Aries Streamer: Tips and Tricks

Audio Components DACs
21
Frode said My Audiobyte Hydra-Z USB converter arrives tomorrow.

The point with this device is to feed it from the Aries USB, converting the stream to I2s and hook it up to the DS I2s input. The Hydra is powered via the Aries USB port.

My HDMI cable is Wireworld Platinum 2m.

The Hydra can support up to DSD512 natively on its I2s port, however the DS will convert this to DoP internally, nevertheless.

According to Ted there is a good chance that this might improve the SQ opposed to direct USB connection, however we will know this after it has settled in my system for a while. I will also look out for lock-on pops and latency issues.

My hope is that this solution will be a giant killer!

Hydra Z | Audiobyte


I would love to hear your review of the Hydra-Z … as I am in the process of getting one. Except I will be feeding it via a Mac Mini. Doesn’t the Hydra-Z come with its own power supply?

22
dvorak said ... But people tend to assume that where such differences exist, "native" must necessarily sound better, and that DoP therefore does something to contaminate the quality of DSD...
Yep. I bristle a little when people assume that the DS would sound better if only I added a DSD direct path instead of using DoP. In reality we know that the opposite is most probably true. Most of the sound quality differences we encounter in the FPGFA seem to be related to complexity - the more special cases (e.g. a direct DSD path) the worse the sound quality.
23
gordon said

Frode

Is the I2s/will-the-ac-12-hdmi-cable-be-offered-again contact mapping as per the PS Audio standard?

Yes, and the clock polarity could also be reversed where needed.
24
sicklehut said
I would love to hear your review of the Hydra-Z ... as I am in the process of getting one. Except I will be feeding it via a Mac Mini. Doesn't the Hydra-Z come with its own power supply?

FLEXIBILITY The Hydra Z can be powered in 3 (three) ways :

  • Directly from USB
  • From an external 5v power supply
  • From dedicated Hydra ZPM (Z-Power Module)
(from the Hydra-z manual - the PSU is optional, me thinks. ).

Great choice sicklehut!

I think you will obtain more benefits than me by using your source.

I will revert later tonight with my first impressions.

25

OK, some updates on the Audiobyte USB converter:

Hook up went like a breeze. The moment I passively connected USB to Aries the power LED lit up.

When connecting the I2s port#1 the small VFD icon was red, but the moment I pushed play on the Aries, the I2s input locked on (went green) and stayed. There was sound and no latency could be detected during song selection, FF, asf. The Hydra-Z also annunciated PCM and DSD correctly.

The cables look messy, but just ignore it because it is just a test setup for now.

The only snag found was a lock-on delay and pop for x64 dsf files. diff did not have this problem. Another issue noticed with dsf files was ticks during DS volume adjustment. I believe I also had this when Aries was connected directly to the DS via USB, so I suppose Ted has a sensible explanation for it.

First impression on SQ follows later tonight, but so far the technical test passed!

WP_20141206_009.jpgWP_20141206_001.jpgWP_20141206_007.jpgWP_20141206_006.jpg

26
Frode said

The only snag found was a lock-on delay and pop for x64 dsf files. diff did not have this problem. Another issue noticed with dsf files was ticks during DS volume adjustment. I believe I also had this when Aries was connected directly to the DS via USB, so I suppose Ted has a sensible explanation for it.


I don’t. The DS has no idea what the source file is, so it can’t be sensitive to the type of source file when changing the volume. Is there any chance that the Aries is sensitive to the DS remote?

27

I will drop-box you one DSD track so you can try to reproduce it at your place. I do not rule out that the problem is on the Aries side.

28

Like I was hinting at above, if any behavior of the DS (e.g. lock time or volume changing) appears to be dependent on file type, then something upstream must be sensitive to the file type - the DS doesn’t know file types (well except the bridge.) Perhaps something like the buffering size could be adjusted in the Aries to smooth the transitions…?

I have quite a few dff’s and more dsf’s. Using foobar2000 and regardless of file type, if they have the same sample rate they play gaplessly with no problems. Transitioning between sample rates is smooth (no pops). Still I’ll be happy to look at any given file.

29

I restarted the whole system and the problem was gone!

The only change I made upon recycling power was to alter the MW setting on my P10 from 6 to 2 but this should hardly matter.

I also pulled the USB hub from the Aries. Hmmmm. - Need to check all of this more carefully.

30

Aries FAQ

http://www.auralic.com/download/LightningServerFAQ.pdf

31

Here is another library tweak to show “The Beatles” as “Beatles” etc.

Originally Posted by bplexico
How to sort Artists such as “The Beatles” under the letter “B” and not the letter “T”

This question was posed a week or so back and not being a Minimserver expert I have been playing with the tagging options to get this to work, initially I got it to work for sorting of artists when in FOLDER view on the Lightning DS application but not when sorting by Artist in Library view. At last I have success!

