 December 2018 I reviewed the Oranic Aries G1 that at first glance looks identical to the Aries G2 on review here. But don't be fooled, the Aries G2 is in a class of its own. The initial Aries streamer was the first that showed the world how important a clean digital feed to a DAC is. I considered the Aries G1 to be the successor of the initial Aries. The Aries G2 on review here is in fact a cost-no-object version of the G1. Functionally they are almost the same, the most significant difference being the optional 2.5 inch internal hard disk in the G2 as where the G1 needs an external hard disk. Let's see how the Aries G2 fits into your stereo. The Aries G2 is a so called digital transport. It reads music from a network share, internet source or optional internal hard disk. It needs to be connected to a digital to analog converter that is connected to an amplifier driving loudspeakers. It also needs to be connected over your home network to the internet to receive streaming services and internet radio. That connection can be over a network cable or wi-fi. If you want to play music from your computer or NAS, that needs to be connected to the network and switched on. Normally you would use Orelik's own Lightning DS app that is only available for iPhone and iPad, not for Android devices. Next to its own Lightning GS operating system, the G2 can also be used as a DNA renderer, Roon Endpoint, Airplay renderer, Bluetooth player and Spotify Connect renderer. The cabinet measures 340 x 320 x 80mm and weighs a hefty 7.2 kilos. Dominant on the front is the 4 inch 300 pixels per inch high resolution color screen that offers very high quality album art and info. On the left side the standby button and on the right side four buttons for play, pause, menu, skip forward and skip back. 40 coupling feet on the bottom are spring loaded. On the rear we see the power switch with fuse and IAC power socket. Then the network connector, a USB B port for storage media, the clean USB B port for hooking up the DAC, a special lightning link on HDMI, a Toslink output, a SPDIF output and an AES EBU output. Two antenna sockets for the supplied rubber antennas offer Wi-Fi diversity reception. The G2 housing is machined from an aluminium slab like products from Air and for instance the Apple MacBook Pro. This way a very strong and stable housing is created that together with the decoupling feet reduces microphony in critical components like the crystal oscillators to a minimum. All components are mounted against the 9.7mm thick top. Hence the cabinet needs to be open from the bottom. The first thing I noticed was the primary power supply board that looks identical to that of the G1. The same goes for the PCBs that hold the display and the front controls. But that's where the comparison with the G1 ends. The G2 can house a 2.5 inch hard disk, preferably in SSD type, where the G1 can't. Despite almost identical looks the housing of the G1 is built from metal panels that are screwed together rather than using a machined aluminium cabinet the G2 has. And the electronics is not internally shielded from the primary power board like in the G2. The circuit board on the G1 is also considerably smaller, holding clearly less components. When we have a closer look at the G2 board we see three clearly marked areas. This area is the general electronics. Remarkable are the two USB interface chips. Apparently a separate one is used for the silent USB to DAC output. The WiFi and Bluetooth radios are as usual mounted on a piggyback board. Often you see a small board computer mounted piggyback too that handles the streaming. Nothing in this case. Aurelac uses its own Tesla platform integrated on the board. In current products like the Aries G1 and G2 it is a second generation Tesla that is 50% faster than in the original Aries. It uses a 1.2GHz quad core processor with 2GB system memory and 8GB data storage. The second area is for the Aries 3 output. It appears to have its own Femto clock oscillator and offers galvanically decoupled Aries EBU, SPDIF and Toslink. The third area holds the clean USB output to the DAC. It also has its own Femto clock oscillator. Between the three areas digital isolators prevent noise leaking from one area to the other. And of course there are two separate power supplies using toroidal transformers and there is local voltage stabilisation. The circuit board looks very structured and well designed, which is a part of a good digital audio design. A short word about the Aurelac lightning link. It is intended for use with other components in the G2 range. To quote Aurelac, lightning link is different from other HDMI-based I2S connections, because it is bi-directional it opens the door to jitter-free operation of all the devices in your system. End of quote. According to Aurelac, it does not provide a better audio quality than the silent USB output but offers system control when using other G2 