AURALiC Introduce ARIES firmware 4.0
New playback engine brings massive sound quality improvement and exciting new features
Beijing, China, 11th September, 2016 – AURALiC LIMTIED released version 4.0 of Lightning device firmware for ARIES, ARIES LE and ARIES MINI. The new firmware, which utilizes AURALiC’s latest Lightning Playback Engine V2, brings user several new features and massive sound quality improvement.
Memory Cache: Memory Cache allows streaming device to pre-load music track into system memory to achieve better sound quality. It also helps to improve streaming stability under less ideal network environment. AURALiC streaming products with this new firmware 4.0 will cache the on-playing file data into system memory rather than internal storage (SSD) for maximum sound quality consideration: device will disable most of idle hardware and software during playback to reduce EMI noise generated by digital circuit.
The size of Memory Cache for ARIES and ARIES LE is 512MB, enough to cache most High-Res music files in regular length at one time. The ARIES MINI has a reduced Memory Cache size of 64MB due to smaller hardware memory. Music files with bigger size will be cached in several segments based on playback progress.
The Memory Cache function will be enabled automatically when Lightning device plays music through Lightning DS and any other UPnP based control software. This feature is however not working under Internet Radio, AirPlay, Songcast, Bluetooth and RoonReady input circumstances. Instead, the music file will be played as a live stream from host device or computer, which is not cache-able.
Bit-Perfect Group Play: The Bit-Perfect Group Play, aka ‘Party Mode’ allows user to create playback zone and play same music tracks on selected devices simultaneously. AURALiC, for the first time in the industry, brings user this function with highest sampling rate support up to DXD (PCM in 32Bit/384K) and DSD256 in bit-perfect way without a down-sampling process.
AURALiC’s Bit-Perfect Group Play guaranteed a much higher synchronization precision, with 10 times less error than any of existing wireless multi-room solution.
High Quality Resampler: Firmware 4.0 also comes with the High Quality Re-sampler. With current version (3.1) of Lightning DS, ARIES can convert DSD64 music to 24Bit/88.2KHz on the fly by disable ‘DSD over PCM’ option in the Lightning DS App. The re-sampler will firstly up-sample 1Bit/2.8224MHz DSD signal to 24Bit/2.8224MHz then convert to 24Bit/88.2KHz, minimizing sound quality loss during the conversion. In future version of Lightning DS, user will be able to fully utilize the Resampler by converting between any PCM sampling rate.
“Firmware 4.0 was firstly being used on ALTAIR – AURALiC’s Streaming DAC product, the initial feedbacks are very positive. After 4 months’ beta testing, we are very excited to bring this latest achievement to our existing ARIES customers.” Said Xuanqian Wang, the CEO and President of AURALiC LIMITED. “The new playback engine is a milestone in to AURALiC R&D roadmap! Our embedded software team has re-written more than 100,000 lines of existing codes, creating this playback engine from ground to maximum the performance of our Tesla hardware platform and to achieve best sound quality ever.”
ARIES firmware 4.0 is available for update free of charge for all existing ARIES, ARIES LE and ARIES MINI customer through AURALiC’s automatic online update. For complete release notice of this update, please visit:
http://support.auralic.com/hc/en-us/articles/226965727-Firmware-Version-4-0-Build-20160909
About AURALiC LIMITED
Founded in 2009, AURALiC LIMITED has established a worldwide reputation for designing innovative music streaming and audio components of the highest quality – a combination of classic analog technology and cutting edge digital evolution with a design aesthetic.
AURALiC’s hardware and software product make it easy for everybody to play the high resolution music in each room of their home, to control all their audio equipment with a single click on their portable devices, to play music from any internet services or local storage, to discover new music they never know based on their own tastes, to share music from their closest friends, and to re-born any of their existing audio system with the latest technology and sonic performance.
