Auralic Aries

[Unclemonty]

I've had the Aries for over a week now. It's a bit frustrating really - whilst the sound quality is very good I'm having a number of 'computer-like' issues with it - it seems to disconnect from the minimserver database all too often, and the Aries device seems to remove itself from the iPad apps frequently as well.

I am having to reboot the router every few days to get it working, and the usability of the apps (Lumin and Lightning DS) are far, far below Sonos. A friend here has one too, and says he has no such problems - but he has a different router and network too.

Annoyingly the '$999/$1500' price is pretty much fictious from what I can tell, with most country distributors charging twice that - I mention this because at a lower price you could put up with some issues, but I paid $2.2k for mine, and feel it doesn't perform as a $2.2k component - my wife can't use the interface, and could never manage to restart it. She'll stick with the Sonos.

I think it's got potential, however ironically I bought it as I thought Devialet Air was too flaky to use! In summary, for me at least, it's a bit too flaky at this stage, but having bought it I suppose I should stick with it for a while. I'm thinking maybe something that has on board storage, and that doesn't connect to a NAS or a router or a computer might be the solution, sort of like an adult iPod.