Auralic G2.1 Series
Unity Chassis II
The G2.1 Series casework now features a double enclosure, or “chassis-within-a-chassis,” where the outer casework is manufactured from high-grade aluminium and an additional internal enclosure is made from copper. These design revisions enhance EMI shielding, providing an audible improvement to performance. A new, sculpted metal base provides a high mass, heavyweight foundation for the G2.1/GX.1 series, bonded to the enhanced four-foot assembly. This substantial base adds overall mass to the product and further builds on AURALiC’s modest elegance and improves the sound of the product overall.
Circuit Optimisations
While external changes to the series are certainly welcome, internal circuitry modification couldn’t be ignored. For the ARIES G2.1, the USB output has been transformed into a more universal category of application, allowing for a broad level of compatibility across most manufacturers’ USB inputs. The HDD port, for local hard drive connectivity, has been given a power boost to handle a broad range of USB drives requiring higher power delivery. These optimisations have extended the potential feature sets of the products.
CD Playback and ripping – the latest from Lightning streaming
Auralic couldn’t ignore the importance of additional features offered by the tried and tested Lightning OS, now in its seventh iteration. As requested by our customers, Lighting OS 7.0 will provide CD playback with optional ripping capabilities. Customers can use a CD drive connected via USB to the AURALiC product. Lightning’s CD function will read each disk sector several times to ensure ultimate data accuracy, then save to memory cache prior to playback. This makes for a completely jitter-free CD playback experience, besting other standalone CD players at far higher prices. As for ripping, while you may already have the lion’s share of your CD collection stored on a drive or NAS of some kind, the ability to comfortably add CD albums to your library on occasion will add a welcome utility to your AURALiC setup.
Lightning Link Continuity
One aspect of the overall G2.1/X.1 design that remains unchanged, and for good reason, is AURALiC’s Lightning Link protocol, making connectivity between G2/GX devices and G2.1/GX.1 an uninterrupted feature, so that owners of both G2 AURALIC LIMITED products and the newer generation of G2.1 products can be connected together for seamless functionality in one system.
G2 By Request
AURALiC understands some customers may wish to add to their G2 series of components and maintain the aesthetics of the original series. To this end, AURALiC will, by special order, construct and ship original G2 products for customers who would like to complete the look of their previously existing G2 products.
Aries G2.1 Streaming Transporter
The ARIES G2.1 Streaming Transporter wirelessly connects your home audio system to all your diverse sources of digital music, from networked and USB-attached storage to lossless Internet streaming services and Internet radio. Install any 2.5” solid-state or hard drive and the ARIES G2.1 becomes a fully functional music server in its own right with on-device hosting of your digital library. Feature-rich and lightning fast, the ARIES G2.1 incorporates cutting-edge galvanic isolation engineering and ultra-clean power control for impeccable care of the digital signals it handles. Dual Femto Clocks and an EMI-shielding chassis machined from a single billet of aluminum are among the features that make the ARIES G2.1 destined to set a new standard of quality in digital audio streaming.
ARIES G2.1 destined to set a new standard of quality in digital audio streaming.
At its core the ARIES G2.1 is a device that unites disparate sources of today’s highest resolution music files and delivers that source material to your DAC, reliably and precisely, via output options including AURALiC Lightning Link, High-Speed USB Audio 2.0, AES/EBU, digital coaxial, and TOSLINK. The processor at the heart of the ARIES G2.1 is 50% faster than the original ARIES Streaming Bridge, with twice the system memory and data storage of its predecessor.
That means even easier handling of resolutions up to DSD512 and PCM 32bit/ 384K, and increased protection against dropouts. The use of AURALiC’s Lightning Streaming infrastructure lets the ARIES G2 make those connections with your music files possible over your existing Wi-Fi network, and brings with it added features like On-Device Playlists, Memory Caching, Gapless Playback and Bit-Perfect Multi-Room functionality. It’s all controlled via the AURALiC custom iOS app, Lightning DS – or access Lightning setup through the new web interface on any smart device. In addition to compatibility with AirPlay, the ARIES G2 is a certified Roon Ready endpoint for seamless integration with Roon software, making it one of the most flexible streamers available. The ARIES G2 Streaming Transporter retails at £4,199 without internal storage. You may install any 2.5” solid-state or hard drive or order the ARIES G2.1 with a pre-installed solid-state drive for on-device music storage.
