During my time listening to high-end audio products, AURALiC has become one of my favorite brands. Their products are reasonably priced (in the world of high end audio, at least), have unmatched build quality, and their products sound great and regularly hit well above their price point. In this review we are going to look at the $5,899 AURALIC ARIES G2.2, the company’s latest network streamer.
Words and Photos by Sam Rosen
This is not my first encounter with the ARIES, since I reviewed and purchased an ARIES G1 nearly five years ago. I loved its software, but what I loved most was how it made my USB DACs sound at the time. It got rid of the harsh high frequency noise that I sometimes experienced with those DACs and replaced it with an inky black background that made the music really stand out.
When I received the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 it felt like a bit of a home coming. Lifting the shockingly heavy streamer out of the box and placing it on the rack felt very similar to five years previous, but this is where those similarities end. The ARIES G2.2 is a very different animal than the ARIES G1 that I had many years ago.
What is a streamer and why might I need one?
Before we dive into what makes the AURALiC ARIES special, let’s first level set on what a network streamer is, and why you might need or want one. In the days of yore, music came on physical mediums such as CDs. This meant your hi-fi rack would either have a CD transport with a built in DAC, or a dedicated transport that then fed a dedicated DAC via a SPDIF connection.
In theory, both the DAC and CD transport were built for hi-fi applications. They had linear power
supplies, they had quality clocks, and attention was paid to noise isolation in both components. The result was complicated but smooth musical bliss. Today, however, a lot of music we consume is not in physical form. It is streamed, either from a local hard drive or from a cloud service like Tidal or Qobuz. Some DACs have a network streamer built in, but many great DACs still do not. It is this use case that makes the most sense for a streamer since a great DAC simply cannot stream on its own.
You might say, “But my DAC has a USB input, so I will just use a computer.” While this is not
technically wrong, you simply won’t get the most out of your DAC that way. While the computer can absolutely stream to your USB DAC, it is likely your computer was not designed for hi-fi use which means it does not have quality clocks nor a linear power supply. This means that it is likely to introduce some level of electrical noise into your hi-fi system. For me, this noise shows up as high frequency noise in the background. Candidly, it is not overtly noticeable until you hear a system without it, and then suddenly you cannot stop noticing it.
At its core, what AURALiC has done with the ARIES G2.2 is to build a device designed for low noise operation. In order to do this they employ galvanic isolation at a level I rarely see, and they even enclose the entire circuit board in a copper inner chassis to prevent interference from other sources of noise such as radio waves and EMI. The level of effort that has gone into this is incredibly impressive and in my experience it shows in the quality of sound from playing music back through the AURALiC ARIES G2.2.
So we are now aligned on the idea that noise control is important, and that one of the reasons you buy a streamer is to ensure that you have quality clocks and proper noise control. This is similar to the days of buying quality CD transports. Is there another reason to own a quality streamer? The answer is yes and it is primarily due to the software.
In the days of the CD player, the interface was relatively simple. You put a CD in, and you used a remote to press play. You could pause, fast forward/rewind, and skip tracks. In the streaming world it is not so simple. You need a way to search for music, whether it be by artist, album, or song. You need to see the track lists. You need a way to browse your existing library, and search your music services for new albums. What I am describing here, in other words, is an app. Your streamer needs an app that runs on your phone or tablet that makes it easy, and even fun, to search, discover and play music. This is the other strength that AURALiC brings to the table.
AURALiC has spent years developing Lightning DS, their streaming software/app. It is a full featured streaming platform, supporting local libraries, external music services, high resolution playback, and yes, gapless playback as well. The AURALiC ARIES G2.2 is not just a network streamer; it can also be used as a full music server, with the ability to store and serve a local library of music from an internal or external hard drive to a household full of AURALiC devices.
If you have ever used other audio manufacturers’ streaming software, you will quickly understand that software is not the thing most manufacturers know or frankly even understand. It is why products like Roon, even with their high yearly fees, have done really well in the hi-fi industry. The software that comes on most streaming products is simply terrible. This is not true, however, for AURALiC. Lightning DS is a full-featured streaming platform that is well built, well designed, and most importantly is provided with other AURALiC products free of charge. It is built in-house and receives regular updates. We will talk a lot more about Lightning DS a little later in the review.
So now, hopefully we are all aligned on what a network streamer is, why it can be better than a computer, and why the software matters. With all of this in mind, let’s talk more about the AURALiC ARIES G2.2.
