Opinions on Auralic Altair (with a Taurus MKII)

[lcasadonte]

I have a moon neo 230had and mind 180 for work that i love so much that I am trying to recreate a similarly functioned desktop system at home. I was looking at the altair/taurus as packing the most value for the $'s. While price is not the limiting factor I'm not running out and buying a dave! I thought there might not be enough difference between the dac's in the altair vs the vega for instance to warrant another 1k investment + the loss of streaming.

 

[T Bone]

I am considering the Auralic Altair as well, but for different reasons. I have a great headphone system in my office, but no DAC in my 2-channel tube/vinyl rig. I'd like to enjoy my FLAC collection on my "other" rig. The Auralic Altair looks like a great option. However, it has been difficult to find other owners experiences here on HeadFi.

I like Auralic's idea of combing the streamer and DAC into a single chassis. It might not be as flexible as separate streamer / DAC components, but I am attracted to the convenience.

From the reviews I've read it appears that the Auralic has the most usable GUI interface of the big streamers.

 

[lcasadonte]

I am considering the Auralic Altair as well, but for different reasons. I have a great headphone system in my office, but no DAC in my 2-channel tube/vinyl rig. I'd like to enjoy my FLAC collection on my "other" rig. The Auralic Altair looks like a great option. However, it has been difficult to find other owners experiences here on HeadFi.

I like Auralic's idea of combing the streamer and DAC into a single chassis. It might not be as flexible as separate streamer / DAC components, but I am attracted to the convenience.

From the reviews I've read it appears that the Auralic has the most usable GUI interface of the big streamers.

 

[lcasadonte]

I was going for the altair for the ability to play tidal and be combined with a dac eliminating the need for a third component. Just got the taurus today and will post some feedback over the weekend hopefully. I was definitely looking for the best of both worlds so we will see how it does.

 

[lcasadonte]

It took a while to set up:

 

[lcasadonte]

It sounds fantastic. I'm not sure if it sounds quite as good as the lynx hilo. I'll have to post a comparison. I would say using the hilo in balanced mode it seems that the hilo has a wider soundstage and a little less treble and slightly more bass. The altair/taurus favors the highs which toned down a little bit leaving it on for a few hours. The altair definitely has more detail but I think i attribute some of that to the increased treble. This definitely was tamed after warming up and with the T5P's gen 2 sounds extremely good. I'd say within 5% or so of the hilo. I've decided to keep the altair/taurus on the boat and move the hilo to my house. The combined streamer/dac is definitely convenient. The lightning ds app seems very good. Everything seemed more difficult than it should be to get set up but that was due in part to my tidal account expiring. Otherwise I'm incredibly excited to settle in and listen for awhile. The tidal app had direct access to masters which i was pleasantly surprised and the graphics are better than the mind app from simaudio. The unit downloads the songs before it plays them ensuring smooth play back which seemed to work flawlessly. I'll post back shortly.

 

[T Bone]

It took a while to set up:

That's a great looking combination!
I'm looking forward to adding an Altair to my system soon.

 

[lcasadonte]

I've been messing with the lightning ds app and I like it for the most part. There are a couple of bugs that lead to repeated app crashes in the radio section. I like tidal better using lightning ds than their own app. The search feature also searches everything including radio which is pretty cool (tidal included in search). The highs mellowed out considerably after letting warm up and run for a while. No edginess to the treble at all now, just lots of detail. Still playing but don't think you will be disappointed. Tweekgeek had a great price when i bought the altair and the taurus came from todd at ttvjaudio who gave me a great price as well.

 

[Blaze55]

Have you compared with any desktop Questyle?

 

[lcasadonte]

The only direct comparison i have is for the mind app from simaudio. I have a mind180 streamer for work so I can't compare outside of that.

 

[lcasadonte]

Have you compared with any desktop Questyle?

I assumed you meant the streamer/player, I've not heard the dac or the player though to compare. After a few days of breakin I can say that the treble harshness has gone away. Every once in awhile I get a loud treble spike which hurts my ears but for the most part the altair is a very good dac and incredibly good streamer. I had hoped for a system that would exceed my lynx hilo and in this regard there are probably 2 weak points: The dac simply is not quite as good and the amp is not truly balanced end to end as the volume pot brings the system to single ended really so you lose something. I'm not unhappy with the system at all but I am adding a vega which I believe will upgrade the overall performance and really be an "end game" system. I'll post back soon. Hope those in the us had a happy labor day and everyone else a stellar day with music!

 

[T Bone]

I took delivery of my Auralic Altair last night. I got it connected to my wireless network and got the IOS app running in short order.
I have been experimenting with using two different media libraries. I have a Synology DiskStation NAS on my network. It runs a Media Server that the Auralic can connect to.

I am also experimenting with using JRiver Media Center as my streaming media server. JRiver has more options and seems like a more robust media server. However, you have to have JRiver running on your PC. Since I live in a 2-story home, I can see myself running upstairs to start JRiver on my PC and then running back downstairs to listen to music.
JRiver looks like it does a better job transcoding some of that stranger high resolution files in my library to a format better suited for streaming.
The downside to this is that it relies on your computers CPU. The computer I'm running it from now is older and I experience dropouts in the stream.
I have a new PC coming in soon that should remedy that problem.

 

[lcasadonte]

Try roon. Its 10/month or 500 for lifetime but its really interesting, natively recognizes the altair and your own music library + tidal and is designed for proprietary high quality streaming.

 

[T Bone]

I've found a pretty glaring omission on the Altair. There is no way to "lock" the volume control - similar to the way many devices have a home theater bypass mode.

I plugged my Altair into my vinyl rig which has a tube preamp. I want to defeat the volume control in the Lightning DS app and disable the volume control knob on the front of the Altair so that volume is controlled by the preamp exclusively.

I called Altair and their only suggestion was to set the volume to 100% in the Lighting DS app and not touch it.
Yes, that will work - but other sophisticated devices often have some sort of "bypass" mode that is better suited to more complex systems.

 

[Shini44]

i heard that this dac got a bright treble, which is a fan of. did anyone encounter a brighter treble? from another dacs. a review from headphonic said that combining this with TH Fostex = ton of Treble. again i am fan off. just wanted to head what you think about this DAC's Treble.

thanks in advance.