Lumin X1 Review

As many audiophiles know, sound quality late at night is so much better than during the day, presumably due to cleaner internet and power grid signal. If this is the case, I wonder switching the input service from Comcast cable to Verizon optical fiber. Has anyone noticed any sound quality from the switch?
 
chungjh said:
As many audiophiles know, sound quality late at night is so much better than during the day, presumably due to cleaner internet and power grid signal. If this is the case, I wonder switching the input service from Comcast cable to Verizon optical fiber. Has anyone noticed any sound quality from the switch?
Click to expand...

Never heard of the Internet signal being cleaner at night. On the other hand, AC power is definitely cleaner at night. Then again, sound improvement at night might be due to the overall reduction in background noise that occurs at night.
 
Whether the poor sound quality is polluted power grid or internet, has anyone find a way to improve the day time sound quality to equal the night time?
 
Have you tried fiber isolation, and LPS for the modem / router / switches, and power conditioner (not for the power amp)?
 
If you have the ability, try to loan a Melco Player/NAS or a Melco Switch, both devices do an incredible job of filtering noise out of your network.
 
wklie said:
Have you tried fiber isolation, and LPS for the modem / router / switches, and power conditioner (not for the power amp)?
Click to expand...

I have Torus RM20 power conditioner, LPS for EtherRegen. No LPS for the modem, which is directly connected to ER.
 
dznutz said:
If you have the ability, try to loan a Melco Player/NAS or a Melco Switch, both devices do an incredible job of filtering noise out of your network.
Click to expand...

With Melco, do you hear any sound improvement/clarity at night, esp late night? Or does it sound same as day time.
 
Sounds the same, don't get caught up in all the audiophile silliness. If you find that you enjoy your music, more so, late at night it probably has nothing more to do with it than you simply being more relaxed and receptive. The Melco is a great addition to any streaming system.
 
dznutz said:
If you have the ability, try to loan a Melco Player/NAS or a Melco Switch, both devices do an incredible job of filtering noise out of your network.
Click to expand...

I second the use of the Melco NAS/server.

When I had the Lumin A1, swapping the Synology NAS for the Melco N1A made a difference - the Melco N1A was clearly quieter.
 
A X1 user shared his impressions with me:
As I had good experience with Lumin, decided finally to go with X1. Now after a week of listening I can say that sound from X1 is equal to my vinyl records player. Made several same track to track comparison and all HQ sound aspects are equal, voice and instruments are live and so on. Of course there is a little difference in "sound color" with vinyl and X1 but important HiFi audio aspects are same to me.
Click to expand...
 
I have my X1 fed by EtherRegen via fiber and today I got a "check the network" error message on X1. I checked the fiber connection between ER and X1 and it looked fine as before. When I took out the fiber and connected them via Ethernet, the message went away and started working. When I put the fiber back in, I get the same error message. Could it be that the fiber pathway inside X1 could have gone bad?
 
chungjh said:
I have my X1 fed by EtherRegen via fiber and today I got a "check the network" error message on X1. I checked the fiber connection between ER and X1 and it looked fine as before. When I took out the fiber and connected them via Ethernet, the message went away and started working. When I put the fiber back in, I get the same error message. Could it be that the fiber pathway inside X1 could have gone bad?
Click to expand...

Could be an SFP, or the cable itself, or maybe the ER. I would try replacing one at a time, starting with whatever is easiest. But before you do that, just try taking it all apart, and re-assembling. Sometimes you need to re-seat the SFPs, or the fiber cable, etc.
 
Unplug the power from the ER.
Wait for a while and do something else.
Come back later then plug in the power.
 
I unplugged everything and then replugged. Ethernet works but not fiber. I talked to EtherRegen and they told me that it is almost impossible for only fiber to die. Either the SFP is bad (after less than a year) or the fiber input in X1 is bad. Any recommendations?
 
It is almost impossible for X1 / P1 to have a non-working SFP port but a working RJ45 port.

Do you have another SFP switch or SFP converter?

If not, please purchase this cheap switch for testing:
Amazon.com

Alternatively, you may use another pair of SFP modules for testing, but we never heard of a SFP module failure from our users.

What model of SFP modules are you using?

Has the fiber been touched recently?

It's also very possible for a fiber to be broken internally. So you may also try getting another single mode fiber (if you use single mode SFP modules) as listed here:
LUMIN - Fibre Networking
 
I've seen many SFP failures. In fact it's the single most frequent equipment failure I've seen at our data centers, and that's typically with data center grade SFPs opposed to what you'd get for this application. I would start there.

Broken fiber cable is a possibility as Peter has said, especially if your fiber is at all exposed to anything resting on it, foot traffic, or being moved around. Also a cheap and probably easy place to troubleshoot. Make sure you don't have any tight bends in that fiber run, that can also cause problems.
 
Is the XLR IC better than RCA for X1 to Preamp connection? Any opinions?

I am thinking of moving up from a generic IC to high end IC. Is the quality of the cable for X1 to preamp connection more important than for Preamp to Amp? I am guessing the former.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top