I can, from all appearances, stream to the Aries without a problem. I select an album or track in Roon and click Play and the Aries responds as you would expect, with the display changing to show a track is playing. However, the Vega does not. No change on the display to indicate that data is getting to it and no music. Unfortunately, I don’t have another DAC that I can test with; however, I can stream music without a problem via the Aries/Vega combo, using the Lightning DS app.
My setup is as follows:
Synology NAS
Windows 10 Roon Core/Server
ARIES
USB connection from ARIES to VEGA
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I would really prefer to use Roon over Lightning DS.
I had an Aries/Vega combo for some time so it can be done ! Let’s see if we can work out what the issue is here.
The fact that you can stream Aries/Vega using Lightning DS means that the physical USB connection is unlikely to be the problem. The Aries will have USB output selected and the Vega on and switched to the USB input in order for Lightning DS to work.
In Lightning DS can you confirm that the Aries has Roon Ready toggled on ? I expect that it does because you are seeing the track playing on the Aries.
In Roon, can you provide a screenshot of the settings for your Aries/Vega Zone ? This will help identify any settings that may be causing a problem.
Yes, vanilla as you say. I can’t see anything in those that would cause an issue.
Have you tried power cycling everything (turn off, wait 10s, turn on again) ? Sometimes software gets into a bad state and a power cycle can put things right. Do it to your Core, the Aries and the Vega.
Are you connecting to the Aries by WiFi or Ethernet ? You might try changing from one to the other just to mix things up and see if that makes any difference. Similarly you might try a coax or AES output from the Aries to the Vega to see if that changes anything.
After that, I’m out of ideas for now so lets drop a flag for the @support devs. I will keep an eye on the thread and pipe up again if I see anything that might assist.
Thank you so much for your assistance. I am pleased to say that the problem was 100% user error. Even though I was connected via USB and playing to the Vega via Lightning DS, I had failed to notice the option in the Lightning DS Aries device settings to specify USB output and not digital. Once I enabled the correct output there, all was golden with streaming from Roon.
Simply for my idle curiosity, are you sending PCM or DSD to the Aries/Vega ? I was upsampling to DSD 128 (my Vega didn’t have the DSD 256 firmware) which required the USB outlet.
When I wasn’t upsampling to DSD however, then I really liked the AES/EBU balanced connection between Aries and Vega . I found it to be a really clean, dynamic and meaty PCM connection. The Orpheo modules in the balanced outputs of the Vega led me to prefer those to the RCA outputs also.
Ooh…interesting. Tbh, I just hooked things up on Saturday. Got a good deal and, after sitting on the fence forever, decided to take the plunge (is that a mixed-metaphor?) .
I am playing a mix of PCM and DSD. I really don’t have that much DSD yet so it is mostly hi-res and redbook PCM. I think I should try out the AES/EBU balanced connection but how much of a p.i.t.a. is it to switch between outputs when using Roon? (Seems, as far as I can tell, that you can only do that via Lightning DS–t’would be nice for AURALiC to make that a bit more of an on-the-fly capability.)
Yes, it’s a bit of a pain to switch in Lightning DS. But I think you’ll have fun trying the various options and seeing what you like best. I tended to leave it on USB myself because I enjoyed the upsampling in HQ Player but I have friends who much preferred the AES/EBU connection.
Remember that Roon now supports upsampling in the DSP engine (Right click your zone icon to access) so you can upsample Redbook to maximum PCM or DSD in Roon and see if you prefer that to upsampling in the Vega.
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