products. All Aurelac network transports can be operated from the free Lightning DS app, which is only available for iOS and iPadOS. But if you like, you can also use open home or DLNA software like Bubble UPnP, Bubble DS, Lin Kazoo and Lumin. I would spend another 10% of the price of the G2 to buy myself an iPad. Airplay, Soundcast and Bluetooth are supported too for those that are forced by the family to compromise audio quality for convenience. I rather stick to Roon or Aurelac's app. The G2 accepts all popular PCM audio formats ranging from 44.1 kHz to 384 kHz sampling rate and 16 to 32 bit depth. DSD is supported from DSD64 to DSD512 in both DOP and native format. If needed the Airis G2 can upsample and downsample PCM files and convert DSD to PCM. And there is a DSP section that lets you apply equaliser settings. Multiroom is supported too, like Gapless Playback and memory caching. Over the years Lightning DS has become very mature, quick and stable. Let me show you the most used functions. This is the main screen where you can select the player you want to control. As you can see I have not only the Airis G2 in my network but also the Airis Mini. You can put both to sleep, power on, mute and unmute. Opening the menu on the left shows sources in the most left column and the options within one section to the right of it. This way you can browse composers, artists, albums and so on when choosing your own music collection. Go to internet radio and you have the usual selection tools leading to stations of your choice. If you are subscribed to Tidalocobus or both like I am, you can play music from these services too. The Lightning DS server in the Airis G2 receives updates automatically so you are always up to date. A nice feature is the learning infrared function. You can teach the Airis G2 to accept infrared codes from any remote, like for instance the buttons on your remote of your amp that are intended to control a CD player. The Airis G2 is clearly in the premier league and not only price wise. It is amongst the best digital front ends I have heard up till now. Switching from my SOtM-SMS-200 alternio, which is very good, see my review, the stereo image opens up further, is wider and deeper while instruments are better focused. Resolution was so much better too, as if there was just more time to render the music better. It leads to a very well defined texture while transient sounds faster and more powerful, but the most striking improvement was on voices. Any voices. I like the words to explain, perhaps more natural by lack of better words. Because of the better transients, a glockenspiel sounds free and sparkling, may I say analog. I know you want me to compare it to the SOtM-SMS-200 alternio with the SCLK OCX10 external clock I reviewed 10 weeks ago. So I will, but only with the disclaimer that at this level of sound quality, I am not fully sure I can with our direct comparison. And the SOtM set has already left. Most properties of the Aries G2 I mentioned are about equal. The highs of the SOtM combo might have slightly more filigree like highs, while sounding a bit more technically correct. The Aries G2 is slightly more musical and surely has the best voice reproduction I have ever heard from a digital frontend in my setup 1. By the way, info on my reference setups can be found below my videos on YouTube by clicking more. The Aries G2 has a lot going for it. It's a one box solution that can play music from the optional internal SSD and or from one or more shares in your network. It does this multi-room and also supports DLNA, Airplay, Bluetooth, Spotify, Connect and functions as a Roon endpoint. All without extra boxes. It looks and feels great, at least to me and works fine. I also love the infrared learning solution. Okay, it would have been nice if the knobs on the front would have been better visible in low light conditions and if adding an internal drive would have been slightly less cumbersome, like a slot loading solution. The European price is €4200 including VAT but excluding internal drive. Aurelix offers a 2 TB SSD at €400 extra. Currently 4 TB is the largest SSD I could find for mounting yourself. It costs just below €500. You might find this all a lot of money and I agree, but don't call the Aries G2 expensive for what it offers is really a steal. It opens up normal CD recorded a decade ago to a sound level many won't believe. It does that already in my setup 2 and fully shines in my setup 1. I've said it before and I say it again, digital audio develops at an enormous pace. And with this statement we come to the end of this video. There will be another video next Friday, as always at 5pm Central European time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to all that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you also feel like supporting my work, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. Whatever you do, enjoy the music.