Auralic Aeries Mini, Fabulous Straight Forward Streamer & Roon Endpoint - SOLD

It’s a little like the 1950/60’s TV show To Tell the Truth – would the real AURALiC Aries Mini please step forward? This Chinese company’s stripped-down level streamer wears many hats. That’s good news in a product category where functionality often matters as much – if not more than – sound quality alone. Many an end user will take a pass on a streamer should its control app walk with a limp, arrive bug-ridden or not do gapless playback. No such issues trouble the Aries Mini when used in tandem with the iPhone version of AURALiC’s Lightning DS app which might be the best most comprehensive app in the business. .

Here are the basics: the Mini pulls music from the cloud and/or home-based data storage and sends it onward to an existing DAC or amplifier. Street price: US$549. Plastic shell. Colour choices: black or white. There's an optional PSU for another $299.

Forget about the streaming service connection for a moment. Whilst the Aries Mini can fetch content from a UPnP/DLNA-serving network node, the client-server relationship isn’t an exclusive one. The Aries Mini – she’s free to see other people like Messrs Bluetooth and Airplay. It’s an Airplay DAC; it’s a Bluetooth DAC.

Not only though. The Aries Mini’s key drawcard is self-sufficiency. How so? 1) Hook an external hard drive full of tunes into its second rear-panelled USB port or 2) install a 2.5” SSD/HHD into its hull and it becomes its own independent twofer; music server and playback client running on a single device. One Mini can even stream to another Mini; or any other UPnP-capable network device for that matter. In this context, the Aries Mini is a WiFi-able NAS drive. (Pro tip: add your music AFTER installing the drive).

So many reviews & testimonials all available on the web... do some searching and read up!

This unit is in excellent condition save for some plastic discoloration which occurs only in the white version. Plays incredibly well and we find it superior to many streamers costing 2-3x as much. If you want a simple basic music computer to bring in all the 1s & 0s, this is THE ONE.

Auralic Aeries "Mini" Network Streamer: $359+ sales tax when applicable