LUMIN - Audiophile Network Music Player

[Joel6m]

psme,

 

psme,

 

I know I know.... but as everybody I also has some expectation for this new equipment.

I will stop comparing new and my old gear at least till end of the week, till this time equipment will be burned-in for ~200h.

Lumin is not a tube based gear, so till this time sound should be more-less stable.

I will have time to tag my music library

 

Darius

 

 

Hello Darius,

 

I received my Lumin loaner at the same time and I am still impressed with the overall sound quality.

IMO the Logitech Transporter is a great source but at home, the Lumin is performing better than the Aurender S10 connected to my Esoteric K03 player.

I am experiencing now the DSD streaming capabilities and it is really another dimension. The Channel Classics downloads are really impressive, sound definitely better than SACDs. You should give a try...

2L also offers free downloads of DSD tracks.

 

Joël

[Joel6m]

Hi all,

 

I am not a very active member of this forum but just to provide you with some further details:

It's important first to understand that the interest of the Leedh Processing is to purely withdraw the analog preamplifier from the playback chain. It's a very easy experience and it's completely meaningful about the level of coloration and distortion released by the best preamplifiers. At the early beginnings of the Leedh Processing tests, I had the opportunity to compare its efficiency and transparency versus some of the very best devices like the Ypsilon PST100 MK2 or the Robert Koda Takumi K10 for instance. All have been outclassed by this simple digital volume processing.

Unfortunately, sometimes people don't look for the ultimate transparency and will find that their colored preamp bring warmer voices, more convincing bass or whatever... It's a matter of choice and I completely respect this appoach. But if you look for the ultimate transparency, especially for classical music, which is in my opinion a more demanding musical genre in terms of high fidelity, then the Lumin streamers are definitely a highly commendable choice as they offer the best volume setting existing on the market for free.

I would like to precise also that I have found during my review of the X1 and Lumin Amps a bit more transparency when you let the maximum volume in the Lumin settings at full scale (100%) using only the usual circular controller on top of the Lumin app. I do not understand why, as Lumin engineers have used exactly the same attenuation values than the full scale volume, but that makes a difference in my system. So I would recommend to not use the maximum volume option for evaluation purposes.

If you desire to compare your analog preamplifier whith the Leedh processing, also ensure that you can set you analog preamp at full volume (adjusting then the desired attenuation from the Lumin app). You will then be able to reverse the test with the Lumin app set at 100% and the attenuation adjusted on the knob of your analog preamp. If you don't set your analog preamplifier at its max volume, then you should keep the distortion of your analog preamp. So in that case, it's better to directly withdraw your preamplifier from the playback chain to assess the performance of the Leedh Processing, especially if you use a tube preamplifier which generate noise at max volume...

 

My 2 cents...

Cheers,

Joël

 

 

[Joel6m]

3 hours ago, matthias said:

 

I think gain matching of the complete set-up is most important as well because the Leedh Processing is not lossless with greater attenuation than 30dB.

 

Matt

Yes in absolute terms you are correct, but you also should consider than the 30 dB attenuation is already a lot and that the lower values are less consuming in terms of bit length than most of the usual digital volume controllers available to the market...

Cheers.

Joël