My experience is this:
Lately I’ve been listening to these streamers; the Lumin U1 mini, Lumin P1 mini, NuPrime Evolution Stream and Grimm Audio MU1 (and also the Pro-Ject CD Box RS2 T CD-transport, which I won’t comment on here). A friend of mine recently decided on the Eversolo A10 (which I haven’t heard yet) over the Lumin P1 mini, and of the two he preferred the A10 for being a bit less "sugary" and a bit more "monitor" vs. the P1 mini. My experience with the Lumin’s in general (incl. the X1) is that they’re resolved sounding but also rather polished, verging on being "polite" and ever so slightly "constipated."
The best (and most expensive) of the bunch just mentioned is no doubt the Grimm Audio MU1, which to my ears is tonally rather neutral/natural and with a fantastically layered, resolved, transparent and open/honest presentation.
Here’s the thing though: of the other streamers I’ve heard sans the MU1 (of which I had a slight preference for the NuPrime Evo Stream) none of them excelled over my existing streaming solution (in some aspects even to the contrary), a DIY, well-made music server with Fidelizer Pro optimization, JRiver and a high quality pro audio Marian AES/EBU digital out soundcard (a soundcard that retails for ~$1,000) via a braided Mundorf Silver/gold AES/EBU digital cable.
This may surprise some of you, myself included, but the fact to my ears and over my resolving and transparent setup nonetheless remains exactly that. I actually know a few audiophiles who still swear by high quality pro digital output soundcards like Lynx and Marian in music servers as their preferred digital outputs to their DAC’s, and it’s not that they have crappy, low quality setups - on the contrary.
Which is to say: unless I’m going more all-in with the Grimm Audio MU1 streamer (or the "Swiss knife" sibling, the MU2) there’s no good reason to buy one of the other streamers mentioned - from a sound quality standpoint it simply makes no sense. Is it more bothersome with my music server compared to the other streamers? Yes, but ultimately it doesn’t matter to me with a bit of inconvenience in the power up procedure.
Instead I’m going to investigate on upgrading my existing digital source by implementing an external master clock (from Grimm Audio) via the WordClock input on my Marian soundcard, and see how that fares out. I know people are rather divided on the use of external clocks, but I intend to find out by listening rather than assuming from a theoretical basis.
