Post by Bigman80 on Aug 28, 2021 8:03:37 GMT
I thought this bit of kit and the subsequent saga of getting it to work deserved its own thread, so here it is.
After picking this up from a lovely chap called "Archie" I was keen to unbox it, set it up and get it running. However, upon switch on, it wouldnt work.
The unit was stuck in some sort of boot cycle and thus never got past the initial power up phase, instead resetting when the BIOS wouldnt load. Icontacted Archie, who immediately suggested he would meet up with me and refund me, but knowing that it was no good to anyone in this condition, i decided to have a bash at fixing it.
With Archies permission, I contacted Digibit to get some support. After firing across a few emails and getting nowhere, i vented a little to our own misterc who promptly fired over the details of how to contact the technical support team at Digibit. Turns out that without the correct title on your email (serial number) they don't bother responding.
"Julio" wrote back to me within a couple of hours and suggested that the BIOS battery was likely to be dead. He suggested that the battery should be replaced, but also that i would then have to set up the BIOS again afterwards. Alarm bells rang, as i am not really a computer guy, and the thought of delving into BIOS made me pretty concerned.
I relayed those concerns to Julio, who told me not to worry, as he was going to send me a step by step guide. I needed a VGA input on a screen, a USB keyboard and a little servive adapter for the VGA cable, which i got for £10 from Julio. Bonus.
After diving behind the back of our TV's, i noted that we didn't have a screen with VGA input. Hmm, then a light bulb appeard, "my mom has a desktop PC with monitor!"
As soon as the cable and battery arrived, i was over to my mom's and had everything up and running in about 15 minutes. Whoop!
Got home and plugged it in, and........MUSIC!
It was quite late, so the next day i wizzed through the library of track that had been left on there by Archie. Pretty obvious to me that this was a significant improvement and got things much more aligned with what i had from my system with the Aries G2 that bigbird kindly loaned me.
GREAT!
Time to put my files on the unit and see how my HiRes stuff gets on....and then we had another problem.
The Aria app on my phone has a function to copy files from an external HHD to the internal 2TB SSD memory, but it wasnt working? I tried multiple times and it just wasnt having it. There was no way to get my library on the unit.
Hmmmm.....lets rip a CD.
I popped a CD in and turned around to sit down, then a few seconds later the tray opened. "omg....is this broken too?"
I dived in to the library and there it was? I played a track and....yup it works, but it didnt sound great. I have had this before when ripping CD's and it was usually down to the quality of the rip. Again i popped into the app and tried to open the ripping settings, but the app kept shuttting down.
Unfortunately, with the Digibit not being well known, the internet was useless. I emailed Julio and was promptly told that there was a charge of 30eur to have a look. Not being overjoyed, i sent the money and in return, Julio went into the unit remotely and rebuilt the software from his location. Very cool.
Seemed that the BIOS wasnt the only issue, but thanks to Julio it is now working as it should. To future proof myself, i asked a boat load of questions and Julio ended up sending me all the information i needed in order to get into it's brain from my own laptop.
So now it was fully functoional? Not quite...the screen doesnt work for some reason and Julio cant find an issue with the software, so we suspect the screen is dead, but as it only displays the bits and sample rate, i don't care at all.
I set about removing the library that was left on there and installing my own. 9 hours later it is done!
Being able to control the unit via my own laptop means i am now fully able to fine tune this machine, and i am glad i can. I changed the ripper settings and ripped the same CD. They are miles apart in sound quality and now sounds far better. Took ages to rip the CD though, which is absolutely ok with me. I'd rather wait and it be done right, than have it done in an instant and sound crap.
So, when i get home from work today, i intend to have a blast through my fully functioning Digibit Aria and listen to some music. Now that i am fully happy with the functionality and the setup, i can finally just have a listen and evaluate what it has brought to the party.
It's been a bit of a faff, but i have learned loads and prevented a very good bit of HiFi from ending up in the scrap.