AURALiC ARIES G2.2: Unboxing and Features
As I said earlier, the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 is surprisingly heavy. Its weight comes from an aluminum outer chassis that is simply perfect. Its seams are so tight you would assume that it was cut from a single solid block of aluminum. Inside the chassis sits a copper sub-chassis, and within that sits the circuit board and linear power supply. On the front the device is four buttons, and glass covered screen. This screen is way better then my old ARIES G1, and allows the album artwork to really stand out.
Spinning the chassis around, you are presented with the inputs and outputs of the streamer. For inputs you have IEC in (power), a USB input for an external hard drive, and a network input to allow the device to connect to the internet and be controlled by the lightning DS app. There is also a master clock input, allowing the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 to be connected to the LEO GX clock. In terms of outputs, there is an optical (SPDIF), a coax (SPDIF), a balanced AES, and a USB output for a DAC. If you want to use the ARIES G2.2 with a AURALiC DAC such as the Vega G2.2, there are also two Lighting Link Outputs. Lighting Link is a proprietary digital interface that AURALiC developed to allow their products to stack together and function as a single unit. One output is designed to go to a DAC and the other is a control output for the LEO GX clock.
There is one last input that I did not touch on, and that is the two wireless network antennas. The AURALiC ARIES G2.2 is capable of being a fully wireless network streamer, which means you do not need to have a network cable available on your audio rack to be able to use the G2.2. Most would argue that you still need one, and I actually think they are wrong. Assuming you have quality WiFi in your home, the ARIES G2.2 is the first and only product that I thought sounded as good, and maybe even slightly better, during wireless operation.
How could it sound slightly better in a wireless configuration? If you are like me, all of your audio equipment is connected to a power conditioner. In my case it is a PS Audio P12, which effectively isolates the entire system from the power mains. However, my networking equipment is not, and which means all the devices using that networking equipment are also not. Therefore, when I plug in a network cable into my AURALiC ARIES G2.2 some of that noise can make its way into my system. When used wirelessly, the system remains isolated. During my listening I found that this was a very, very mild effect, but it was perceivable when I went looking for it.
AURALiC ARIES G2.2: Hardware and Software
The AURALiC ARIES G2.2 is not just about its inputs and outputs. AURALiC took great care when designing the internal hardware and the software that runs on top of it. The ARIES G2.2 features their new Tesla G3 streaming platform which features a quad core CPU, 4GB of dedicated memory, and is capable of 8x the processing power of the previous G2 platform. The most interesting thing, at least to me, is what AURALiC calls DMA (Direct Memory Access) which allows the audio hardware and software to directly access the physical memory. The result of the DMA is a dramatic reduction in latency, and a measurable drop in jitter by 90% compared to the original Tesla G2 platform.
The extra processing power of the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 is nice, but comes in especially handy if you use the PEQ functionality built into the streamer to perform room correction or you use the G2.2 as a whole home music server. When performing these tasks, the Tesla G3 platform performance really shines.
When communicating with external DACs, two high quality Femto clocks ensure jitter is kept to the minimum for synchronous digital outputs, and a USB output with full galvanic isolation ensure a USB-based DAC can perform at its best. This along with a massive amount of specialized firmware specifically designed to lower electrical noise and jitter enables the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 to sound a cut above the rest.
At this point I have mostly talked about hardware and firmware. Let’s talk a little bit about software. As I said earlier I think Lighting DS is an incredibly good piece of software for streaming and music management. It supports Amazon Music, Qobuz, Tidal, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, and several other services. If that is not enough, the Vega G2.2 is also Roon Ready which enables you to integrate the ARIES G2.2 into a larger hifi ecosystem.
As a music server, it worked incredibly well. I plugged in a hard drive containing a library of music files and in about 20 minutes all my music was tagged, categorized, and showed up in Lightning DS. As with anything, your setup will depend on how well metadata tags in your music files are maintained, but it was overall a smooth experience. Playback with the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 as a music streamer or streamer/server was superb and showed little difference likely due to the DMA technology and data caching strategy.
One additional feature of the ARIES G2.2 that I love is its ability to act as a CD transport. To use this feature all you have to do is plug in a USB CD drive. Once done, place a CD inside the drive and you have two choices: you can play the CD back or rip it into your music library. When you choose to play the CD back, the contents of the CD are ripped into memory, and the playback occurs from the memory cache. This ensures a jitter-free experience, and makes the quality of the CD transport itself irrelevant. It is value-added features like this that really makes the G2.2 stand out.
