Auralic Aries

[MightyMart]

News from Auralic posted on Facebook earlier today promising RoonReady intregration:

"Version 3.0 of Lightning Streaming Platform Firmware is coming, adding MQA and RoonReady. Please visit AURALiC in Venetian Suite 29-122 during the 2016 CES, January 6 – 9. AURALIC North America Inc. and its parent company, AURALIC LIMITED, are pleased to be the first developer of a complete line of high-resolution audio streamers to offer fully implemented capability for two of the industry’s significant new technologies: MQA decoding and the RoonReady integration.

Both these eagerly-awaited technologies will be demonstrated at the 2016 CES, and will be available soon afterwards via online firmware update. MQA decoding will be available for all three AURALiC’s lightning streaming devices: ARIES, ARIES LE and ARIES MINI. The RoonReady capability will initially be available for the ARIES and ARIES LE.

As TIDAL streaming is already integrated into the Lightning DS software platform, all three of AURALiC’s streaming models will be ready to handle TIDAL’s anticipated launch of MQA-encoded music.

During the CES, AURALiC will stream TIDAL and MQA exclusively, and will also be demonstrating the RoonReady capability.
Xuanqian Wang, AURALiC’s president & CEO, pointed out that 'with ARIES and ARIES LE fully decoding MQA music, they bring the MQA technology to any existing DAC on the market. ' (The ARIES MINI has its own built-in DAC.)

'After more than two years developing and refining the Lightning streaming platform, we are building our own eco system, achieving our goal of repositioning Lightning DS from being a hardware control software to a complete music management system, helping people explore their music.'

'Considering that we first demonstrated a prototype of the Lightning streaming at the 2014 CES, we have grown tremendously as THE streaming solution for high-resolution music, making the impossible possible.'

In other important news, AURALiC will make available an iPhone version of its Lighting DS app, with full functionality, soon after CES."

Maybe I should have hold on to my Aries a while longer now that Roon will be available...? I really didn't like the Lightning DS interface. Oh well...