MiND: the smarts
You get your ACE networked using its front panel menus, then as soon as you fire up the free MiND app, the ACE appears on your iPad screen. Don’t read the manual, which leads you on a merry dance (see main article), just tap it and start playing. An ‘input’ icon brings a pop-up screen (right). Choose ‘Network’ (you may get a significant firmware update that this point), and press ‘Libraries’ to show what’s available (below right). There is internet radio via vTuner or TuneIn, there is Tidal and Deezer (and Qobuz, not yet available in Australia). You can access the music on your device (though not any playlists, so playing via Bluetooth may be more convenient).
Below these music sources you see any DLNA/UPnP network shares, with excellent codec support — MP3, AAC, WMA, Ogg, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV and FLAC up to 24-bit/192kHz. DSD not so much, only DSD64 and only by Ethernet, if you’re lucky.
You build a playlist queue of music as you browse, mixing from multiple shares if you like, adding tracks or albums as ‘now’, ‘next’ or ‘end’ of the list. Playlists can be saved. From one of our WD NAS drives, albums played in their correct order, and ELO’s ANewWorld
Record and the Philip Glass album not only sounded superb (see main review) but played with gapless playback. ‘Asset UPnP’ served music in order from our Mac. From a second WD NAS, albums were out of order (as for Band
ontheRun on the top iPad picture). It’s not MiND’s fault — bulk retagging, ‘ssh’ and some string work on the NAS drive could fix this, just be aware that such unhelpful non-uniform DLNA/UPnP implementations from your storage software can mess up ease of use.
Overall the MiND app on iPad is logical, attractive, and enabled easy access to Tidal (three-month subscription included), internet radio and network shares. Small niggles might include the Home screen being near blank unless you have multiple MiND devices, the ‘back’ button being a little lost at top right, and the volume control using only little touch symbols requiring a careful press for every half dB — we much prefer a slider, so long as it’s adequately responsive. We very much like, however, the way that a tap on a mute symbol invokes a big mechanical clack from the ACE’s noisy ‘Mute’ relay as it turns on and off! This clack quite worried (and once woke up) the missus until we told her it was most certainly a reassuring indication of quality componentry.