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AURALiC SiriusG2.1/VegaG2.1 Auralic’s latest stream er/DAC com bines with its upsam pling proces or,and at f irst glance there seem sto be som e duplication ofefort.So how do theywork together? Review:Andrew Everard Lab:PaulM iler
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The trouble with m any m odern hi-fi rangesistrying to workoutwhateach of the boxes does. I’ve recounted before the tale of the tower of identical-looking Linn components stacked up in the prem ium lounge of a wel-known airline, and the am usem ent there was in watching ‘elite’pas engers trying to work out where to inserttheirDire StraitsCD. Sim ilarly, Auralic also has a wide range ofdigitaldevices,and given thattheyallookalike,it’ssom etim es hard to workoutwhatdoeswhat. Thingsarefurtherconfused bythe fact many Auralic products are m ultifunctional. The Vega G2.1 we have here,seling for£6799,m ay be ‘first and foremost a perform ance-focused DAC’ (as the com panyputsit),com plete with a comprehensive suite of inputs including USB-B for computer hook-up, but it’s also a network player,interfacing with the com pany’s Lightning DS app to playm usicfrom local storage, online streaming services and Internet radio. Via USB-B or stream ing inputs, it wil acept file formats up to 384kHz/32-bit and DSD512, and it has both XLR and RCA analogue outputs, com plete with a volum e control if required, and a pair of 6.35mm headphone outputs for personallistening. RIGHT:Inside the Sirius G2.1 three linear PSUs [top] feed separate areas of the digital input/output – including XM OS USB [botom left]and CS8406 S/PDIF and AES transm iter – and ‘Proteus’co-proces or (a Xilinx XC7A200T FPGA with 512M B RAM ) running proprietarycode
upsam pling forjustaboutevery digital input format and sampling rate, plus the inevitable choice of digital filters. There’s also – and this is ratherm ore than a m ere also – an eight-band parametric equaliser on board,and even adjustm entsforgain and delay, the later set by inputing distance, to com pensate for the location of your loudspeakers relative to your listening position. And ifyou realy wanted to go even further,you could add to this duo the £4799 Aries G2.1 stream er, which brings with it the option of internal
W hy,then,would you need the Sirius G2.1, at another £6799 –and m ore to the point, what actualy is it? Auralic describesitasan ‘Upsam pling Proces or’,able to convertal incoming digital signals in stepsup to DSD512 or384kHz, and then feed them to a DAC via the com pany’s proprietary Lightning Link.Butthatsim ple headline description only scratches the surface of what this unit can do. Dig into its menus and you’l discover there’s a wide range of resam pling options built into theupsam pling proces ,so you could set a diferent
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