[Edwood]

Is it possible the newly released HifiMan HM-801 is going to have a real competitor?

The Auraliti Digital Music Player is unveiled at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest.

Rocky Mountain Audiofest 2009

The website has scant few details. Only thing listed is:

"is the first easy to use, moderately
priced music file player designed for 24 bit 176.4
and 192KHz high resolution audio files."

No pics, price, or other specs.

I'm curious to see what this thing turns out to be.

-Ed

 

[a_tumiwa]

nice info, i hope it is portable

 

[Edwood]

Hmmmm. Yeah. Didn't notice that it very well might be a dedicated deskstop player.

 

[krmathis]

Interesting indeed!
Who knows if it is targeted home or portable use, what other features it pack, and much more. Worth keeping an eye up for I guess.

 

[krisstack]

I saw this product at the Rocky Mountain Audiofest. It looks quite promising, but it is not a portable unit. They had a prototype at the show, and expected to ship production units in November. They were quoting a price of $800 for the device, with a pre-order price of $600 for show attendees. This product would most like a Squeezebox or Sonos. It has a built-in DAC, capable of playing hi-rez files (which a Squeezebox or Sonos can't), but also has a coax SPDIF for connection to external DAC. It will play music stored on and external USB drive, or a NAS device connected via Ethernet. You control the device using an app on an iPhone/iTouch or via a computer using a web interface. I really liked the interface. You can use multiple units for different zones in your home, playing different selections in each zone, or the same selection simultaneously.

At the show they had the player connected to a Berkeley DAC driving Ultrasone headphones (don't recall the model). I listened to several HRX files from Reference Recordings, and it sound very nice. I actually stopped to listen because of the Berkeley DAC- I've heard such positive reviews about it.

I currently own Olive Opus, Sonos and Squeezebox devices, and also use a Mac Mini connected to a Benchmark DAC. None of them please me completely. I've decided to preorder the Auraliti and give it a try. I'll post an update once I have it.

 

[fileundernoise]

Thank you for the kind post. We had a great time introducing this new music file player at the RMAF show and really enjoyed getting feedback from the many enthusiasts in attendance.

I must say to all audio enthusiast that if you have the chance to attend next year, do it! This show is much more relaxed than CES and we had a great time seeing long time friends and new folks as well.

There will be much more info on our site soon. We can send a shout out to all who let us know they want to know more.

FYI: the headphones were the wonderful Edition 8s on loan to us from Ultrasone. I cannot say enough about how good these sound while at the same time being comfortable and isolating from outside noise. Amazing. On Sunday we also used the HIFI-780 which I then purchased at the show for location monitoring of recordings, need I say more?

I would also like to add that the special show price is available to anyone that attended, wishes they had attended or has read about the RMAF show. In other words, all audio enthusiasts can take advantage of this special price by pre-ordering via email through the month of October.

Question: Amongst those looking for a high performance portable device. How portable? Size of a Benchmark DA with battery power? Or something much smaller?

 

[Edwood]

Something much smaller. The smallest highest quality player is the newly released HifiMan HM-801.
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f87/up...eorder-424053/

It plays various codecs, including lossless like FLAC and APE files. It's quite a bit larger than an iPod, but much better sound quality.