I finally got a chance to audition a Codex at my local Ayre dealer. He had burned it in for about 250 hours before I listened to it.
Source: My own Auralic Aries Mini w/LPS, and with internal SSD containing a bunch of DSD and Hi Rez PCM music --> some fancy
USB cable
-->
Ayre Codex -- single ended, no balanced cable on hand --> Sennheiser
HD800 (Tyll's Anax mod)
Sonic Impressions: I was really floored by the Codex. Of course it helped that this guy had megabucks power cords, conditioners and interconnects in play. The net effect was definitely to make the Codex shine. The complete lack of noise created a palpably black background. And this was single ended! Tonal balance was very neutral, excellent bass, and a very smooth treble. The latter was particularly nice on the HD800, with its unforgiving nature on the higher frequencies. I detected a complete lack of harshness, glaze, or brightness that I have heard with lesser amps. The Codex DAC is definitely something special. Music had an effortlessness to it, with excellent PRAT.
Comparison: Unfortunately, I cannot compare the Codex to any of its competitors, since none were on hand. I would love to pit it against the NuPrime DAC-10H, the Mytek Brooklyn, or the Simaudio Moon 230HAD. All I had on hand was my trusty Benchmark DAC1 HDR, and it was severely outclassed. We fed the Codex audio output into the Benchmark, to compare the headphone stage of the Codex with the Benchmark. It was really no contest. The Benchmark sounded thin, and noticeably smeared. The same PRAT that had my feet tapping on the Codex was MIA on the Benchmark.
Limitations: The Codex lacks any analog inputs, nor does it have coax S/PDIF, both of which are important to me. Also, I worry about the power of the amp. I had to set the volume in the 85-90 range (on a 0-100 scale) with my HD800 for some of my classical music, which doesn't leave much more gain on hand. Of course, going balanced will give me +6dB, so perhaps this is not a huge issue.
Issues: Sadly, I did run into some operational glitches, having to do with the USB connection. Specifically:
- We saw this strange issue where a track could be selected, and would successfully start playing, but the Auralic Lightning DS app would show no status or progress, and there was no way to pause or otherwise control the track.
- The only way to control was to select another track in the app
- First time selecting the track, it would get an error indicating no USB device was detected, but subsequent attempt to play would succeed.
These all sound like USB handshaking issues, but since I'm already committed to the Aries Mini as my source, this does give me pause. I've alerted both Ayre and Auralic of this issue, and am waiting to hear their feedback.
Clearly, as others have mentioned on this thread, the Ayre is targeted squarely at the user driving it from a Mac over USB. All other use cases are fraught with peril.
So all in all, a mixed bag.
