Auralic Aries (Hardware) - Impressions and Information

[Knut Schmidt]

I have owned the aries femto 2 years. In the second year I was able to buy an Aurender s10 by chance. For a year I used both.

The Aries has the much better software. And I liked the Aries very much.

But the Aurender never made any problems.

On the other hand, I have had many problems with the Aries. Most of these are described here. But I have often found very good help here.

I also wrote to Auralic and got the advice to test the beta 5.1. I have made. Result disappeared library, in addition to the other problems.

In the last 5 weeks I used the Aries, there were problems with almost every start. I had in this time a toothpick next to the Aries lie for the daily softreset.

I want to listen to music. I do not want to provide daily technical service. Mostly 10 to 30 minutes until everything runs.

In the end I sold the Aries 2 months ago.
  
And I am very happy with the Aurender S10. Just start and listen to music.

I hope for all that auralic can solve the problems and keep my fingers crossed.

 

 

[Frankie61]

I must say this again ..... IF you are or has been BETA TESTER ...... EXPECT problems ! 

Hard to understand for most pepole. ! 

AND ....... Many problems are related to bad and unstable routers ! 

 

[pvanosta]

2 minutes ago, Frankie61 said:

I must say this again ..... IF you are or has been BETA TESTER ...... EXPECT problems ! 

Hard to understand for most pepole. ! 

AND ....... Many problems are related to bad and unstable routers ! 

 

Let me respond:

1. I am not nor have I ever been a beta tester

2. The Auralic Altair is connected to the NAS via a simple, WIRED, gigabit switch. No routing, no wifi, just a straight wire through an ethernet switch. 

The only thing unstable here, is either the Auralic hardware or the Auralic software. Either way, I hope they get a grip and sort it out.

[Frankie61]

Well ..... I do not use either NAS or wire connection only USB HDD and WIFI !

And i have got a Mini a Femto and now a Polaris ! ..... NO problems here ...... I am listening to internet music / Tidal and my own HDD music ! 

[pvanosta]

And how big is your library? Mine is 22,000 albums and over 240,000 tracks...

[Frankie61]

Only 2.000 albums .... about 25.000 tracks ....... Don't know if there is a limit or it will course instability ! 

If it's the case you could try a Aurenda  ..... It's probably a "little" more expensive :-/ 

[pvanosta]

I went from the Mini to the Altair for that reason and was told the Altair should not have problems up to 500,000 tracks. And yet...

 

I have looked at Aurender. The A10 is 2.5 times as expensive as the Altair. That's not a subtle difference but it may be where I end up if they don't stabilize the Auralic LightningServer.

[Frankie61]

Well ..... so i'm a lucky guy with only 2000 albums ! :-)

[jventer]

I have today spoke to two persons that own an  Auralic Aries.They both have problems to get it to work. One of them told me that they contacted Auralic withno response. The products are sitting on the shelves  - unused. 

To me it looks like when it works it is good, but when it does not you are in for serious issues!

• Who is to blame ?
• Who is going to sort it out?
• Who is going to buy a product where there are issues?

 

[lentille]

My experience is very good with the Aurilac Aries Mini - so much so I have bought a 2nd one for use at a second house. 

 

It has been very stable and tolerates with many Dac changes and output changes. My library is over 500 albums (small compared to some) and I use Tidal and it's Masters / MQA. 

 

More info on Aurilac's web site would be useful but other than this I recommend it highly. 

[pvanosta]

36 minutes ago, lentille said:

My experience is very good with the Aurilac Aries Mini - so much so I have bought a 2nd one for use at a second house. 

 

It has been very stable and tolerates with many Dac changes and output changes. My library is over 500 albums (small compared to some) and I use Tidal and it's Masters / MQA. 

 

More info on Aurilac's web site would be useful but other than this I recommend it highly. 

Lentille,

I don't mean to sound rude but the point here is to address, log and resolve issues along with tips and tricks which might benefit others. We are all sure that the vast majority of Auralic devices (Aries, Aries Mini, Altair, Polaris, Vega, ...) work fine in the vast majority of cases. That is why in online forums you seldom hear about the 'silent majority' where everything works fine, because there is litterally nothing else to report. We are here because we are in a minority. Some have issues, others have questions they are trying to find answers to.

 

I am clearly a fan of Auralic since this is the second product I bought from them after returning my mini. My brother is is the same situation (returned mini and bought Altair).

 

But there are issues and I am clearly not alone. Giving voice to these issues will help (hopefully) Auralic in analyzing the root cause and fixing them.

 

Saying you have a mini which works perfectly: good for you ! You and several thousand others, I am sure. And we all know where the Auralic website and its support pages are. Those of us on this thread have all spent time there already

 

I apologize if my frustration is showing but I seem to spending more time troubleshooting my setup and rescanning / reindexing my library than listening to it and I was hoping for more from a 2000$ product.

[mjb]

5 hours ago, pvanosta said:

I apologize if my frustration is showing but I seem to spending more time troubleshooting my setup and rescanning / reindexing my library than listening to it and I was hoping for more from a 2000$ product.

pvanosta, it can be frustrating, I agree. The thing that drew me to the Aries is that it should behave like an appliance: you select an album and press play, thats it! Easy. Except it isn't. I really hope Auralic can fix the software bugs and make the experience match the sonic performance. The Aries should be family friendly, not a geeks Achilles' heel.

[austinpop]

I seem to post this periodically, but it's worth repeating.

 

I no longer have an Aries Mini, but did until 5.0, both beta and GA. For me, it was flawless. I never experienced anything like you guys are describing. My library size is 1250 albums, ~10k tracks.

