As new things come in, I will continue to update this thread. The latest unit to roll in on trade was the Lumin T2 DAC/Streamer. This was a customer trade and the unit was completely broken in. I did my formal test and have listened to it for a couple days.
I mentioned in another thread that I was exploring Lumin as a brand partner. This is not going to move forward. They have a model that protects certain dealer's territories. As I am largely web based, this will not work for me and I am not going to sign up for a brand knowing I am going to violate my agreements.
That being said, this is a nice DAC/Streamer. I briefly tested the Lumin software which seem stable and competent. But I moved back to Roon for the bulk of my testing and it is flawless as a Roon endpoint.
In A Sentimental Mood sounded wide. There is some speaker localization which is to be expected at this level. Top end sparkle is great.
Be Still My Beating Heart sounded wide but not massive. Depth of soundstage was good but not great. Sibilance in stings voice became immediately obvious and overall, this (and Liberty) expose this to be a relatively bright DAC. This is not a bad thing but needs to be accommodated as you build your system.
Soundstage on Liberty is very good. Wide, again but not deep. Some of the effects are wanting but overall detail levels are good. Definite moments where her voice comes across as sibilant.
At the beginning of Duende, separation, particularly in Tony Levins bass solo sounded muddy but not distorted.
String separation in the Berg piece was good, not flawless. There was a small amount of massing.
The list price on this unit is $4500 and I would say that as a standalone DAC, it falls a bit short of other units in this price range. The Audiobyte and Chord are more detailed while the Rockna and Bricasti have much larger soundstages. The thing to remember is this is not a standalone DAC. This is a fully functioning streamer that needs no server and that makes it a bit unfair to compare it to other $4500 to $6000 units.
I would definitely say this is a nicer unit that the Hugo2 and 2Go as a standalone DAC and streamer. Obviously, the Hugo 2 has a strong Headphone amp and is great in other places.
This is very fairly priced at $4500 when you consider it's functionality. Standalone DACs without a streamer at this price and above will deliver more but when you consider its full feature set, this is a great unit. Just make sure you integrate it into a system where the overall balance is warmer.
On a side note, there was another thread that discussed an absence of bass with this unit. I did not hear that at all. Admittedly, this unit has 100's of hours on it and I can't speak about how it sounds when it comes out of the box.
Coming soon I will cover the Musical Fidelity M3s CD and soon the Canor DAC 2.10.