So I am using Minimserver in conjunction with the Lightning DS application.

You need to make a change to your property file for Minimserver, you can do this using Minimwatch on your PC, Mac, whatever.

Choose properties in Minimwatch.

Go to the setting, “tagOptions”

Enter the following into tagOptions - “Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}, artist.ignore.*={The}”

Re-start Minimserver and re-scan.

Next on the Lightning DS application choose Music Library under Settings. Select your music server and choose Refresh data.

When complete you will find that “The” is ignored when sorting by Artist. So “The Beatles” show up under “B”. “The Rolling Stones” show up under “R” etc. The artist name will appear in the format “Beatles, The”

This does not impact how albums are sorted, so albums that start with “The” will still be sorted under “T”, i.e. “The Wall” by Pink Floyd will show up under “T”. If you also want to apply the sorting rule I showed for Artist to albums as well that can be done.

Enjoy.

Barr

32

Also to add what Gordon is speaking about regarding sorting in Minimserver. The trick he mentions to get “The Beatles” to sort as “Beatles,The” will only work if the Album Artist metadata field is blank… Typically at least for me, I use XLD, there is both an “Artist” field and a “Album Artist” field… if one has The Beatles in both fields it will still sort The Beatles. One needs to remove “The Beatles” from the Album Artist field also. Since the filter only affect the Artist field, and frankly Album Artist is rather redundant.

Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}, artist.ignore.*={The}

33

Aries with Paul pang USB cable on a directstream with minimserveur on a Synology NAS a is just fantastic…

34

Aries review:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f22-networking-networked-audio-and-streaming/auralic-aries-hardware-impressions-and-information-21261/index55.html#post377609

35

Auralic announces new update for Aries Streamer Bridge

Firmware v 1.11

Available Monday 12/29

What’s inside? Plenty of USB bug fixes! Check out Facebook announcement.

36

I have installed it and it works as advertised.

37

I got my Aries a few days ago. First off, kudos to Shilodog (a.k.a. Christopher) for all the hard work he put into the group buy. It was painless for the participants (but not for him, I’m sure). This was the second time I’ve done business with him and he has always been very responsive and reliable. I was away for a few days and really just started playing with the Aries. I downloaded firmware 1.11 yesterday (I had been told by Auralic it would be out Monday but it was there last night when I got home and went to play something) and plugged in a USB hard drive with about 1.6 TB of FLAC files. The first go round it failed to download a lot of albums’ artwork and, for the small sample I tried, would not play those files even though they are listed. Refreshing the cache did not help. I cleared the cache, hit refresh and went to bed. Today the same albums are missing their artwork but they do play, which is what matters. So far the sound is very impressive, well above that from my early 2009 Mac Mini (also connected by USB). Any thoughts on the missing artwork?

Edit: The artwork eventually showed up. I don’t know if it just took time, occurred when reloading the USB library after playing with a minim server library, or what.

38

After playing tag with FedEx for a few days I finally got the Areis in the house and connected to the system this week. I to want to thank Shilohdog for all the hard work and efforts he put into this group buy. His communication and antention to detail in this endeavor was no small task and he truly delivered! Through dealings with this, as well as other things, I count him as yet another good friend I’ve come to know through PS Audio and these forums!

Intstation into the system was very straight forward with no issues what so ever. That’s probably due to following Gordon’s instructions above to a “T” and having the iPAD app already installed and connected to my JRiver library. Thanks G!

You require the Lightning DS app in order to setup the Aries, which is easy to do, but as a controll point it is certainly not up to par yet. I have changed the device from its OpenHome DS setting to UPnP. After a restart of my JRiver server it was identified and I’ve been able to stream RB, HiRes and SACD ISO files via USB into the DS DAC via JRemote/JRiver without any issues what so ever.

This UPnP configuration is where this is going to stay for awhile. I have other obligations that are more pressing then OpenHome DS vs UPnP at the moment! This configuration also allows for a more apples to apples environment when examining various other input options into the DS!

All I’ll say about SQ right now is that it certainly is a step up from my USB connected Mac Mini!

T

39

@tpauline;

If you have abandoned the LDS as your control point, have you considered setting the Aries back to Open Home and using Lumin as your control point?

The Lumin is free, stable and in another league than the LDS.

40

That was also my experience with shilodog and with the comparison to my Mac Mini. I didn’t care for Lightning DS at first and it’s still not my favorite controller but I’m getting more used to it and it does what I want it to do, if not always elegantly (I don’t understand why so many of these programs add so many unnecessary steps when you just want to add single tracks to the current playlist). If you have an Android device BubbleUPnP also seems to work with the Aries in Open Home setting. I just got a cheap (and small) Android tablet and have been playing with it. I still like JRemote better but I can see why it has so many fans.