Lumin is a different app. I would go to a product like Sonore that is Roon ready and set it up properly. The A1 is huge money and for far less money, you can build a much better sounding system with Roon.
Hi,
Ya maybe, but the price I can get for a used lumin is less than the price for a DAC that sounds as good as the A1 actually does. And my budget is unfortunately not in the mood for a 15-25k upgrade right now.
Hi,
I can really understand how you are thinking because I was you last year. I have actually tested 72 different digital front ends over the last 10 years.Dacs from $50K down including Total dac and Audio Note 5SE. The dac from my experience is not near as important as getting the server and network player correct. Sonore is another level and I have tested all the big dogs on the market. My current dac is $2000 retail and my system sounds better than when I had my previous $30000 dac.
Call me if you need more help but Lumin is very average dac wise. Lumin is easy to use with a nice app but sound wise, Sonore and sonic Transporter combo with a $2000 dac is a complete different level. Bob.
Moderator edit: telephone number removed for your protection.
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The usual answer, others must have medocre systems. First that’s absolutely not the case here. Second if you need a buzillion dollar system to hear these “insane improvements” then stop advicing stuff like this to us guys that only have a four or five figure systems If you use words like “it made a worthwhile audible improvement” or “I was suprised by the difference” but insane improvement is going from a bluetooth speaker to a highend hifi system. But you’re right I"ll stop now but please please stop over exaggerating so much. It just makes that your whole problem can’t be taken serious anymore.
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@Robert_Neil you may wish to share your number via a private message rather than on a public forum
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Hi,
I never said anything about an expensive system but rather suggested a $2000 dac after testing many expensive dacs. I would also appreciate you not telling me what to say Nyquist. My system is not super expensive but instead well put together. Certainly not trashing Lumin but for the same money as a used A1 you can get better sounding based on many years of A.B different products.
I think the number of concern here is your phone number rather than the cost of your DAC!
Robert, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t replying to you but Thomas as you can see in the upper right hand corner of his post.
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Thomas, I have great news for you. The assumption that DS918 has enough processing power to run Roon well is not correct. I started with Roon on DS1815+ then DS918 and sure it works but nothing exciting, I did not know any better. I have a computer engineering background and assumed 10-20% CPU busy was fine, that’s how it is in data processing right? WRONG!! I failed to appreciate that hi end is not data processing. Then for other reasons I moved Core to a custom built quad core overclocked i7 system and WOW!! I lent the quad core i7 Roon to my friend who has a full DCS system and all the society members agreed the Roon absolutely blows the DCS out of the water. Now I can’t get my Roon back from him. I’ve heard a lot of five figure gear and I’m happy to tell everyone who will listen that Roon sound quality is absolutely top reference standard. You need to deploy it in the same rigorous manner which you would treat any high end equipment. A couple of tips, if I may. 1) Use the Roon headless core don’t use the version with user interface. Run it on the most powerful machine you can find. 2) Connect Roon core server to a good endpoint eg microrendu via wired ethernet, never drive the DAC directly from the machine that runs Roon core. 3) Use CAT7 cable. Good luck! My message to Roon Team is CONGRATULATIONS! your software is wonderful in both sound quality and features.
Thomas, I have heard Lumin DAC both at Lumin’s demo room in Hong Kong and home demo. While it may not be reference standard it is quite acceptable out of the box. It has good electronic components and good build quality. If you have a spare powerful PC you can try moving Roon core onto it and then feed Lumin with Roon upsampled audio. Doing this will cost you nothing and you may be very pleasantly surprised.
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Yes agree with Ed 100% and this is where I was heading you. Sonic Transporter at Little Green computers. Either i5 or i7 WORKS PERFECT. Nice to see there are other people that are dealing with the question rather than micro managing the comments.
I like to give honest answers and answer the questions. You might not like my answers but after 40 years of A/B direct testing audio, they are experienced, honest answers.
Hmm just to add another datapoint, I used a sonicTransporter i7 when I was using a DAC to do some serious DSP and in a larger home with multiple endpoints sometimes all playing at the same time…
I now don’t do any CPU intensive stuff and my 918+ plus performs just as well as Roon Core as my sonicT i7 did.
I gave my sonicT i7 to my old man (dad) and he’s having fun playing with Roon DSP (going bonkers with DSD up-sampling etc).
For future proofing, something like a ROCK i7 or sonicTi7 or Nucleus i7 is the way to go, agree there.
But I’m in no rush to take my sonicT i7 back from the old man 
Sean, I’m very interested in your experience. You must have good reason to give up Roon’s upsampling. Can you share with us what endpoint/DAC you are using? On the DACs I have tried so far, RME ADI2 plus, Musical Fidelity, Lampizator, upsampling to either PCM max power of 2 or max DSD is best.
Between Nucleas/Rock and Sonic I prefer Sonic as it is quad core while Nucleas/Rock is dual core.
Did you try it with Sonore that it was designed to work with?
Hi Ed, I used a sonicT i7 with a microRendu and then an ultraRendu. I gave the sonicT i7 and ultraRendu to my dad. I up-graded my microRendu to the latest board and still use it now, it’s fantastic.
I definitely haven’t given up on Roon’s up-sampling - it’s superb and I imagine will get even better over time and may or may not become more CPU intensive over time, so having a lot of grunt is a good idea - I think?
But when I got a PS Audio DirectStream DAC and then a Chord Hugo2, I just let those DACs do their internal up-sampling (to 20 x DSD rates and ~100MHz sample rates, respectively).
So this is why I didn’t need the i7 power right now.
