Arylic LP20 Music Streamer

Sonic Compass does not grade gear. We plot gear and listeners on the same seven axes, so a review tells you where a product sits and you can see how far that is from where you sit.

Desktop audio can take up half the room. The LP20 is a streamer and preamplifier about the size of a large deck of cards, and I wanted to know whether it could feed a headphone amp properly. Phoebe at Arylic sent it for review, and Arylic had no say in this review.

I ran it by RCA into a Schiit Asgard X, so the LP20's own AKM DAC did the converting (the Asgard X's Mesh DAC card was fitted but not used). I listened on HiFiMAN HE1000 Unveiled headphones and NiceHCK NX8 Ti IEMs, and compared it with an Aune A17 amp and Gustard R30 DAC.

Where the LP20 sits — A clean, uncoloured source that lets the amp and headphones do the heavy lifting. Comfort and Space are its strongest axes. It gives ground on scale, body and bass depth against a far dearer rig.

Background — Streaming over Wi-Fi instead of through a noisy USB cable from a PC gives a pitch-black background, even with sensitive IEMs. There was zero electrical hiss.

Stage and imaging — Instrument separation is surprisingly sharp, and the stage was beautifully wide on both the IEMs and the headphones.

Design and use — About the size of a Samsung Z Fold 7. The front has a single volume knob that doubles as the mode selector (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi) and a coloured status light. The back carries RCA in and out, optical in and out, coaxial out, a USB host port, USB-C, Ethernet and a subwoofer output, per Arylic's listing. The DAC is an AKM AK4490EQ. The unit is 148 × 148 × 43mm and weighs 500g.

Subwoofer output — It cuts everything above 250Hz and sends bass only, and its volume follows the main volume, so there is no reaching behind the desk to adjust the sub.

The app — No PC needed. It connected and reconnected easily and is easy to read and navigate. It streams Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz natively and supports DLNA and AirPlay. It also has presets, saved sources, URL streams, radio, and NAS or USB playback of local files. The playing screen shows the exact format, for example 48kHz, 24-bit and 2304kbps on one track.

LP20 and Asgard X vs Aune A17 and Gustard R30 — The big rig, run over USB from my PC with Tidal, sounds better, particularly on the HE1000 Unveiled. It has a larger sense of dynamics and body, bass that goes a fraction deeper and slightly punchier, and a greater stage with images further separated and easier to pinpoint. The difference is audible, not night and day. The Aune is roughly US$2,500 and the Gustard at least that again, against about US$200 for the LP20 and US$550 for the Asgard X. I wondered whether Wi-Fi streaming from the LP20, against USB from the PC, hid some background noise in the big rig that I wasn't aware of.

Read this against your own profile — If you want a reliable, ultra compact, affordable way to add hi-res streaming to a headphone amp without leaving the PC on, it fits. If you want a reference DAC or every last bit of scale and bass depth, it doesn't.

Honest limits — Supplied by the maker. An unfair comparison by design: the amp, DAC and connection all differ, so it cannot isolate the streamer. One chain only, through the LP20's RCA output into the Asgard X. I did not test its optical or coaxial outputs or its Bluetooth. By ear, with no measurements.