Built as a ‘box within a box’, and prom ising a slicker al-round perform ance,Auralic’s G2.1 series now extends to the fuly-fledged Altairstream ing DAC/pream plifier Review:Andrew Everard Lab:PaulM iler
We’ve commented previously on the sim ilarity – atleastin styling – between m any of the products in the Auralic range,and here’sanotherhead-scratcher in the form ofthe AltairG2.1.It’sonly a litle m ore than the AriesG2.1 ‘W ireles Stream ing Transporter’[HFN Feb ’21]– £4599 plays £4199 – yet this m odel, designated a ‘DigitalAudio Stream er’,is a m uch m ore com prehensive product.It com es com plete with onboard DAC,a pream p thatalows itto drive a power am p ora pairofactive speakersdirectly, and there are even analogue inputs – a line leveland M M phono – to reinforce thatrole asacom plete system hub. Indeed,you can go even furtherwith the option ofan internalhard drive to alow the AltairG2.1 to function as a network m usicstore aswelasac es ing external storage. Specifying it with a 2TB SSD instaled adds £400 to the price,while looking around Auralic’s retailers finds it with a1TB SSD fited for£4699,ora4TB drive for£4899.Althese are reasonable add-on costs considering the prem ium charged bysom ecom puting brandsfora Bought ‘as is’, without the internal storage options,this is stil an extrem ely flexible device.Leave aside the analogue capabilty for a m om ent, and you can play m usic into itvia optical,coaxialand AES/EBU inputs;connecta com putervia its asynchronous USB-B port, or an externalUSB store using the USB-A;or storage upgrade. LIKELIGHTNING
stream to itoverahom e networkusing eitherW i-Fi(forwhich twin antennae are provided)or Ethernet.It also has both Bluetooth and AirPlay connectivity and is also Roon-ready, alowing the AltairG2.1 to be used as an endpointwith a system builtaround aRoon Core. Ifyou don’tgo down the Roon route,the AltairG2.1 itself supportsarangeofonlinestream ing services,aswelasbeing ableto stream from theuser’sownnetworklibrary.Q obuzand Tidalare builtin,asisInternetradio,and itcan also workwith Songcastand SpotifyConnect.
ABOVE: O ne linearPSU [top right]feedsscreened areasfor phono EQ [botom right],the DACs[top left],laddervolum e controls [centre left]and ‘Clas A O rfeo O utput m odules’ [heatsink,botom left].O ptionalHDD would sitabovevolum e cans.
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