Auralic VEGA G1
Beschrijving / Description
Streamer / DAC / Preamp
AURALiC continues to increase its market share in the world of HiFi, and it's no surprise why. The company never stops innovating and at the same time offering its innovative products at reasonable prices. Very few HiFi companies are even capable of creating what Auralic has developed with its Lightning DS platform. By very few, I mean less than a handful. The most venerable and storied brands in HiFi would kill to have the talent and ability to create what Auralic has created.
That said, during my time with the VEGA G1 I totally ignored the Lightning DS platform in favor of using the streamer/DAC/preamp as a Roon Ready endpoint.
The Auralic Vega G1 is a streamer, DAC, and preamp that can drive power amplifiers directly. This fact alone is enough to make one consider upgrading to the G1 because of the reduction of boxes and price associated with three separate components. The G1 has it all in a single chassis. Let me rephrase that, it doesn't have it ALL because some features are better left to products like the Auralic Aries. Anyway, the G1 has all the traditional digital inputs and its most powerful input Ethernet. I call it powerful because it enables not only streaming from cloud or local network sources, but it also enables two-way communication for volume and playback control.
A major difference between the G1 and G2 is the G1 doesn't have an analog input. For most HiFi consumers this isn't a problem because all our music sources are digital. If one has a turntable, the G2 combined with a phono preamp will be necessary.
Internally, the Vega G1 uses Auralic's Tesla hardware platform with a Quad Core Cortex-A9 processor running at 800MHz, 1 GB of RAM and 4 GB of data storage. Both the G1's and G2's Tesla hardware are identical. The G1 starts to show major differences from the flagship G2 internally when it comes to galvanic isolation and volume control. If I had to guess at the biggest reasons for the sonic differences between the G1 and G2, I'd say they rest mainly with these two aspects.
When it comes to volume control, manufacturers can spend exorbitant amounts of money minimizing sonic degradations and perfecting the tiniest of details. On the flip side, this is an area where chip manufacturers have really improved, enabling manufacturers to take advantage of built-in volume control inside the digital to analog chips. A DAC already needs this chip to function, so enabling the volume control, or should I say not disabling it, can be a huge benefit to the consumer with respect to the price/performance ratio.
The Vega G1 uses the built-in DAC chip digital volume control. Old school audiophiles may cringe at that fact, but their experience with these attenuators is from the last century. Digital volume control can be superb. However, if one wants something a bit better a step up to the Vega G2 gets one a fully passive volume control using an R2R resistor ladder network. This volume control is on another level with its eight coil-latch relays for isolation, but its price is on another level as well.
Specificaties / Specifications
FREQUENCY RESPONSE:
20-20kHz, +/- 0.1dB
THD+N:
< 0.00015% (XLR); < 0.00016% (RCA), 20Hz-20KHz at 0dBFS
DYNAMIC RANGE:
130dB, 20Hz-20kHz, A-weighted
STREAMING FILE FORMAT:
Lossless AIFF, ALAC, APE, DIFF, DSF, FLAC, OGG, WAV, and WV; Lossy AAC, MP3, MQA, and WMA
SAMPLING RATE:
PCM 44.1KHz to 384KHz in 32-bit
DSD:
DSD64(2.8224MHz), DSD128 (5.6448MHz), DSD256 (11.2896MHz), DSD512 (22.57892MHz)
CONTROL SOFTWARE:
AURALiC Lightning DS for iOS, AURALiC Lightning DS for web browser (device setting only), OpenHome compatible control software (BubbleUPnP, Kazoo), Roon (Roon Core required)
DIGITAL INPUTS:
AES/EBU, Coaxial, Toslink, USB Audio
STREAMING INPUTS:
UPnP/DLNA Media Server, native TIDAL and Qobuz Sublime+ streaming, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Internet Radio, RoonReady
OUTPUTS:
Balanced XLR (4.8Vrms at 0dBFS, output impedance 5 ohms), Unbalanced RCA (4.8Vrms at 0dBFS, output impedance 50 ohms), Headphone 6.35mm Headphone Jack (output impedance 5 ohms)
NETWORK:
Gigabit Ethernet
POWER CONSUMPTION:
50W max
DIMENSIONS (WXDXH):
13.4 x 12.6 x 3.2 inches (34cm x 32cm x 8cm)
WEIGHT:
15.4lbs (7.0kg)