Streaming Quality Test - Lumin U1 vs. PS Audio Direcstream DAC vs Bridge II

You've discovered that most streamers and DACs sound exactly alike. Congratulations, you're not a sucker. Save your money or invest in better speakers.

So what you are saying is that the Bridge II streams the bits to your Directstream Dac as well as the U1.  That's really not that surprising and means you should sell the U1.

Helomech,

On a well setup system the differences especially in dacs, should be quite large unlesss both dacs are of a similar quality, then the differences come into play in terms of soundstaging, resolution, musicality and tonality.

We sell and display many dacs, Naim, Nad, Mytek, Lumin, Light Harmonic, T+A, Cary Audio, Emm Labs, Anthem, M2 Tech and a few others.

As per a built in streaming card vs an external server, the internal card should have the advantage, it is not a matter of price, the internal card will allow for less transmitted jitter as you effectively have no cable and the signal path is very short.

We have run exactly thoese kinds of demos we have compared the Innouos servers vs the Baetis, the Baetis vs the Memory Player, and we have done other such tests, such as the Aurender vs a modified Mac Mini

On our systems as well as many of our client’s systems the differences are very audible.

There is a richness and improved dynamics when you upgrade your digital server, also some digital servers can allow for digital crossconversion and upsampling.

On certain dacs a regular 16 bit 44k redbook cd file when upconvereted to a higher sampling rate or converted to DSD may sound far superior to its native red book files.

With the Lumin the kicker is to set it to transcode PCM to DSD and then feed it to the dac.

The amazing thing is how audible the difference in servers actually is.

At the Munich show Innous was comparing their new two box statement server $13k to their original reference server the Zenith SE a $7,500.00 server and many people were blown away by ow much better the new more expensive server sounded on the same digital file.

If bit was bits then you could not hear a difference in digital cables we have sold the AQ Diamond, the Wireworld Platinum USB, the Enklein David and the Light Harmonic USB cables and boy these cables all sound different and they are all transmitting digital data from the same server to the same dac.

Ask anyone who ever heard a CEC belt drivien CD transport if there is an audible difference in CD transports?

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Dave and Troy,

sfseay was listening to two different streamers through the same Dac, not different Dacs.