Mac AIR v MiND 180 v Auralic ARIES v totaldac d1 server

[Kunter]

Hi guys.
Sorry for the delay.

I sent the Aries back.

It is a glorious piece of gear, responded well to power conditioning (sound was considerably better with Valhalla power cord connected to the isolation transformer compared to wall with regular power cord) and that way it would have been a keeper. That way, better than my AIR setup.

But my new love, the Cubox i4Pro, is now even better. More air around instruments, much better detail, beautiful tonal picture, you name it. I am now using it with battery power supply (see my last posts on the Cubox project) and still waiting for eSATA disk for music. But even playing from the thumb drive, and through a relatively cheap USB cable, sound is really beautiful.

Will post further comments once I have my final setup in place.

But current conclusion is,

If you want to have a nice piece of gear added to your system, easy to use, sounding great, and wish to spend some effort on power conditioning, Auralic Aries is the way to go. AIR is not too far behind, but Aries takes the burden of using PC (except for a NAS server).

But if you like fiddling around with small gear, would chose a bit more "diy" approach, and would like to spend much less, Cubox is the way to go.

My Aries setup that beat AIR had a 2000 USD power cord connected to a 5000 USD power isolation transformer on top of 1700 USD for Aries.

My Cubox setup that beat Aries has 140 USD PC, 50 USD Anker battery power supply, some cables (say 10-20 USD for power connection and all) and a thumb drive.

Silly..

Kunter