Network Audio Players/Servers

While most hi-fi brands will often shout about their heritage, Auralic's origins are shrouded in mystery. The brand is not very old, founded in 2008 after Xuanqian Wang and Yuan Wang met at the Waldbühne, Berlin's open-air venue best known for the annual end-of-season Berliner Philharmoniker concert. Their first product was the ARK MX, which was only available in China. It was followed by the widely available ARK MX+ [pictured], a rather straightforward DAC sporting a futuristic industrial design later replaced by the more contemporarily dressed 'G' generation.

Sources are currently Auralic's primary focus, but previously it offered amps, such as the Merak monoblocks or the Polaris – a very early entrant into the now popular streaming amplifier segment. Auralic was also in the vanguard of hi-fi app development, at a time when other companies were floundering in this virtual space. Serendipitously, founder Xuanqian Wang had the skillset to make it happen. 'I came from an engineering and software background so I knew how important user experience was, and how to organise a software team to develop such a product.'