PRICE
£4,199 without storage
SSD storage prices upon request
Vega G2.1 Streaming DAC
The VEGA G2.1 Streaming DAC is a DAC with the power to flawlessly process all of today’s highest-resolution digital music formats, up to DSD512 and PCM in 32bit/384K. But the VEGA G2.1 is also a fully-functional streamer, capable of connecting directly to your digital music sources. Compared to the original VEGA, the VEGA G2.1 has a completely re-designed structure, utilising AURALiC’s Tesla Platform to buffer, process and carefully regulate delivery of the source signal to a customized DAC chip. For the first time in the audio industry, it’s a DAC that operates independently of the source signal’s frequency: VEGA G2.1 buffers data in such a way that it has no need to lock on to the frequency of its source signal.
Never before has a DAC been able to entirely govern timing with its own clocking – in this case, extremely precise Dual 72 Femto Master Clocks. Freed from outside limitations, the VEGA G2 delivers completely jitter-free performance.
At the heart of the VEGA G2.1 is the AURALiC Tesla Platform, sporting a Quad-Core A9 chip, 1GB DDR3 memory and 4GB of storage for calculation speeds 25 times faster than its predecessor.
Add brand-new Galvanic Isolation that permits data transmission between primary circuits that are entirely separated physically and ultra-clean power from Dual Low-Noise Linear Purer-Power units, and it’s clear this DAC strives for an analog signal that’s as pure as it is loyal to the music.
Fully Passive Volume Control is another new feature appearing in the VEGA G2.1 It’s based on a unique resistor ladder attenuator network built by AURALiC, and draws exactly zero current once it’s set. Zero current equals zero interference, and it’s one more innovation under the hood of the VEGA G2.1 that reflects an obsessive attention to detail.
Together with AURALiC’s ORFEO Class-A Output Module, inspired by classic analogue designs, the end result is an incredibly faithful level of musical presentation. Incorporating AURALiC’s Lightning Streaming technology, the VEGA G2.1 takes on all the streaming functionality and connectivity of a dedicated streamer. When connected over Ethernet to a home network, all of Lightning Streaming’s features become available. User control is at provided via the AURALiC custom iOS control app Lightning DS, and Lightning Server setup for the VEGA G2 is made easy with universal access to the new web interface from any smartphone, tablet, or computer.
The VEGA G2.1 Streaming DAC is a certified Roon Ready endpoint too, for seamless integration with Roon software.
PRICE
£5,999
A breakthrough in digital system clocking
As digital music formats and system components march ever forward in quality and capabilities, high-end audio systems increasingly rely on the precision of their clocks to keep the digital realm in order. The greater dynamic range of high resolution files for example is only realised with the help of modern clocks that are capable of working frequencies nearly ten times higher than what was common just a handful of years ago. However, today’s high-frequency DAC clocks are costlier and much harder to design and build than ever before.Even systems that make use of traditional external clock generators (10MHz reference clocks or sampling frequency word clocks for example) are limited by the performance of the DAC’s own internal clock. The DAC can reference the external component to create its clock signal using PLL circuitry, but it can never resolve that signal more precisely than its own clocking mechanism (usually based on a crystal oscillator) allows.
AURALiC’s LEO GX.1, working in conjunction with the VEGA G2.1 Streaming DAC, takes a radically new approach to the entire concept of system clocking. Now, for the first time ever, a high-end DAC can work directly from the signal delivered by the Master Clock. Never before has it been possible to bypass a DAC’s clock entirely, in favour of the extreme precision of a dedicated, external master clock in this way.
The interplay between LEO GX.1 and VEGA G2.1 is an entirely new, potentially revolutionary model of system clocking — one that delivers on high-resolution’s promise of better-than-ever dynamic range, enhanced signal-to-noise ratios, and disappearing distortion.
