aurender is DACless but runs off USB. The Aurender N100H is tempting and supposedly better than the Aries, by how much is the problem as I can't try it and it's not cheap to just buy.

I've been shopping around for a streamer for the last few months, but I haven't found any that I can afford and available for home demo that can really outdo the Raspberry Pi 2 (RPI) setup I've got right now. This leads me to two things: either fully optimizing this setup or find that elusive streamer. Budget wise I'm open to a lot of streamers as I've set a $3,000, however what that budget limits me from is the top high end music servers. What I have tried so far is the Cambridge CXN, Auralic Aries and a CAPS server and I found that Aries > CAPS > CXN. Now, where my RPI setup lies is between Aries and the CAPS. I think that it is shy of the Aries quality when streaming to a max of 24/96, the Aries then shines from 24/96 onwards as the RPI has issues from me, it only sometimes clocks 24/192 smoothly. This is my setup so far: RPI2 + Hifiberry Digi (running off a portable battery) -> Coax -> QBD76 HDSD (DAC) -> AMP. The battery has been a night and day change, so I think going with cleaner power should improve it even more. What I'm thinking of going now is: RPI2 + Hifiberry Digi (running off iFi USB with 9v Linear Power Supply, nice cables to go with it) - > Coax -> QBD76 HDSD -> AMP. Ideally going through USB direct is best if I've got the iFi USB, but the Volumio on the RPI won't detect my QBD76 through the HD USB, only the SD USB. It could also be important to note that I listen to Spotify or Tidal most of the time as my library isn't as big as I'd like it to be. Long shot, but I hope someone knows, where should I go with this, the nice power to go with the RPI2 or a nice streamer if anyone can recommend any. Of course, optimizing the RPI is a cheaper option, which is why it was hard to keep the Aries I had on home demo as it definitely wasn't worth 30 times better as the price suggest, although it was more user friendly and streamed hi-res much better. If there isn't any other option, that might be the way to go. Other network players and servers I've been eyeing are the Aurender stuff either X100L or N100h and Antipodes servers. Thanks in advance!

I can't seem login to Tidal on the Lightning DS app on both iPad and android for my Auralic Aries, anyone stumbled onto this issue? It says authentication failed: network error on the iPad. I know my username password is right because it works on my laptop perfectly fine.

I've an Aries for home demo at the moment and I can't seem to login to Tidal. My username and password is correct, but for some reason whenever I try to login through either iPad or my android phone it would fail to login and on the iPad it says network error. Tidal works fine on my laptop. Has anyone had this issue? I can't really fully test the Aries as I've had so many issues with it just working in general. Could it be a hardware issue? And with those deciding between Aries and mini, which I am too, are the Femto Clocks only beneficial when using USB? I will most likely be using coax, should I just save my money and go mini? AES would be useful to have though. I just don't own a cable yet.