Lumin D1, has anyone heard it?

the Lumin A1 is fabulous..

We have tested over 60 different digital front ends from $50K and down. Three manufactures stood out for sounding toe tapping musical and not sounding digital. Total dac with the Total dac server and a very expensive AES cable in-between the 2 pieces to get them to communicate with each other. Total dac was very nice but cost after shipping, exchange and duty is $17000 for one of the less expensive Total Dac and server set ups.

I own an audio distribution company in Canada and occasionally people come over to hear my set up. I personally now run a Lumin A1 and a D1 server with their built in dacs. I set up the A1 for people at the $6000-$7000 range and the D1 for people under $3000.00. First of all I want to say that after 6 months of use, the Lumin product has worked flawless. I even accidentally unplugged my power on the server and it was back up and playing in less than one minute later. The Lumin app is spectacular, no tech support needed. The Lumin in my opinion, is the most simple server to set up that I have experienced.

Now let's talk sound; When you test as much digital as we have, you come the conclusion that dacs that are super expensive are really about system matching. Same goes for digital cables. We tested the Lumin A1 and D1 using their own dacs and then added several outboard reference dacs to the 2 servers to hear the difference. Our conclusion was, there was no outboard dacs that were better in our reference system than the Lumin own dacs at their respected price point. Truth be told I have heard dacs costing 2-3 times more that were not in the same league as Lumin's own dacs. We believe that one reason for this conclusion was because when you add the outboard dac, you are adding jitter and a digital cable in the scenario. We also added a reclocker and this helped but the Lumin was still better just doing it's own thing. Where you can make huge gains with the Lumin product is adding a product like Core Power technology balanced power cord on the power supply. I went from liking the Lumin, to being shocked at how good this all in one unit could sound. Is my A1 with CPT cord as good as my previous Total dac set up; slightly different flavors but with my reference system, they are darn close.

With all good things there is bad and the Lumin is no different. The Lumin is not a stand a loan dac and you cannot plug any other devices into it. You must upgrade the stock power cable. It must be directly plugged into your router. They need a real 250 hours of play to open up but 500 hours is better. The D1 unit needs some sort of isolation but the A1 is already isolated properly.

If you can get past these things than this is a world class digital device at an incredible price. Is it a TT, no but we are getting very close. I would also say that anyone that is looking at a $3000-$4000 dac, should really look at the D1 and add a CPT cord with some isolating cones.

For the record, I just plug my hard drive and USB stick directly into my Lumins but they do sell a matching NAS set up, that works off the same Lumin app.

Cheers,

worldwidewholesales29 posts05-01-2016 3:37pm

We have tested over 60 different digital front ends from $50K and down. Three manufactures stood out for sounding toe tapping musical and not sounding digital. Total dac with the Total dac server and a very expensive AES cable in-between the 2 pieces to get them to communicate with each other. Total dac was very nice but cost after shipping, exchange and duty is $17000 for one of the less expensive Total Dac and server set ups.

I own an audio distribution company in Canada and occasionally people come over to hear my set up. I personally now run a Lumin A1 and a D1 server with their built in dacs. I set up the A1 for people at the $6000-$7000 range and the D1 for people under $3000.00. First of all I want to say that after 6 months of use, the Lumin product has worked flawless. I even accidentally unplugged my power on the server and it was back up and playing in less than one minute later. The Lumin app is spectacular, no tech support needed. The Lumin in my opinion, is the most simple server to set up that I have experienced.

How about S1?   Extra cost over A1 justify?

Have you compare L1 to generic NAS?

Hi,

To be honest I have not had a S1 in for evaluation. The main reason is that the 9018 chip has not been my fav over the past few years due to the hyper detail. My understanding is that Lumin has really done some stunning things with the 9018 but for me the A1 is already world class. Total dac is no joke and until Lumin, Total dac was playing at another level compared to everything we had tried. When I first heard Total dac I thought it would take manufactures a couple of years to catch up but Lumin is already there.

I did have another NAS but the L1 with the Lumin app is a no brainer. Sound wise it is as good as I have heard. Again everything is subjective and system dependent so I refuse to say anything is the best but it is the best I have heard in my system. I just plug my hard drive and DSD stick directly into both my Lumins. I did have the NAS but my buddy begged me for it so I need to buy another Lumin L1.

I might also try a S1 next month.

Cheers,

WorldwideWholesales is spot on with his evaluation. And I don't know him from Jack. I am just here reading treads and came across this. I had a Lumin D1, and upgraded to the A1 within a few months, sold my SACD player, ripped all my CDs and SACDs to a Synology NAS (one of the options recommended by Lumin), and haven't looked back. It really is that good and a game changer as far as I'm concerned.  And I am not biased for digital, I still spin two TT and own a boat load of vinyl. 

The really nice things about this server is it's not fussy, clean in design and to look at, sounds great (it doesn't even sound like it's digital), and you have a universe of music options (internet radio is free, TIDAL DSD, and you own music library (my CDs are boxed up in storage). BTW, my CDs sound better than they ever have ripped to my NAS and streamed to my LUMIN via a CAT 6 cable. 

I use  Wireworld hi-quality balance cables, a hi-quality after market power cable and Stillpoints for isolation.