Arylic audio gear, a good option for boat audiophiles.

[GILow]

One for the audiophiles out there.

A while back I asked here to see if anyone could recommend a Bluetooth compatible headless audio unit for the boat. I’ve never been all that happy with the sound quality from car stereo units, plus they mostly seem to suffer from poor Bluetooth connections and miserable remote control functionality.

There were some options given in that thread but nothing really right for my needs.

Well, a few months back a brand called Arylic turned up on my Facebook feed. I had a look at what they were offering and they seemed to have just what I wanted. All sorts of bits and pieces, but the ones that interested me were their DIY audio range as these looked like they’d lend themselves to easy “back of the cupboard” installation.

I bought the unit with no onboard amplification, just line-out level audio, (up2stream pro) as I already have a pair of good quality 500 Watt amps with line-in support. It was incredibly cheap, just US$43 thanks to a sale they had running at the time. (Normally US$50). It arrived in the post within three days and we’ve been having an absolute ball with it since.

The device supports native streaming of a number of services, we are Spotify geeks so that’s mostly what we use, but we have also tested the internet radio function, line in and usb, and will try the Amazon streaming service when we get time.

Eliminating Bluetooth from the audio path is, of course, a huge improvement in audio quality. However it does support Bluetooth streaming if you are not too fussed by the quality hit. It also has line in and a USB port for music encoded onto a flash drive.

The sound quality is pretty impressive for such a cheap unit. My partner has been intrigued by what she is hearing for the first time in many of her favourite tracks and went on a very long journey of exploration of various genres when I set it up. I find it has terrific spatial separation and a good accurate and warm sound overall.

There is a software package for PC that can be used to adjust the frequency response curve. I haven’t tried it yet but the capabilities of the package look very good and I will buy it (US$25) once we finish the fitout so that I can adjust the device to suit the acoustics of the boat. The shipped response curve is pretty flat, which is good, but I like a little more mid range than most people so I’m looking forward to tweaking the setup.

The remote is good too, only $10, worth adding to the list. If you lose the remote there is a simple app for IOS and Android that has worked perfectly each time we’ve used it.

Boot time is a bit slow from a cold start, about 35 seconds to boot up and connect to wifi. But return from standby is instant. I have not yet had a chance to measure standby power consumption but it has to be less than 5 watts as it is powered by a 1.0 amp usb port. (Anyway, standby power probably varies depending on which model you choose.)

Happy to answer any questions about it if I can.

Matt

[Fatboypaul]

Matt, thank you for the write up.