LEO GX.1 engineering
The Leo GX.1 applies all the engineering tricks of its G Series brethren to the singular task of providing the perfect environment for one of the most advanced clocks available in high-end audio. LEO GX.1 is in fact two clocks, each temperature-controlled for consistent performance and dedicated to establishing extremely precise working frequencies for 44.1K-based signals and 48K-based signals. The exact operating frequencies of these clocks are 90.3168MHz and 98.304MHz respectively — astonishing numbers that reflect the kind of performance that AURALiC is aiming for with the LEO GX.1.The familiar Unity Chassis found in G Series products keeps this Reference Master Clock well-shielded from EMI noise, and its specially designed foot spikes dampen and absorb vibrations. LEO GX.1 is also built with two of AURALiC’s super-quiet Purer-Power linear power circuits: one for the clocks, one for the control. A new optical isolation technology makes an appearance as well, sending control signals via a fibre optic cable in order to keep internal systems separate, and to minimize physical connections.
A huge advantage for LEO GX.1 comes from the direct-feed nature of its implementation: there’s no need for noisy PLL (phase lock loop) circuits in the system. Since G Series DACs like the VEGA G2.1 work directly from LEO GX.1’s signal, there’s never any need to “lock” onto anything, and PLL’s are conspicuously absent.
The LEO GX.1 includes a special clock cable developed by AURALiC and is made from 60GHz bandwidth military aerospace-grade material and connectors. The cable is handmade, performance-tuned using precision instruments, and actually includes a performance report demonstrating that its specs are well capable of the task at hand.
All of the engineering detail that’s gone into the making of LEO GX.1 means that it’s an amazingly pure environment for creating a frequency that is so fine, and so precise, that traditional descriptors for jitter and phase noise aren’t detailed enough to measure this clocks performance.
A new description of performance
To understand the level of precision that LEO GX.1 achieves, we need to move past traditional measurements and scales used to describe audio clock performance. Existing benchmarks are simply not detailed enough to accurately represent the resolution of which LEO GX.1 is capable. Instead, Allan deviation is used, which is the measure of variability in short-term clock performance and phase noise expressed in extraordinary detail. In the case of LEO GX.1, it’s like looking at phase noise closely enough to see graduations of +/-1Hz, or even +/-0.1Hz.The Allan deviation of the LEO GX.1 Reference Master Clock measures at 2*10 -12 (at 1 second). That’s equal to a 10MHz rubidium atomic clock with phase noise of +/-1Hz at - 110dBc/Hz, or 500 times less jitter than an 82fs Femto clock oscillator.
LEO GX.1 and G Series Products
AURALiC built the LEO GX.1 to enhance any system comprised of its G2.1 Series components, and its unique direct-to-DAC signal design at present works only with the VEGA G2 and Vega G2.1 Streaming DACs for now.
Altair G2.1 Streaming DAC
ALTAIR G2.1, is an all-encompassing digital and analogue source component. It provides abundant capabilities to the performance-oriented G2.1 Series. Combining every function available from AURALiC into the ultra-quiet G2.1 chassis, the ALTAIR G2.1 is perfect for the most demanding music lover. Whether you're playing a high-res title from an online streaming service, a file on a NAS drive, or an LP on a turntable, the ALTAIR G2.1 will deliver exquisitely rendered, dynamic music, from almost any source. Hardware upgrades include Unity Chassis II: a copper enclosure minimising interference, an anti-vibration footer system on a massive base, clocking armed with hyper-accurate femto-second clocks, a Purer-Power power supply, and Class A Orfeo Output modules. Internet radio, Airplay™, Bluetooth, USB connectivity, and optional internal storage are available. Controlling the ALTAIR G2.1 couldn't be simpler with the intuitive Lightning DS app, or the controls clearly shown on the high-resolution 4" colour display. Completing this extensive feature set: Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, smart IR control, and a locked-in analogue volume control.
PRICE
£4,599 without storage
SSD storage prices upon request
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