Streamers - Auralic, Aurender, Lumin, others...

My entry into the world of streaming had the potential to be as painful as it was painstaking. Much searching, lots of listening, which wasn’t easy. Scrutinizing many trusted reviews etc. I eventually chose Lumin X1.

It really is a stunning two piece, stella build quality inside and out. Billet aluminium case work, discreet high end components, including Lindahl output transformers, hIgh end clocks, and regular firmware support and no cutting of corners that I could detect and typified by Lumin pairing the X1 with an excellent matching quality, off-board power supply.  I really like that the X1 is laser focussed soley on what it is designed to do, it isn’t compromised by superfluous features used as selling points. It instead concentrates on being what it is, a truly world class Streamer.

I use it with Tidal connect and also via the solid if not flashy Lumin app on a very nice, very slim and elegant Honor Tablet or via my smart phone. So I have no use for an extra distracting screen, when I have beautiful and useful VU meters and glowing Tube deliciousness to soothe me during my low light listening sessions.

It has been a pleasure to be able to add this digital front end to my mostly analogue set up. If it helps to understand where I am with my system, mine is fronted by the Lumin X1 and an extensively modded and improved Linn LP12. I use the EAR Yoshino 912 preamp, a ground up rebuilt stunning Lumley ST70 stereo vacuum tube power amp, point to point silver wired and now sporting Mundorf, Nichicon and Audionote caps and playing through Proac Carbon Pro 6 speakers on stack Audio Auva 70’s and backed up by an invisible stereo pair of REL S3 SHO Subs for foundational bass.

The Lumin X1 sound is as it turns out, what I was looking for from a digital source, more about the music and less about the “digital”. I connect my Lumin to the big wide world via an optical fiber SFP, so combined with the late Tim de Pavaracini’s genius all transformer driven tube pre 912, we start with an inky black silent background. The Lumin X1 is emotionally engaging, presents a wide deep soundstage with particularly impressive imaging, maybe helped by the Proac’s here but it has to be in its repertoire, to be reproduced in the room. I was looking for a natural tonality and I love the heady mix of digital precision and detail wedded to some analogue warmth.

Maybe its system synergy that counts more than anything else but I would say that I have tried 3 other impressive streamers during this journey but they just couldn’t match the X1 for the way it draws me in, in a similar way the LP12 seems to.

I am now looking to rengage with CD playback by adding a complimentary player as my current rarely used one isn’t bad but it trails a long way behind the best from the LP12 & X1 and since I don’t have room for a full width unit the choice is limited and I need to be careful.

Any suggestions on what might fit my search would be appreciated, I need something that is no wider than 40cm max and no deeper than 33cm. I prefer Balanced XLR out, and some options for upgrade using a separate DAC in the future.

I hope my experience helps anyone on a similar quest. I’d say research your product, the company, what others have experienced and listen in your own system if you can and also to as many as you can with a varied selection of music.

Take your time don’t jump in, if you can find a 30 day return take advantage of this as it does afford time to properly audition. My dealer did say if I wasn’t delighted I could return it. I suspect they knew what I was after and were therefore very confident I would find it with the Lumin X1 which I am happy to say categorically that I did.

I had an auralic g2.1 and really liked it. I have now switched to a Grimm mu2, which is a bit better and much more expensive. The beauty about the Auralic was in its fantastic WiFi execution. From what I’ve seen it’s not very common at this level. If that’s not important to you, I’d probably stick with some of the other suggestions.

Playback Designs MPS-X. Best in the world. 

If you can use one of their DAC's too, there is a glass cable interconnect that connects streamer to DAC and eliminates noise and is the best link to use. 

As I mentioned above, Mac Mini is ok as a roon core. But…the purpose built Roon Nucleus One is better. And yes I am talking about using it purely as a core, not connected to DAC. I was surprised to find a difference in sound as I didn’t expect there would be any but the Nucleus provides a more lively and engaging presentation. Not a huge improvement but it’s worth it. Again, if you don’t have a revealing system you may not hear this improvement but at some point I highly recommend you give it a try. 
I thought about why there could be a difference in sound. The only explanation I can come up with is the Nucleus’ mission is much simpler than the Mac’s and it is to run their proprietary OS where main focus and priority is Roon and processing the signal doesn’t involve concurrent irrelevant tasks that potentially deprioritize Roon. There are also less components that can introduce noise. 
I bought the Nucleus because I was annoyed by a frequent need to reboot the Mini or restart Roon app or fighting with impacts to Roon due to macOS updates. I saw a used Nucleus one and snatched it. Improvement in sound quality wasn’t on my mind. 

One other important improvement to sound quality was an upgraded Ethernet cable to either the Mini or the Nucleus. Both reacted to the change but with the nucleus, since it was already an improvement over Mac Min, it widened the gap in performance. I compared these cores in exactly the same configuration - connected to the same router using the same Ethernet cable.