Rickie Lee Jones: "Chuck E's in Love"-I mostly focused on Steve Gadd's kit here, particularly the sound of the bass drum and snare. I haven't compared blind-and perhaps I should-but I seem to be able to hear the differences with repeated listens. The Bluesound sounds just a bit blobby or rounds off the edges a bit. In general, the Lumin shows off Mehldau's touch better and gets across more microdynamics and nuance in the playing. The Node 2i even makes a few notes-particularly the pianissimo passing tones-harder to discern. But here are three that I've been testing with that-I think-do:īrad Mehldau Trio, Blues and Ballads, the first two tracks, the first 20-30 sec of each-There's some subtle lefthand stuff that the Bluesound smears or blobs a bit. It can be subtle, and not every recording shows up the differences. But with headphones (Sennheiser HD800), I've started to notice ways in which the Lumin is (oh, gawd, here comes some audiophile-speak) more resolving and offers more fine grain detail. With speakers (Magnepan 3.7i), it can be fairly difficult to discern. This will be something of a learning process. I only stream (Qobuz and Tidal), don't do any local-storage files, and haven't messed around much with things like upsampling. If anyone has experience of either the Lumin or Bluesound or both, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts and whether you see any clear advantages in the Lumin's feature set. Should be interesting!Īnyway, watch this space. I'll also be playing around with sending both streamers direct (digital) into a DBX DriveRack Venu 360 and using that as a combo DAC/room correction device/digital crossover between the Maggies and a pair of Seaton Sound subs. The Yggy will go straight into a pair of Sanders Sound monoblocks, which in turn power Magnepan 3.7i. I'll hook the Lumin up via AES, and the Bluesound via optical, likely, or possibly coax. Both streamers will be going into a Schiit Yggy DAC. I assume that's the Bluesound kicking in some kind of upsampling to allow for the volume control?)Īnyway, I'll be comparing overall sound quality and ease of use of the Lumin app next to the Bluesound app (which I already know and think is basically fine). But if you lower the volume slider in app, the bit rate goes up to 24. Interestingly a 44.1/16 stream stays at 16 bits, of course, at fixed/full volume. A 48/24 or 96/24 stream from Oubuz remains the same whether at fixed or variable volume, up and down the slider. Unless I'm interpreting things incorrectly, it seems that the Bluesound doesn't lower the bit rate to lower the volume. (I tested this, as best I could, with a DAC that shows the bit rate incoming. However, a little digging on Bluesound's volume control suggests that it, too, is essentially bit perfect. Lumin's current killer feature is meant to be Leedh Processing, which is supposed to have finally nailed digital volume control. However, the notion that bits are bits also makes a kind of horse sense, so I'll be curious if I hear some, a lot of, or no difference at all between the two streamers. I don't know a ton about digital/computer audio, other than that things like power supplies and interior shielding, etc are supposed to matter. A dealer has given me a loaner of a Lumin U1 Mini, and I'll be comparing it to my Node 2i over the next week as both a streamer and a volume control.
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