AURALiC introduces its pioneering audiophile quality wireless whole-house music solution at this year's CES in Las Vegas: AURALiC Lightning Streaming, a breakthrough high-resolution streaming solution.
The Lightning is based on AURALiC's proprietary Tesla hardware platform. The new platform includes a quad-core ARM Coretex-A9 processor running at 1GHz, 2GB DDR3 onboard Memory, and dual-band 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi infrastructure. The brand-new Telsa platform enables a 25,000 MIPS calculating capability compared to 1,000 MIPS for AURALiC's previous platform, named Sanctuary.
Lightning Fast
Lightning, the speedy, versatile lynchpin of the new system, showcases several industry firsts. It's the first streaming solution based on dual-band 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi, among the world's fastest, with a maximum speed of 1300 Mbps. As a result, Lightning is also the first system able to stream Direct Stream Digital (DSD), double-rate DSD and Digital eXtreme Definition (DXD) wirelessly.
In addition, Lightning is the first streaming solution that allows digital audio signals to output though a USB host port to DACs, like AURALiC's VEGA Digital Audio Processor. The USB output does PCM in sampling rates from 44.1 to 384 KHz at 16-, 24- and 32-bit resolutions. It also supports DSD, Double-Rate DSD and DXD at 2.8224 and 5.6448 MHz rates, as well as a vast spectrum of audio formats, including AAC, AIFF, ALAC, APE, DIFF, DSF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, WV and WMA.
Powerful Functions
Lightning is based on the OpenHome structure, adopted by the U.K. streaming manufacturer Linn. Compared to the legacy standards of the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), Lightning supports several more-advanced functions, such as on-device playlist that allow control software to turn off during play, the gapless playback, and complete supporting of multi-room, multiple control points.
Lightning also supports Songcast, a music distribution service that allows users to map computer's sound to any Lightning-equipped system and to map sound between different Lightning systems in the house.
Easy to Use
AURALiC's Lightning App can control all Lighting-powered hardware. The Lightning App allows you to browse your music library on your network-attached storage (NAS), to control the playback, and to set the hardware settings. The Lightning App also comes with built-in radio services, such as Spotify.
The Lightning App will be available on several platforms, such as Apple iOS, Android, Windows PC, Mac OS X and even Linux. The Lightning Streaming solution is compatible with other digital streaming control programs, such as Kinsky and BubbleDS. It is also backwards compatible with legacy UPnP and DLNA standards hardware and software.
ARIES — A DAC Bridge that Endows DACs with Streaming Functions
ARIES, the first product in the Lightning family, serves as a bridge between music on network storage and DACs, enabling DACs to stream music quickly and superbly via Wi-Fi in virtually any format, including DSD, double-rate DSD and DXD. ARIES includes a switchable USB host output; digital AES/EBU, coaxial and Toslink connections driven by AURALiC's patented ActiveUSB technology; and an extremely accurate Femto Master Clock.
ARIES will be available in May 2014 at suggested prices starting at $999 (MSRP).