Review System
For this review the following system was used, all components have been broken in for a minimum of 200 hours:
Speakers: Zu Soul 6
Streamer: AURALiC ARIES G2.2
DAC: AURALiC VEGA G2.2, Chord Hugo 2
Amplifiers: ampsandsound Zion Mono-blocks, ampsandsound Black Pearl
Power Conditioner: PS Audio P12
Interconnects: Wireworld and Wywires
Performance with the Chord Hugo 2
Chord DACs were a staple in my audio collection for some time, and I still have a soft spot for the Chord Hugo 2. I never purchased a 2GO, however, so since I transitioned to a mostly streaming audio lifestyle my Chord Hugo 2 does not get much use–at least until the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 arrived. After getting the ARIES setup on the rack, I connected the Chord Hugo 2 with a USB cable to the ARIES G2.2 output and selected it as the output DAC from the ARIES UI. After checking in Roon, all supported audio formats appeared to be recognized by the ARIES G2.2.
I started with a little Melody Gardot, Live in Europe, which is one of my favorite albums and a great test album. The detail, especially in the way the album renders space and the crowd, is a great way to tell if a DAC is doing its job. With DACs like the Chord Hugo 2, the crowd detail can be too sharp and at times distracting and as a result it stays in the foreground when it should really be in the background. I had observed in the past that with the right front end system, this effect can be fixed. The ARIES G2.2 provided that right front end system.
With the ARIES G2.2 driving the Chord Hugo 2, the result was truly sublime. The Hugo 2 sounded much closer to my memory of the TT2 and even felt like it was in spitting distance of the Dave. To be clear, this matched my expectations. I have always found Chord DACs to be incredibly sensitive to their sources, especially USB sources, so the performance improvement of the Hugo 2 is in line with what I expected when fed from a extremely high quality USB source.
Listening to Love this Giant by David Byrne and St. Vincent, we get all of the benefits of space, but in this album I noticed better timber and tone. It was subtle, but things generally felt more real and more three-dimensional. The horns in the song “Dinner for Two” were particularly improved, using the Hugo 2 on its own it sounded harsh and thin, but using the Hugo 2 with the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 made it sound a little fuller and the harshness was completely gone.
I spent quite a bit of time enjoying the Hugo 2 and the ARIES G2.2 and while I would not recommend the combo (as the Aries price point makes more sense with DACs priced $5k and up), I have no issue recommending this as a quality front end for the TT2, Dave or other high end DACs.
Performance with the Vega G2.2
A few of my friends asked me, “Why would you add an AURALiC ARIES G2.2 to a VEGA G2.2?” I will be honest–it is a reasonable question. The VEGA G2.2 also has the Tesla G3 platform and a streaming input, so why do it?
As I explained above, the ARIES G2.2 is more than just a network input. It is a digital processor, supporting PEQ, and speaker placement correction. It is a high-end CD transport, and it is a high quality digital music server. It also, with other outputs, gives you the ability to have other DACs on the rack and share a single source (the ARIES).
AURALiC was nice enough to loan me an AudioQuest Diamond HDMI cable along with the ARIES G2.2 so that I could have the highest quality connection between the two AURALiC devices. Once connected, I selected Lightning Link as the output of the ARIES and Lightning Link as the input on the VEGA, and the two devices became a single unified streamer/DAC. This is the thing that AURALiC does better then anyone else. The two devices together truly work like one device and this is true for configuration, control (whether it was through Lightning DS or Roon), and even for power cycling.
From a audio performance perspective, the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 allowed the VEGA G2.2 to relax slightly. Without the ARIES G2.2 in the mix, I preferred the smooth filter on the VEGA, with it in the mix I preferred the precise filter. Without the ARIES G2.2 the precise filter was just a little too harsh, coming off as detailed but edgy. With the ARIES G2.2 the precise filter now presented as much more balanced, giving me all the detail with none of the drawbacks.
Should you buy a ARIES G2.2 for your VEGA G2.2? It depends, I personally do not think it makes as much sense if you are just using it as a sound quality upgrade. The VEGA G2.2 has an excellent network streamer built-in and its based on the same platform. However, if you want room correction, to be able to stream to multiple DACs, to add the Sirius G2.1, or a whole home music server that doubles as a CD transport, then the AURALiC ARIES G2.2 makes perfect sense on the same rack as the VEGA G2.2.
AURALIC ARIES G2.2 Conclusion
AURALiC always delivers. This has been true since my first AURALiC product and it continues to be true for every product of theirs that I have owned or reviewed since. The AURALiC ARIES G2.2 is no exception to this. It is well-built, does exactly what it is supposed to do, and does it with industry leading software and hardware (that peers at 3x its price only dream of delivering). I am sad to pack up my ARIES G2.2, but hopefully it will come back one day to stay.
