New playback engine brings major improvements to sound quality and exciting new features

ARIES Version 4.0 Firmware

Beijing, China, 11th September, 2016 – AURALiC LIMITED release Version 4.0 of Lightning device firmware for ARIES, ARIES LE and ARIES MINI. The new firmware, which utilises AURALiC’s latest Lightning Playback Engine V2, introduces several new features and a major improvement in sound quality.

Memory Cache

Memory Cache allows streaming devices to pre-load music tracks into system memory to achieve better sound quality. This also helps to improve streaming stability under less than ideal network conditions. AURALiC’s 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 – the device will disable most of idle hardware and software during playback to reduce EMI noise generated by the digital circuit. The size of Memory Cache for ARIES and ARIES LE is 512MB, enough to cache most high resolution music files. The ARIES MINI has a reduced Memory Cache size of 64MB due to smaller hardware memory. Larger music files will be cached in several segments based on playback progress. The Memory Cache function will be enabled automatically when the Lightning device plays music through Lightning DS and any other UPnP based control software. Please note this feature does not apply to Internet Radio, AirPlay, Songcast, Bluetooth and Roon Ready inputs. Instead, the music files will be played as a live stream from the host device or computer, which is not cache-able.

Group Play

Bit-Perfect Group Play

Bit-Perfect Group Play (party mode) allows the user to create playback zones and play the 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 guarantees much higher synchronisation precision, with significantly less errors than any existing wireless multi-room solution.

High Quality Re-sampler

Firmware 4.0 also comes with a High Quality Re-sampler. With the current version (3.1) of Lightning DS, ARIES can convert DSD64 music to 24Bit/88.2KHz on the fly by disabling the ‘DSD over PCM’ option in the Lightning DS App. The re-sampler will firstly up-sample the 1Bit/2.8224MHz DSD signal to 24Bit/2.8224MHz then convert to 24Bit/88.2KHz, minimising sound quality loss during the conversion. In future versions of Lightning DS, the user will be able to fully utilise the Re-sampler by converting between any PCM sampling rate.

Xuanqian Wang, CEO and President of Auralic Limited commented, “We first implemented Version firmware 4.0 in the ALTAIR – AURALiC’s Streaming DAC product. Initial feedback from the market is extremely positive. Following four months of extensive beta testing, we are very excited to bring this latest achievement to our existing ARIES customers. The new playback engine is a milestone on the AURALiC R&D roadmap. Our embedded software team has re-written more than 100,000 lines of existing code, creating this playback engine from the ground up to maximise the performance of our Tesla hardware platform and to achieve the very best sound quality ever.”

ARIES firmware 4.0 is available for update free of charge for all existing ARIES, ARIES LE and ARIES MINI customers through AURALiC’s automatic online update. For the complete release notice of this update, please visit here.

AURALiC

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 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 service or local storage device, to discover new music based on their own tastes, to share music from friends, and to connect their existing audio system with the latest technology and sonic performance.