Description
Streamer/DAC/AMP. Well specced and great sounding. Boxed and in very good condition. With six month warranty.
Auralic Polaris: As a well-equipped streamer, it rightly asks the question: Is such a device more hi-fi fast food or already an audiophile designer drug? The answer, it turns out, is surprisingly clear.
Whenever the author of these lines tests a good all-in-one device, he briefly longs for a solid, steady hi-fi life without the constant assembly, disassembly, comparison, re-plugging, unpacking, and repacking. A life without cardboard storage cluttering the hallway and every reachable niche of the apartment. And without the stacks of devices and the tangle of cables that an active test cycle sometimes entails.
A radical counter-utopia to this nerdy technological overload is the streaming amplifier. These devices, available for several years now, can make an entire system including the player, almost disappear without significant sonic compromise. T+A, Linn, and Naim were pioneers of this movement. Auralic took its time, presenting its all-rounder, the Auralic Polaris, just this year. It’s a powerful integrated amplifier with digital and analog inputs (one of which can be switched to Phono MM) and a sophisticated streamer that supports Tidal, Qobuz, any hard disk or DLNA server, Internet radio, Bluetooth, Airplay, Multiroom, and even the Roon playback protocol.
