Lumin A1 Review

Mike

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This is an old review, but still worth posting. This is of the Lumin A1. He describes the sound brilliantly.

Mono and Stereo High-End Audio Magazine: Lumin Audiophile Network Music Player review

Some highlights:

"There was an absolute absence of any kind of nervousness, no tendency to become hyper-detailed, to impress with details extracted from the music. All this resulted in the feeling, that time does not matter anymore, that we do not have to deal with things now, and we can postpone everything for the future. Distant future. I do not know when I listened to “Komeda” by Leszek Możdżer, to the soundtrack of “Finding Neverland” of Jan A.P. Kaczmarek; so I begun thinking that either I’ll move to Tuscany or Catalonia, where ‘mañana’ is a normal thing, or I change the repertoire to finally get to work. But how to do that, when one of the most difficult instruments to reproduce, the piano, played from the Lumin sounds like somebody would demolish the walls in the apartments surrounding mine and placed in this space a Stainway, Bösendorfer or Yamaha. Clear contours, right size and most of all the juiciness and palpability showed, that the creators of Lumin did their homework well.

But regardless of the fact, if the Lumin was fed with SD or HD material, one of its characteristics was always visible, permanent and at the same time a little bit frightening. This nicely looking, absolutely digital source, had absolutely no ‘digital manners’, no ‘digital coldness’ nor ‘post-upsampling rash’, usually present in form of a combination of sweetness with spiciness/sharpening.

I would not like to fall too much in the pathos, but I must gladly say, that the Hong Kong made streamer is far away from the computer symbolic associated usually with ‘file players’ and a kind of fashion of using popular OEM solutions (like StreamUnlimited). Only after you listen to the Lumin plugged into your own system, you can really live through the thing, called high resolution. High, means here close to what you can hear live, in a studio, concert hall or listening to natural sounds. Not better, not improved, because improving nature is not always favorable. Lumin made me re-define my own understanding of resolution. And I hope it will do the same to you. I really wish you that."
 
I know I own one,and that in itself says that I am biased. But I think he nailed the sound of the A1. It just doesn't sound like any other digital source that I've heard. It has a much more natural and organic sound to it than it's competitors. If someone is more interested in a little more detail, they should try the S1,it's still a sweet sounding piece, but if you own a sweet sounding or a little darker sounding speaker, the S1 will be better match.
The A1 was superior in my system with Salons, while the S1 was a much better match with my Raidho D3's.
 
I ordered an S1, and hope to have it this week or next. It will be replacing my Bryston BDP-1, Auralic Vega DAC, and Shunyata Anaconda AES digital cable. I had been thinking of upgrading to the Bryston BDP-2 file player, so the S1, with a Shunyata Sigma Digital power cord, will handle that role. When you add up the total cost of the separate gear and cables, the cost is the same. My hope is that the S1 DAC is a bit better than the Vega, and eliminating the extra power cord (on Vega) and digital interconnect will also bring a sonic upgrade. Anyway, I will soon find out.
 
Congrats Bud!!! [emoji106][emoji106]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I ordered an S1, and hope to have it this week or next. It will be replacing my Bryston BDP-1, Auralic Vega DAC, and Shunyata Anaconda AES digital cable. I had been thinking of upgrading to the Bryston BDP-2 file player, so the S1, with a Shunyata Sigma Digital power cord, will handle that role. When you add up the total cost of the separate gear and cables, the cost is the same. My hope is that the S1 DAC is a bit better than the Vega, and eliminating the extra power cord (on Vega) and digital interconnect will also bring a sonic upgrade. Anyway, I will soon find out.

+1 You nailed it.
 
I ordered an S1, and hope to have it this week or next. It will be replacing my Bryston BDP-1, Auralic Vega DAC, and Shunyata Anaconda AES digital cable. I had been thinking of upgrading to the Bryston BDP-2 file player, so the S1, with a Shunyata Sigma Digital power cord, will handle that role. When you add up the total cost of the separate gear and cables, the cost is the same. My hope is that the S1 DAC is a bit better than the Vega, and eliminating the extra power cord (on Vega) and digital interconnect will also bring a sonic upgrade. Anyway, I will soon find out.

Congrats Bud !

The thing is, that it's not all about the DAC's, although the Wolfson DAC's are among my favorites. I truly believe that streamers, like the Linn or the Lumin just sound better than the Mac & DAC method. I'll let the experts on technology try and explain it. But that's been my experience.

Bud, what's the rest of your system comprised of ?, sorry I can't remember :D
 
Congrats Bud !

The thing is, that it's not all about the DAC's, although the Wolfson DAC's are among my favorites. I truly believe that streamers, like the Linn or the Lumin just sound better than the Mac & DAC method. I'll let the experts on technology try and explain it. But that's been my experience.

Bud, what's the rest of your system comprised of ?, sorry I can't remember :D

Thanks.

The 'My System' thread.

http://audioshark.org/audioshark-members-systems-101/my-system-6840.html

Soon to replace the Bryston/Auralic with the Lumin.
 
I remember now !

Damn old age.

Should sound incredible in your setup. Nice system Bud, don't blow it up again. :D
 
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