Having looked at all the options available to me, and ruled out most of the competition for various reasons, I am considering buying a Lumin U1 Mini to use Roon with my Graham Slee Majestic DAC.
The Roon Core is housed in a Nucleus and will receive from Tidal (HiFi) and various locally stored files up to 192kHz FLAC (on internal SSD on Nucleus).
I have 2 questions to help me make my final decision:
1). What information is displayed on the screen of the U1 Mini when streaming using Roon?
2). Is the U1 Mini a good fit for the Majestic? The Majestic does not support USB at higher rates than 48kHz, so I believe the best connection will be 192kHz through SPDIF Coax. In that case, will I need to make any settings changes in Roon and/or Lumin to send files to the Majestic DAC?
Hi, as regards point 1 trying to upload an image and hope it works: you see track name on line 1, artist and performer on line and file format on line 3. On the side time elapsed and a circle representing what remains. It’s brighter than appears on the photo but if you are sitting a few meters away, font is rather small. No scrolling but maybe that can be set up so if you are relying on the Lumin display to know what exactly is playing, of limited help (here it’s playing a piece of classical music and you cannot therefore which of the 5 movements is playing).
As regards point 2, I am sure Peter will give you a fuller answer but I would have thought that you can simply set max resolution in the Roon device settings so that it automatically downsamples or converts as necessary. Alternatively you can do that in the Lumin app or set conversion up or downsampling in either Roon DSP settings or the Lumin app. I believe Lumin would recommend using Roon if possible.
Peter should know regarding compatibility. My U1 mini feeds into the USB input of a Meridian 818.3 and as a streamer, it has been rock solid and the sound is great. I say this after over 18 months of regular usage. There are cheaper options but having tried the Pro-Ject Stream Ultra S2 the last few days for my headphone setup (and not to replace the U1 mini which is in my main speaker set up), that unit has way more bugs (can’t stream native DSD via Roon) and no one at the dealer or distributor could figure out the bug which seems long-standing (hence didn’t buy that unit) whereas Lumin support on this forum is 5 star.
Yes. Please use the U1 MINI coaxial output to connect to this DAC.
In this setup there is no mandatory setting change on Lumin, but if you want you may disable the unused AES / BNC / toslink outputs, disable Spotify Connect, AirPlay “Lumin Streaming” if you don’t need these. Roon Ready setting should default to Enable from factory.
In Roon, go to Settings -> Audio, find and enable Lumin under Roon Ready device section, and assign it a zone name. In Roon the Max PCM should have been set to 192kHz automatically, but if not you can change it. One special thing to do is that you need to set Roon to do DSD to PCM 176.4kHz conversion for this DAC, if you have DSD files.
I would say this is automatic, as long as the “Convert DSD to PCM” is chosen, which i belive is the default setting. Roon defaults to integer downsampling when necessary.
That is very helpful @Happycy thank you. I had searched for the answer to the display question but came up short. It is also very useful to hear real-world application in terms of visibility from distance and the scrolling issue - neither of which are show-stoppers but very useful info.
Also great to hear that you are a long-time user of the Roon-Lumin pairing and that it has been rock solid during that time.
It’s the genuinely valuable interactions like this that really make me glad I began my Roon journey, cheers
Thank you kindly @wklie for your prompt response which was detailed and useful. Your response has given me the answers I was looking for and the clear direction I needed to feel confident enough to buy the U1 Mini - I have just ordered one!
It is quite apparent that Lumin excels in it’s customer support (5 star like @Happycy said), and for this alone deserve every success. I am sure your competitors are envious of the reputation you are building as you set the blueprint for customer relations and interaction!
Thank you also @Mikael_Ollars for adding further information, very useful
Great thread & answer. Also looking at a U1 Mini & after having a go with one today, followed by you guys knowing what the unit displays when using Roon, it seems like a wise choice.
@Red_R correct you are RE Roon & Lumin customer support. Both have wowed me with any queries with full, proper answers & response times.
