A Question For Peter Lie

[MDP]

Peter, I've been involved with digital streamers since I bought my Linn Akurate DS. Having moved to a Lumin A1 quite awhile ago I am convinced of the advantages and sonic qualities of these players.

Back when I owned my Linn, every time we would get an update to download the Linn forum would debate the differences in sonic quality from one version to the next.

My question is, can you manipulate the sound quality through updates?

Thanks!

 

[wklie]

Back when I owned my Linn, every time we would get an update to download the Linn forum would debate the differences in sonic quality from one version to the next.

My question is, can you manipulate the sound quality through updates?

The simple answer is yes, but Lumin firmware changes have always been feature additions or minor functional bug fixes. New sound-quality related features came in form of optional settings, e.g. realtime conversion to DSD. Lumin also does not digitally alter the music data by default (unless users turn on upsampling or use volume control), unlike products from some manufacturers.

Some manufacturers improve their FPGA and/or filtering for sound quality with firmware upgrades. We never changed such things once we release Lumin products to market, so there is very little risk of new firmware sounding different from old ones. [If one believes in the theory that everything affects sound, then it is not impossible for different CPU processing to affect sound in some unintended ways due to RFI/EMI noise, but at this level all bets are off - thus Lumin S1 / A1 have thick aluminium shielding between the digital and analogue boards to minimize such interferences.]

I actually thought of trying different filter(s) for certain Lumin models, but I've researched this subject and found there is no consensus about what filter sounds best to everybody for all types of music (*1). One manufacturer advocates one type of filter, another manufacturer advocates a different type (*2). Yet another manufacturer - Esoteric allow users to choose different filters. The designer of HQPlayer recommends using one class of filter for some types of music, and a different class of filter for other types of music.

I asked j2020 about his filter preferences on Esoteric N-05, and at the end he found no filter is best...

*1: http://www.stereophile.com/content/...ter-listening-impressions#xAwGgrY6kHxUWlw6.97

*2: https://ayre.com/pdf/Ayre_MP_White_Paper.pdf