Network Audio Players/Servers

Make no bones about it – Auralic's Lightning DS platform is brilliant, and as fine an example of software/hardware integration as you're going to find on the hi-fi market, enabling products such as the Vega G2.2, or indeed a whole stack of Auralics, to be setup and controlled from a clean, easily-understood app interface. Well, provided you're an Apple iOS user, anyway... Unfortunately, if your world revolves an Android device things are a little more complex, requiring the use of a web browser – which could, of course, be running on your Samsung or Sony tablet, or whatever – to set up the Vega, with a third-party Open Home client to 'drive' it to play music.

Fortunately, the web interface [pictured] is simple to access: you just need to read the G2.2's IP address from its front-panel 'Welcome' screen once it's wired into your network, and enter that address into a browser – Auralic recommends Google Chrome or Safari – to get to the menu. Beyond that it's all plain sailing, with simple pull-down menus for the likes of digital filter selection, upsampling, display performance and so on. With the true flexibility of the Vega G2.2 revealed, it's then just a matter of firing up a suitable client app on your Android phone or tablet – the latter will be better for readability and viewing album/track details. Auralic recommends Bubble UPnP or DS, Linn's Kazoo or Lumin, but not pure UPnP clients such as JRiver Media Centre.