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Context. My circle of dacquaintances is limited on price. That's due to my cheerily confessed lack of interest in really dark-green converters. At the very top of my heap—and in this exact sequence—sit the April Music Eximus DP-1 (here insert a space bar to signify some distance), the Antelope Audio Zodiac Gold with Voltikus and the production-version Resonessence Invicta. One rung below sits the Metrum Acoustics Octave with April Music Stello U3 and Weiss DAC2. Below that sit the Burson twins, with the DA-160 ahead of the HA-160D by a small margin. This hierarchy or sequence is as objective as I can make it. But that's only half the picture. Now you must know the crassly subjective facts. I prefer listening to the Burson DA-160 over the Invicta even though it clearly means giving up resolution and refinement. I rather have density, warmth and flow than laboratory but somewhat aloof perfection. I consequently also prefer the Metrum over the Invicta and Burson. Over the latter the Octave adds finesse, nuance and treble ésprit whilst maintaining high color temperatures. Over the Invicta the Octave adds more 'humanity'.
My objective assessment includes featurization, design completion, price, fit 'n' finish and such to paint an all-inclusive picture. My subjective assessment refers exclusively to the pure pleasure of listening when the lights go out and nothing matters but going elsewhere.
That recapitulates my status quo in this product category into which the ARK MX+ landed. On sound and features it quickly found itself categorized as Metrum plus. My private inventory controller also thought of the Metrum as an ARK lite. Without breaking into my personal upper echelon, the Hong Kong box thus moved ahead of my top sub-€1.000 reco from Holland. To accomplish this also meant twice the cost. On sound alone that wouldn't be justified. The distance to the Metrum is too small. But to its performance lead the AURALiC adds onboard USB, an S/PDIF output and XLR analog outputs. That neatly eliminates the Metrum's need for a quality USB-to-S/PDIF to do PC audio as is my unapologetic focus; and a quality digital cable. Now the ARK's pricing seems spot on. It's exactly what informed competitiveness demands. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this picture. All is peachy. Yum!


For a new firm from China to hit the ground running in such proven company is impressive. Whilst buzzword-averse shoppers could get hung up on AFN402™, Alire™, PurePower™, ActiveUSB™ and the Sanctuary chip, the need for differentiation in an overcrowded market is more pressing than ever. When marketing verbiage rewards with actual performance and build as it does here, I forgive it without a second thought. I suggest you do the same. Which leaves us with the need to go sonic.
27" quad-core iMac with 16GB of RAM, PureMusic 1.82 in memory play,
AURALiC ARK MX+, April Music Eximus DP1, ModWright LS-100
The Korean Eximus DP1 is the sonic ideal the ARK MX+ doesn't quite match—it's also €1.000 less than Simon Lee's benchmark—but emulates in spirit. Right off the bat this puts it in a different sonic class from the Weiss DAC2 and Resonessence Invicta. Those sound as though they'd been designed in a laboratory first to parade superb neutrality, linearity and high resolution. Yet they lack that certain negligée factor. They show the naked truth but strip away an indefinable something. That won't show up on the test bench but can matter in the listening seat. It's the core appeal of tubes. Matured tastes often wish to diminish the valve aroma to just its barest essence. It then lets you see everything—the negligée is perfectly transparent—but adds textures and nearly subliminal sweetness. In ways that parlay immediately but elude words, this injects emotiveness. The music communicates differently. More.


This means saturated tone colors and a very minor shift into softer 'analogue' handling of transients and concomitant image outlines. Within those developed timbre textures the DP1 manages greater separation and magnification power of minutiae. The ARK MX+ veers a tad toward wall-of-sound density. This accords depth layering and ambient retrieval a bit less prominence. These however are quite small distinctions. Owners of innately lean systems might favor the AURALiC and gladly sacrifice a dose of transparency. A friend whom I loaned the ARK, DP1 and Invicta for a week ordered himself an AURALiC for example. Running 100dB efficient widebanders of great speed and lucidity with a minor penchant for highlighting recorded brightness, his speakers indeed seem more weighted towards AURALiC's voicing than my long-term 3-way Aries Cerat loaners below.
FirstWatt S2, Aries Cerat Gladius, all Zu Event wiring throughout
Because the Hong Kong company is about to launch the matching Taurus headfi/preamp, the ARK MX+ doesn't incorporate these popular features in one box as the DP1 does. With a Taurus loaner already earmarked for a followup, how competitive that combo might be against the Eximus remains to be seen. Based on the DAC's showing I quite simply expect rather ambitious sonics. What type of headphones it'll drive will be the big question.


Back to the Ark of the Converter. The Zodiac Gold will conjure up airier more three-dimensional space.		  

China-only Bugatti SE precursor of the global Taurus model



The MX+ doesn't stage any smaller. It's simply less teased out and less concerned with depicting individual presence bubbles around the performers. It's less about champagne fizz, more about robustness. Like the Metrum Octave this includes color intensity and emotional projection power. The latter is a loaded term. It's perfectly self-explanatory and descriptive yet nearly impossible to correlate with specific technical attributes. Like that judge and pornography, you simply know it when you hear it. The AURALiC has it, period.

Because of this organic fluidity rather than choppy edginess, I suspect that Xuanqian and Yuan Wang and their Swiss collaborators at Archwave AG really did their homework with the Sanctuary chip run amongst other things as USB transceiver. Like the super fast XMOS chip championed by April Music, Ayre and Lindemann, it completely circumvents that striated sharpness one gets from lesser USB implementations. The only functional negative for multi-source users might be the auto switching of the coaxial and USB inputs. While it keeps the front panel unmarred by a second switch, it does require care on your part to not send active signal to both inputs simultaneously.


Deliberately scaled back on functionality, AURALiC's ARK MX+ is a real surprise. It's a surprisingly mature product launch for a young new company who until now had only introduced 1st-gen products on the Chinese market. The present assault on the global scene introduces tweaked and costlier variants. With today's USB-enabled DAC to be shortly followed by the Taurus headphone/preamplifier, a matching power amplifier can't be far off. Attractively styled, competitively performing and fairly priced, it's not as though we really needed more choices in this sector - but the ARK MX+ certainly is made of the right stuff to deserve success. Kudos!
AURALiC website
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