I mention somewhere earlier that I was going to try the Sbooster with the Matrix as alternative to the Uptone LPS. I do not have the Uptone so I cannot compare them, but I do have the Sbooster. It just came. It has 3 outputs. 5, 6, and 6.5v. I did not try the other 2 volts yet, but I’m using the highest voltage of 6.5 right now and I can say I did not waste my money and time. There is a considerable improvement with the Sbooster. The music is less veiled. There is more clarity, substance, and detail to the sound, not huge but substantial to make the sound more enjoyable. I don’t know how good the Uptone is, but you have to wait until Feb. of next year to get one. After hearing the Sbooster, I have no desire to get an Uptone. The Sbooster sounds good enough to me.
I recently acquired an aries g2 as well. I’m getting a consistent clicking/popping noise during playback when connected to DS dac with usb that I wasn’t able to figure out. I’ve tried the USB out to another dac without issue so I know it’s not the USB output itself. Very odd.
That’s what I get when I hook up a MicroRendu or UltraRendu to my DSD via USB or Matrix. With a Chord Qutest it happens as well but not as much. So odd.
Never had a problem with a G1 and DS Sr. since June.
I never had any problems with the G1 either.
Silly questions. Where should I purchase the Matrix from? I looked on the New Jersey website (Power Holdings Inc.). They have something called “Matrix X SPDIF 2 Femto Clock & Format Converter” which they are selling for $399. It looks the same as the X-SPDIF 2 that’s on the matrix site but it’s called a USB Interface and they’re selling it for $379. It looks like that comes from China.
Are these the same units?
Yes AFAIK. Power Holdings is the US distributor. Feel free to contact Power with any questions. I found they are quite responsive.
Hmm, I do not have any such issues running Aries G2 > USB > Matrix > I2S > DirectStream. Have you tried a different USB cable between the G2 and the DirectStream?
Multiple USB cables have been tried. USB out from aries g2 works with multiple cables out to a vega g2 dac.
Toslink from aries g2 to DS dac seems to work fine🤔
I don’t have a matrix anymore to test the USB out to matrix to i2s to DS dac. If I keep this I’ll have to get one again. That is up in the air at this point though. Lightning DS is too much of a drop off in experience from roon to leave roon behind so I need to keep the server, and I honestly can’t tell a difference between using my current server/streamer with i2s out(wyred 4 sound ms1) and the aries g2 with toslink connected to the DS dac.
Edit: that’s with wired connection to wyred 4 sound and wireless to aries g2(supposedly the strength of the g2 and one reason I’m trying it). That is a testament to the aries g2 wireless implementation, I suppose.
I am new to the Auralic Aries G2 and the Auralic Lightning DS app, so I am probably not the best person to offer help on this subject, but I know there is a setting buried in Lightning DS where you have to choose the G2’s digital outputs. I am not at home now or I would check it for you, but if you go into the G2’s setup menu in Lightning DS, you will see a setting for digital outputs, and I am fairly certain you cannot output via USB and TOSLink at the same time, i.e., you have to choose USB or the other digital outputs. If you have the non-USB digital outputs selected, that would make your G2’s TOSLink output work correctly, but it would likely cause problems trying to use the G2’s USB output.
You are correct in what you say, but that is one of the first things I played with so it’s off the list of possibilities sadly.
I had an Aries G1 in my system on loan for awhile. I did not think the Matrix made much of a difference that I could hear. When I returned it to its owner I loaned him a Matrix and an LPS 1.2 and I believe he agreed with me and decided he could live without the pair. I was under the belief that the G2 offered galvanic isolation as well as other upgrades over the G1. I am not certain you should rush to buy another Matrix. (I have two of them and for where I have them I would miss them if they were gone. It’s just with the Aries products where I think the benefits are too subtle for the expense and bother.)
Just to finish off this leg of the journey, I finally took delivery of the HDMI cable this week. Relieved to report that I heard a significant improvement to the sound straight away. As the week wears on and the cable burns in it’s just getting better and better. I’m hearing more precise detail even away from the sweet spot.
Early impression is that, out of the UpTone LPS and the decent USB and HDMI cables, I think the HDMI cable has made the most significant improvement. I guess that makes sense given the HDMI cable is transmitting the clocks?
Anyway, next step for me for the next little while is to get used to the different (better) sound, leaving the ‘raw’ output from HQP as is.
This last bit got me thinking, and Ted may like to clarify for me. If all input to the DS is upsampled and converted, what filtering if any does Ted use (like HQP gives you the option to do)?
Thanks for reporting Mike. I know it can be rather subjective using memory, but do you think the quality of the sound you are now getting surpasses the quality of the ethernet and Bridge connection? It sounds like it has done so but only after some of those tweaks?
Yes mate, I think I’ve listened enough to make that call. My feeling is the Matrix, even without the LPS and cables, has an edge on the Bridge. The LPS and cables have just made the distinction clearer (excuse the pun). Of course there’s a caveat here. When I had the Bridge hooked up, I just used a standard 8-port ethernet hub and standard ethernet cables so certainly the Matrix/LPS/cables combo beats that.
Hi Aangen, when you tried the G1, how did you connect to the DS - did you still use USB or did you move to one of the other options e.g AES?
I either used a Wireworld Platinum Starlight 7 USB cable to the Matrix or I used a Wireworld Gold Starlight 7 AES/EBU cable to the DSD. At the time I preferred to have my server connected to the Matrix and the G1 connected to the DAC via the AES/EBU cable.
Yeah, no. The DS does not reference the I2S clock lines.
Would you mind posting your impressions of the G2 with and without the Matrix in your system? Curious given the high quality of the G2.
Have you compared the WW Gold AES cable to the WW Platinum USB both from your G1/G2?