Similarly, for more casual file-sharing applications, visiting friends can bring music-laden USB memory sticks to your home and then plug them in to the ARIES’ USB drive port. Or, what about those who wish for a simpler, more server-like solution? Once again the ARIES fits the bill because-by attaching a USB music library drive to the ARIES-one can effectively turn the AURALiC into a simple, fully featured, and high-effective music server in its own right. One upshot of these capabilities is that, for listeners already accustomed to using music software packages such as jRiver Media Center, it is possible to continue using their chosen software as the control point application of choice while still using the ARIES as the bridge that delivers digital audio files to the system DAC. How about streaming content from network-attached resources such as NAS drives or from OpenHome, DLNA, or UPNP-compatible PCs or Macs? The ARIES supports all of those options, too. Would you like to listen to Internet radio or to stream content from Tidal, WiMP, Qobuz, Songcast, or Airplay? The ARIES supports all those options. Another essential question involves deciding how the whole digital audio playback process will be controlled.ĪURALiC’s ARIES serves as a flexible, multipurpose ‘bridge’ that can deliver high-resolution digital audio files from just about anywhere to the DAC of your choice, while wirelessly controlling the process via AURALiC’s Lightning DS application running on an iPad. Things get complicated, though, when one has to decide where digital audio files will be stored and how they will be delivered to the DAC. In short, in any digital audio system, you’ve got to have a DAC in order to make the music happen. Let’s start by acknowledging that DACs are essential components whereby digital audio files of various formats and types are converted from bits and bytes to become high-quality analogue audio signals that can be amplified and used to drive our favourite loudspeaker or headphone-based systems. So, in order to understand the many and diverse functions of the AURALiC ARIES wireless streaming bridge it helps first to take a ‘big picture’ view of how digital audio playback is evolving these days. After scanning the title of this review article my bet is that your first question might be: ‘What exactly is a wireless streaming bridge?’ The question is perfectly understandable given that the lines of distinction between audio streamers, servers, renderers, and DACs are already blurred and becoming more so over time.
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