 

I never used Lightning Server to manage my library. I tried it once, and found it to be hopelessly slow. My library resides on my Synology NAS. The 2 music servers I ran, either on my NAS directly, or on a separate Windows 10 box were:

• MinimServer (DLNA/UPnP)
• Roon Core

With these, everything just worked. I realize Roon is not for everyone, but why don't you guys try MinimServer?

[pvanosta]

7 hours ago, austinpop said:

I seem to post this periodically, but it's worth repeating.

 

I no longer have an Aries Mini, but did until 5.0, both beta and GA. For me, it was flawless. I never experienced anything like you guys are describing. My library size is 1250 albums, ~10k tracks.

 

I never used Lightning Server to manage my library. I tried it once, and found it to be hopelessly slow. My library resides on my Synology NAS. The 2 music servers I ran, either on my NAS directly, or on a separate Windows 10 box were:

• MinimServer (DLNA/UPnP)
• Roon Core

With these, everything just worked. I realize Roon is not for everyone, but why don't you guys try MinimServer?

I have tried both.

Roon is nice but an expensive add-on AND it does not run on my NAS without constant dropouts (RoonServer needs more computing power than my Syno 1513 can deliver). So to use Roon, I have to spend more money twice (additional hardware plus Roon License, which pushes me towards a move away from Auralic again.

 

Minimserver does run but does not offer the features / browsing filters I use most often: 'Sort by last import date' and 'Sort by last modify date'. And rescanning the library for new additions (using minimwatch on a laptop) is as glitchy as lightningserver.

 

 

[mjb]

@pvanosta, did you notice if the Aries was more reliable with Minimserver? I've tried Minimserver in the past, but like you dropped it as several useful features are missing. I won't be buying Roon... The reality is, Auralic just need to fix their software.

[George Hincapie]

47 minutes ago, mjb said:

@pvanosta, did you notice if the Aries was more reliable with Minimserver? I've tried Minimserver in the past, but like you dropped it as several useful features are missing. I won't be buying Roon... The reality is, Auralic just need to fix their software.

 

You are missing out then. You should at least try it before deciding; Roon is excellent.

 

No argument from me about Auralic though. They should fix their hardware. Frustration with my faulty 7 month old £1400 Aries caused me to sell the warranty replacement on eBay; I made £700 after fees FFS.

 

How is it the Mini works flawlessly 24/7, yet the flagship is just so unreliable? I really won't be shelling out for the Aries G2 based upon that experience.

[mikey8811]

Does anyone have the problem of not being able to play DSD from an Aries with Firmware 5.1 to a PS Audio Direct Stream DAC with Huron?

 

It comes out as white noise. I cannot enable or disable the DoP on the iOS Lightning DS. Going back does not save or change the settings.

 

On the web app, I cannot disable "Convert DSD to PCM". I slide the switch but it turns it back on.

[mikey8811]

9 hours ago, mikey8811 said:

Does anyone have the problem of not being able to play DSD from an Aries with Firmware 5.1 to a PS Audio Direct Stream DAC with Huron?

 

It comes out as white noise. I cannot enable or disable the DoP on the iOS Lightning DS. Going back does not save or change the settings.

 

On the web app, I cannot disable "Convert DSD to PCM". I slide the switch but it turns it back on.

Things got even worse - the whole library is gone now.

 

I cleared the cache and have been trying to rescan - twice now but it has not completed. On the 2nd attempt, the web interface said the device was offline when all I did was turn the display off. I went to check - seems the scan caused the Aries to turn itself off even when the power was still on. Bizarre!

[Frankie61]

On 19/8/2017 at 10:22 AM, mjb said:

@pvanosta, did you notice if the Aries was more reliable with Minimserver? I've tried Minimserver in the past, but like you dropped it as several useful features are missing. I won't be buying Roon... The reality is, Auralic just need to fix their software.

I wonder if most of you with issues are using web interface !?

[pvanosta]

3 minutes ago, Frankie61 said:

I wonder if most of you with issues are using web interface !?

I only control the Altair from my Ipad. The only time I go into the web interface, is to monitor ongoing activity (like the progress status of a rescna or a reindex).

[Blade1001]

I take it all the people having issues are beta testers? I took a look at my Aries last night and its still on 4.1 with no new firmware available?

 

[pvanosta]

we're not betatesters... If we were, we would not be complaining, because problems would be expected.

There's aries firmware and there is LightningServer, each with their own version numbers...

 

I can't speak for everyone else, but my problems are with LightningServer (latest version is 5.1 I believe).

[Blade1001]

11 minutes ago, pvanosta said:

we're not betatesters... If we were, we would not be complaining, because problems would be expected.

There's aries firmware and there is LightningServer, each with their own version numbers...

 

I can't speak for everyone else, but my problems are with LightningServer (latest version is 5.1 I believe).

 

Right, I see. Where do you go about looking up the current Lightning Server version number? - All I can see within the Lightning DS app is my Aries FW number (4.1) and the Lightning DS version number (4.4).

[pvanosta]

46 minutes ago, Blade1001 said:

 

Right, I see. Where do you go about looking up the current Lightning Server version number? - All I can see within the Lightning DS app is my Aries FW number (4.1) and the Lightning DS version number (4.4).

Lightning DS is Lightning Server. Your version is 4.4. Ours is 5.1.

[Blade1001]

1 minute ago, pvanosta said:

Lightning DS is Lightning Server. Your version is 4.4. Ours is 5.1.

 

Right, I see. So where are you getting Lightning DS with a version number of 5.1 from?

 

The Auralic website shows the current version as 4.4:

http://support.auralic.com/hc/en-us/articles/206599937-Current-Lightning-DS-Version

 

Apple iTunes shows the current version as 4.4:

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/lightning-ds/id887436741?mt=8