After picking this up from a lovely chap called "Archie" I was keen to unbox it, set it up and get it running. However, upon switch on, it wouldnt work.
The unit was stuck in some sort of boot cycle and thus never got past the initial power up phase, instead resetting when the BIOS wouldnt load. Icontacted Archie, who immediately suggested he would meet up with me and refund me, but knowing that it was no good to anyone in this condition, i decided to have a bash at fixing it.
With Archies permission, I contacted Digibit to get some support. After firing across a few emails and getting nowhere, i vented a little to our own misterc who promptly fired over the details of how to contact the technical support team at Digibit. Turns out that without the correct title on your email (serial number) they don't bother responding.
"Julio" wrote back to me within a couple of hours and suggested that the BIOS battery was likely to be dead. He suggested that the battery should be replaced, but also that i would then have to set up the BIOS again afterwards. Alarm bells rang, as i am not really a computer guy, and the thought of delving into BIOS made me pretty concerned.
I relayed those concerns to Julio, who told me not to worry, as he was going to send me a step by step guide. I needed a VGA input on a screen, a USB keyboard and a little servive adapter for the VGA cable, which i got for £10 from Julio. Bonus.
After diving behind the back of our TV's, i noted that we didn't have a screen with VGA input. Hmm, then a light bulb appeard, "my mom has a desktop PC with monitor!"
As soon as the cable and battery arrived, i was over to my mom's and had everything up and running in about 15 minutes. Whoop!
Got home and plugged it in, and........MUSIC!
It was quite late, so the next day i wizzed through the library of track that had been left on there by Archie. Pretty obvious to me that this was a significant improvement and got things much more aligned with what i had from my system with the Aries G2 that bigbird kindly loaned me.
GREAT!
Time to put my files on the unit and see how my HiRes stuff gets on....and then we had another problem.
The Aria app on my phone has a function to copy files from an external HHD to the internal 2TB SSD memory, but it wasnt working? I tried multiple times and it just wasnt having it. There was no way to get my library on the unit.
Hmmmm.....lets rip a CD.
I popped a CD in and turned around to sit down, then a few seconds later the tray opened. "omg....is this broken too?"
I dived in to the library and there it was? I played a track and....yup it works, but it didnt sound great. I have had this before when ripping CD's and it was usually down to the quality of the rip. Again i popped into the app and tried to open the ripping settings, but the app kept shuttting down.
Unfortunately, with the Digibit not being well known, the internet was useless. I emailed Julio and was promptly told that there was a charge of 30eur to have a look. Not being overjoyed, i sent the money and in return, Julio went into the unit remotely and rebuilt the software from his location. Very cool.
Seemed that the BIOS wasnt the only issue, but thanks to Julio it is now working as it should. To future proof myself, i asked a boat load of questions and Julio ended up sending me all the information i needed in order to get into it's brain from my own laptop.
So now it was fully functoional? Not quite...the screen doesnt work for some reason and Julio cant find an issue with the software, so we suspect the screen is dead, but as it only displays the bits and sample rate, i don't care at all.
I set about removing the library that was left on there and installing my own. 9 hours later it is done!
Being able to control the unit via my own laptop means i am now fully able to fine tune this machine, and i am glad i can. I changed the ripper settings and ripped the same CD. They are miles apart in sound quality and now sounds far better. Took ages to rip the CD though, which is absolutely ok with me. I'd rather wait and it be done right, than have it done in an instant and sound crap.
So, when i get home from work today, i intend to have a blast through my fully functioning Digibit Aria and listen to some music. Now that i am fully happy with the functionality and the setup, i can finally just have a listen and evaluate what it has brought to the party.
It's been a bit of a faff, but i have learned loads and prevented a very good bit of HiFi from ending up in the scrap.
, but they are all neatly stored away in boxes and instead of having to move, get up, look for particular albums, keep them scratch free etc, i prefer to use a streamer, which is by far the best way to enjoy digitally stored music for all of the aforementioned reasons. 