Dad is currently doing up-sampling to DSD256 with the iFi iDAC2 I got him and it sounds superb. I just got a Pro-Ject S2 Pre Digital DAC which will replace the iDAC2 in his system and this supports DSD512 and PCM768Khz and sounds superb with Roon’s up-sampling. I’ve just been playing with it these last few days before I install it in his system when I next visit.
I’m just one datapoint so I can’t make any sweeping statements unfortunately! But this is why I mentioned if Thomas isn’t doing CPU intensive stuff , just ruling out the DS918+ NAS because it has a Celeron chip inside isn’t accurate or fair - I have one and it’s fine But there are caveats / conditions of course. It may not work well for everyone. It really mostly comes down to what DSP you do or don’t do with your current DAC/s and library size. That could all change with a future change in DAC/s of course. My library size is ~100k and I don’t find any annoying lag with browsing my library - RoonServer is on an SSD inside the NAS of course.
If I ever find my Roon experience starting to slow down and lag even just a little bit (slow speeds, library browsing etc) then it’s easy - I’ll just add a ROCK i7 to take over the Core duties. I don’t think dad would be too happy if I took my sonicTi7 back, he seems to be loving it. But right now I’m in no rush to add an i7 Core (again).
What do you mean by this?
“Use the Roon headless core don’t use the version with user interface”
And by the way…, I’m not a fan of upsampling my music cause it does nothing good to the music!
Sean, thanks and appreciate your detailed note. Agreed Roon upsampling has a very good ability to make middle price DACs perform at a higher level. Congrats, you’ve got some great gear. I wonder whether you’ve had a chance to set up a comparison between say Chord internal upsampling and Roon upsample on i5/i7 then feed Chord at its highest sampling rate. It would be really interesting.
Thomas, when you download Roon for running on Windows or Mac you have a choice of “Roon” or “Roon Server”, choose the “Roon Server”. You don’t want the machine running core to be doing unnecessary stuff. NAS version is already “Roon Server” only.
Thomas, I appreciate the discussion ref upsampling. Before Roon I always switched off upsampling on my DACs and concluded that upsampling gave an unnatural sound. Roon upsampling has been a revelation to me, you really owe it to yourself to try it but you have to run Roon core on a powerful machine. There are lots of folks on this forum with more experience of software upsampling, perhaps we can persuade someone to chime in?
Hi Ed, I definitely have. I like to experiment and tinker. I can feed the Hugo2 with Roon up-sampling to 32bit/768kHz PCM - my NAS has no problems, with a processing rate above x2.0. I found that Brian’s done a really superb job with all Roon’s filters, especially Precise + Linear Phase with my Hugo2. I’m sure Roon’s DSP will continue to grow/improve over time.
It really can. Along with a quality linear PSU feeding the DAC (good ones aren’t too expensive these days), I’m really really shocked and impressed at the performance of < USD500 DACs, like the iFi iDAC2 and now the Pro-Ject S2 DAC.
The Lumin A1’s network input is limited to PCM384k/DSD64, which the DS918+ will have absolutely no problems handling (with Roon’s filters as they are right now, I can comfortably up-sample to DSD256 and PCM768k with my DS918+).
Hi,
Why is the outcome of upsampling different when roon does it vs. others? My experience is that every time I’ve done it the sound became “not right” and unnatural.
I will of cause try the different filters, but I have a priority list to keep things apart.
1). I need my LPS before further comparing.
2). I have to try move the synology to another Room.
3). I would like to get Roon to sound as good as the lumin without Upsampling enabled.
Can anyone give an explanation (if possible) why Roon sounds so much more “closed” than lumin the second DSP is enabled (without processing anything), it’s just enabled.
Because this is the case I don’t have high hopes that I will gain anything from using upsampling.
Regards
Hi Thomas,
Let me expand on my limited experience a bit and apologies if I am boring you. I’ve come to view Roon not as an individual component but as something that enables a DAC to perform at its best. ie Roon and DAC work together. Let’s talk DAC - my experience is that each model has one specific sampling rate and format at which it sounds by far the best. I am talking about the soundstage opening up to reveal musicians playing in your room kind of difference. On older DACs based on 24/192 chips like PCM1792/95 the optimum sampling rate is often 44 or 96 - this is not a surprise if you study data sheets and see how SNR and distortion gets really bad with each doubling of sampling rate. But for recent DACs with the newest chips I’m hearing the opposite. Lampizator sounds best when you upsample PCM files to PCM 352/384 and DSD to DSD256 by Roon. ADI-2 pro sounds flat in all PCM modes but comes alive (and then some!) when you run it in DSD direct mode and you convert everything to DSD256 via Roon DSP. So it is Roon’s job to convert the format of the music file into whatever the DAC likes best and I have found Roon does this admirably. Upsample to integer multiples, non integer sounds bad. You will need to get Roon running on that spare i7/i5 to try Roon DSD processing.
A1 uses WM8741 24/192 chip so it is possible that it really does sound best at low rates in which case PCM upsampling will do nothing for you. However the data sheets says " In DSD Direct mode the internal digital filters are bypassed, the input bitstream data is subjected to the minimal possible processing and is applied directly to the switched capacitor stage of the DAC system. Using this mode provides the purest possible representation of a DSD stream." If you can get A1 to run in this mode and feed it DSD from Roon at its max rate it could get really interesting.
Regarding technical reasons for preferring upsampling by computer/software over hardware DSP. You can do things in software that are far more sophisticated and in much greater accuracy than you can in hardware/firmware. Just ask your bank!
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That’s good finding. It seems to me LampizatOr has different options of PCM and DSD playback engines for different models, so what the ideal rate is might be model and option dependent.
By default Lumin A1 / T1 / D1 / D2 play DSD64 in this pure DSD Direct mode, if the user has not changed related settings via Lumin app.