Auralic Aries

[ZincAlloy]

snip...

And let's not forget the persistent rumours of UPnP being planned by Devialet...

Guillaume

My dealer is adamant that they won't do it, saying that at the Devialet dealer training day recently they spoke of all the limitations of the UPnP approach and how AIR was much better.....

Hi - tried to get an Aries for home dem. Entry level model not available until September, the one with the upgraded power supply available now, according to my dealer. So, I guess I'll be staying with the SBT until Autumn...

ATB, Ken

Ken

Any comments on what benefits (if any) you get from the better PSU on the Aries into the Devialet.

I dealer I spoke to came up with some dramatic flowery language but little of substance to describe the potential impact!!

Hi Guillaume - I got exactly the same! Maybe there's a dealer handbook on the approved way to answer this question .... The only thing I got was that "it's much better, and they expect to sell more of them than the standard version". This concerns me slightly - £999 is a lot of money to pay for, essentially, a DAC-less streamer and I'd expect the sound quality to be stunning, improved power supply or not. Will try another route to try and get my hands on one and will keep you all posted.

ATB, Ken

[PhilP]

The only thing I got was that "it's much better, and they expect to sell more of them than the standard version". This concerns me slightly - £999 is a lot of money to pay for, essentially, a DAC-less streamer and I'd expect the sound quality to be stunning, improved power supply or not. Will try another route to try and get my hands on one and will keep you all posted.

ATB, Ken

I doubt that your dealer has heard both models

Yes £999 is a high price especially when you consider that the product costs only $999 in the US (approx £590) where Auralic sell direct. Once again we're effectively subsidising customers in a wealthier economy...

EDIT: I just checked and the eurozone list price is 999 euros so you can save over £200 by buying there instead of in the UK. Presumably the £200 goes the the UK Distributors... ? I'm not sure why distribution costs should be so much higher here than anywhere else in europe?

Linear power supplies have, of course, been shown to improve performance in a wide range of applications though if the Devialet does put as much noise onto the mains supply as some here have measured then perhaps it might be necessary to put the Aries on a different spur to get the best performance (!)

[ZincAlloy]

The only thing I got was that "it's much better, and they expect to sell more of them than the standard version". This concerns me slightly - £999 is a lot of money to pay for, essentially, a DAC-less streamer and I'd expect the sound quality to be stunning, improved power supply or not. Will try another route to try and get my hands on one and will keep you all posted.

ATB, Ken

I doubt that your dealer has heard both models

Yes £999 is a high price especially when you consider that the product costs only $999 in the US (approx £590) where Auralic sell direct. Once again we're effectively subsidising customers in a wealthier economy...

EDIT: I just checked and the eurozone list price is 999 euros so you can save over £200 by buying there instead of in the UK. Presumably the £200 goes the the UK Distributors... ? I'm not sure why distribution costs should be so much higher here than anywhere else in europe?

Linear power supplies have, of course, been shown to improve performance in a wide range of applications though if the Devialet does put as much noise onto the mains supply as some here have measured then perhaps it might be necessary to put the Aries on a different spur to get the best performance (!)

Good point Phil - I live outside Belfast, so if I can find a Republic of Ireland based dealer, it's a short drive to the Eurozone... Failing that, does anybody on the forum intend to holiday in France soon?

ATB, Ken

[PhilP]

Good point Phil - I live outside Belfast, so if I can find a Republic of Ireland based dealer, it's a short drive to the Eurozone... Failing that, does anybody on the forum intend to holiday in France soon?

ATB, Ken

I just checked the Auralic site and I couldn't see any authorised dealers in RoI or Northern Ireland... Why not take a flight to France and visit Maison Devialet whilst you're there.

It does say on the Auralic site that you can order directly from them but doesn't quote any prices - you have to send them an e-mail.

Good luck!

[ZincAlloy]

Good point Phil - I live outside Belfast, so if I can find a Republic of Ireland based dealer, it's a short drive to the Eurozone... Failing that, does anybody on the forum intend to holiday in France soon?

ATB, Ken

I just checked the Auralic site and I couldn't see any authorised dealers in RoI or Northern Ireland... Why not take a flight to France and visit Maison Devialet whilst you're there.

It does say on the Auralic site that you can order directly from them but doesn't quote any prices - you have to send them an e-mail.

Good luck!

Thanks Phil - just called my Devialet dealer in Dublin. Apparently he's had a few requests for the Aries over the last week, so there may be a solution soon!

ATB, Ken

[wiresandmore]

Good point Phil - I live outside Belfast, so if I can find a Republic of Ireland based dealer, it's a short drive to the Eurozone... Failing that, does anybody on the forum intend to holiday in France soon?

ATB, Ken

I just checked the Auralic site and I couldn't see any authorised dealers in RoI or Northern Ireland... Why not take a flight to France and visit Maison Devialet whilst you're there.

It does say on the Auralic site that you can order directly from them but doesn't quote any prices - you have to send them an e-mail.

Good luck!

Thanks Phil - just called my Devialet dealer in Dublin. Apparently he's had a few requests for the Aries over the last week, so there may be a solution soon!

ATB, Ken

I think the same distributor has both UK/Ireland, so sadly we'll get the same (high) UK price (I'm in Dublin!!) rather than the euro one.

[GuillaumeB]

Am I right in thinking that the Lumin IOS app would work with the Aries? I believe it's built on the same Openhome UPnP standard.

http://www.luminmusic.com/lumin-app.html

The clever guys at Lumin used the Linn Forum to help develop their app. Linn users thought they were helping to develop an app for the Linn DS so they threw themselves at the task! The thread on the Linn forum is 75 pages long and many many people were involved in giving detailed feedback. Check this out:

http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=19429

I'm sure the new Lightning app will be great but there will be a decent choice of controllers to choose from.

