AURALiC V7 firmware brings high-quality CD playback and ripping to the company's current products, and many of the older streaming models dating back to 2014. 

AURALiC's CD playback feature, just like its Lightning file streaming, uses the same advanced, jitter-reducing Memory Playback technology. How this works is that CD data is first read and compared several times for accuracy in the system cache before playing or ripping. This ensures the elimination of potentially induced jitter from the transport, as well as cancelling any adverse effects from the quality of your chosen CD drive. AURALiC says that this potentially improves performance beyond what's offered from high-quality CD players.

MULTITASKING

You have the option of simply playing CD, of course, but you can also choose to rip a CD while playing, or merely just rip a CD to store it to be played later.

While ripping, multiple-stage data verification technology beavers away behind the scene to ensure accuracy. Each data sector is read twice, compared, and stored only when the "sector reads" match. Should a read not match, the sector is reread at a lower speed another eight times. After calculating and storing the most accurate reading, the process continues and provides you with the most faithful digital file possible.

You will be able to enjoy the CD playback and ripping feature once firmware 7.0 and above installed on:

• ARIES G-series
• ARIES Femto & LE
• ALTAIR G-series 
• ALTAIR
• POLARIS

Supported USB Optical Drives

You can use any Windows or Mac compatible USB optical drive with your AURALiC streamer. However, you will need to use an external power supply as most of USB optical drive demand more than 1.5A/5V, which is beyond AURALiC product's USB power capability.

Also, it is worth using a quality external power supply as this can dramatically effect the playback sound quality because noise may be injected into the streamer hardware. AURALiC advises that you buy a good quality external power supply to optimise best playback sound quality; an audiophile-grade linear power supply unit is highly recommended.

The following USB optical drives will give superior playback sound quality when used in conjunction with a good quality linear power supply unit:

• Melco D100 (above)
• Pioneer X12J-UHD
• ASUS BW-16D1X-U

AURALiC V7 is available as free firmware download. It includes an update to the Lightning Link protocol which has been made backwards compatible so that you can connect G2/GX devices and G2.1/GX.1 together for seamless functionality in one system.

For more information, visit AURALiC.