Srajan Ebaen jas posted a review of the AURALiC ARK MX+ USB DAC ($1999) at 6moons. His conclusions:
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!
You can read the full review here.