Sadly the MiND is based on a different implementation of UPnP and therefore Kinsky, Lumin etc won't work with it.

If Devialet do implement UPnP then I really hope they piggy back on something that is already out there, open source or not. Even the Streaming Unlimited platform would be good (used by lots of companies including dCS, ARC and Krell). But I have my doubts...

Guillaume

[jjo]

Am I right in thinking that the Lumin IOS app would work with the Aries? I believe it's built on the same Openhome UPnP standard.

Yes

Sadly the MiND is based on a different implementation of UPnP and therefore Kinsky, Lumin etc won't work with it.

But Lightning will and does work with "pure" UPnP/DLNA devices.

If Devialet do implement UPnP then I really hope they piggy back on something that is already out there, open source or not. Even the Streaming Unlimited platform would be good (used by lots of companies including dCS, ARC and Krell). But I have my doubts...

I, on the other hand, am hoping for an open source solution so that 3rd party developers are free to create their own controllers and a support will easily be available to all platforms.

[GuillaumeB]

Am I right in thinking that the Lumin IOS app would work with the Aries? I believe it's built on the same Openhome UPnP standard.

Yes

Sadly the MiND is based on a different implementation of UPnP and therefore Kinsky, Lumin etc won't work with it.

But Lightning will and does work with "pure" UPnP/DLNA devices.

If Devialet do implement UPnP then I really hope they piggy back on something that is already out there, open source or not. Even the Streaming Unlimited platform would be good (used by lots of companies including dCS, ARC and Krell). But I have my doubts...

I, on the other hand, am hoping for an open source solution so that 3rd party developers are free to create their own controllers and a support will easily be available to all platforms.

Open source and 3rd party developers are great as long as they continue to develop decent software and continue to support their products. The Linn experience has been quite interesting in this regard. Originally their approach was to go completely open source but the result was that they lost control of the CP experience since many apps were unreliable and didn't work well. Many consumers got fed up and this reflected badly on Linn. A number of 3rd party developers had jumped into the market and developed apps (some better than others) but didn't always bother to support the products beyond a certain point (which was a problem since Linn regularly updated the firmware of their streamers). I suppose this is why a number of manufacturers have now taken control of the user experience - for e.g. Lumin, Auralic, Linn etc. It's rumoured that Linn's new CP platform Kazoo went way over budget and only just went live a week ago after almost a couple of years of development. I understand it's still very buggy. I expect Lightning DS will take time to become fully functional and stable. I don't think we should underestimate the amount of work required.

So if Devialet did go down the UPnP route (big if!) it would be interesting to see what kind of resources they would throw at this. Would they be happy depending on 3rd party apps? I somehow doubt it. They seem to have more than enough on their plates at the moment with AIR, SAM etc. No doubt the DSD development effort is taking up lots of internal resources too.

If I were in their shoes (which I'm not!) I would white label Streaming Unlimited. But then we have the question of whether the Devialet unit can technically actually do UPnP. Where would the processing for this sit? In the AIR chip? Or will we be sending our units back for another hardware upgrade?

Guillaume

[jjo]

Open source and 3rd party developers are great as long as they continue to develop decent software and continue to support their products. The Linn experience has been quite interesting in this regard. Originally their approach was to go completely open source but the result was that they lost control of the CP experience since many apps were unreliable and didn't work well. Many consumers got fed up and this reflected badly on Linn. A number of 3rd party developers had jumped into the market and developed apps (some better than others) but didn't always bother to support the products beyond a certain point (which was a problem since Linn regularly updated the firmware of their streamers). I suppose this is why a number of manufacturers have now taken control of the user experience - for e.g. Lumin, Auralic, Linn etc. It's rumoured that Linn's new CP platform Kazoo went way over budget and only just went live a week ago after almost a couple of years of development. I understand it's still very buggy. I expect Lightning DS will take time to become fully functional and stable. I don't think we should underestimate the amount of work required.

We are talking about different thing. Where you are talking about relying on 3rd part software I'm talking about allowing 3rd party software.

A possibility to get something is way better than the option to not get anything at all. Take Moon 180D for example. You can use it with almost any UPnP software, but if that wasn't the case what would be the options? As far as I see it, the only option would be to use the crappy iOS software. No OsX app, no Windows app, no Linux app, no BSD app, no Android app, no Windows Phone app no nothing. Just the app for iOS that ain't so goo and in fact stopped working "properly" when iOS update arrived. Yay for that. A streamer only for Apple mobile device owners, who don't upgrade their OS.

A lot of Linn users on Android happen to use BubbleDS, not developed by Linn, btw.

So if Devialet did go down the UPnP route (big if!) it would be interesting to see what kind of resources they would throw at this. Would they be happy depending on 3rd party apps? I somehow doubt it. They seem to have more than enough on their plates at the moment with AIR, SAM etc. No doubt the DSD development effort is taking up lots of internal resources too.

No, they should not depend on 3rd party apps, but they should allow them. Unless, of course, they plan on supporting all the available platform themselves. I could live with that as well, but as it would require a lot of development effort, well it's like you said.

If I were in their shoes (which I'm not!) I would white label Streaming Unlimited. But then we have the question of whether the Devialet unit can technically actually do UPnP. Where would the processing for this sit? In the AIR chip?

I'd be really surprised if Devialet couldn't do UPnP. Even RasberryPi and way inferior hardware can do UPnP. Actually Devialet does all the thing needed for UPnP already, but not in UPnP related contexts.

Still, I think Devialet should opt for OpenHome as it extends UPnP/DLNA somewhat.