Lumin X1 latest Review like we have been saying

I won't be buying a streamer + dac combo any time soon. Prefer separates.
Talking about streaming, i thought that my aurender N10 was cutting edge but this segment of market moves even faster than Dacs. From reading on forums, seems best streamer hands down atm is SGM extreme, then very closely is pink faun 2.16x.  Saw some people claim that the latest aurender W20SE can't touch those. Dont know what to believe on forums anymore))
Well, as a personal experience,  a friend recently bought a hand built streamer from some guy who is building them out of passion (couple of such builders out there experimenting out there with various power supplies, CPUs, motherboards, network cards, USB cards etc), and it did sound much better than my "industry standard" N10!! What do we know...
USB is getting a whole lot better as well vs spdif/fancy clock high end streamer approach.
Well the N10 is still "fine", and i decided I'm holding on any streamer upgrade for a year or two. Lets see where this direction is moving and if the typical contenders will up their game!

Troy do you have the top of the line NAIM streamer / DAC and power supply? I believe you are a dealer ? Comparing that to the subject of the post would be of some value, at least to me.

surprised you parted ways with CJ, great gear, well engineered, long standing firm with upgrade paths, real service department, etc... sorry to hear that :-(

to be frank, and this is just my theory, some of your “ on our radar “ enthusiasm is meant to pre sell part of the initial order...

a happy 2020 to you

@saleh84,

Thank you for you post. As you know, the streaming / server segment is much more crowded and competitive now than what it was in 2015 (N10 release date).

Don’t know about you but I cannot see myself spending $29K for Taiko, $22K for W20SE, $15K for Pink Faun 2.16x or Innuos Statement.

No doubt, N10 is somewhat dated but still remains a very fine streamer. My N10 is not going anywhere until another streamer comes along that outperforms N10 in SQ and aesthetics under $10K 😊

What a total douche thread this is....

”Haters”...?...please...

Tomic our on the radar is just that these are products we are going to be getting in for evaluation. We do have to buy them however, in most cases we have a right of return so there is no risk.

If you read most of our posts we explain the reasons why a product line or product is of interest.

You are correct that the CJ gear is excellent, they have been almost non existant in terms of doing shows, advertising, and for years they did not update their products offerings.

Zesto is a very interesting company because their prices are good their best amplifiers the Eros 300 monoblocks are $20 vs CJ are $40k, Zesto's best preamp is $10k vs $24 for CJ.  They get fantastic reviews, they do shows, the people behind the company are really nice. 

Add to that the Zesto Leto Utlimate has an amazing feature set as well as balalnced ins and output which CJ's gear lacks, home theater bybass, adjustable gain for inputs, a unique tone eq, and their designs are all about creating a very musical product that is well designed for the price rather than just being overbuilt and jacking up the price for these reasons the line is worth testing out.

As per the Naim 555 streamer, although we have heard this piece at shows we do have the NDX 2/XPS 2 combo which is nearly $14k on display and the combo is very good, in our opinion the Lumin X1 is far better. The Naim NDX 2 is a very good sounding piece but we tend to sell it with a Naim system. For the high price of the Naim 555 streamer the combo is close to $30k we just can't seem to wrap our minds and hearts around that piece for that price point when we allready have the $35k Light Harmonic Davinci as well as the T+A SDV 3100 dac/preamp which is also a $35k piece, we also have the Aqua Hifi Formula V2 which is a huge improvement over the last version at $16k, and now we are looking at Bricasti starting with the M3 as a possible dac/streamer with digital inputs if that piece is excellent than it is possible we would evaluate their $16k M21 dac/preamp as well. 

Saleh you Aurender N10 is still an excellent piece we recently did a shoot out of the N10 vs an Innous Statement and the Statement was better however the N10 still sounded very good. the N10 is showing its age and Aurender really needs to do a major overhaul in terms of technlogy the N10 probably is close to five or more years old at this time and clocking and anti jitter technlogy has been improved since then. 

As per an Aurender W20Se not sounding as good as any other server it is going to be about system matching as well. It would almost be impossible at this point if you are spending $20k or more on a server to get a bad one, the Taiko extreme is super expensive, and is it really that much superior some people in Europe have tested it vs the Innous Statement and found the Taiko to be a bit better but hardly worth the gigantic price difference, the Pink Faun does look to be a contender but the company has done a very poor job of getting the product in front of people so is it better just as good hard to say. 

For world's best servers we would in no particular order look at Innous Statement, Pink Faun, Aurender and Antipodes the Taiko is just crazy expensive. The Memory Player in our tests vs the Basetis and Statement was a good sounding and very analog piece but it is a bit clunky to use.

Hope that helps you understand our postioning we are always lookng at the market for 2020 here is what we are testing:

Hegel H390 just got that in
Zesto Monoblocks on order,
Vimberg Tonda and Amea on order
Bricasti M3 on order.
Unison Research hybrid tube solid state integrated amplifiers the Unico 150 and Due.

Who knows what else we will test this year we are also looking at importing a fascinating set of speakers from Europe.as we are renaming our company to reflect our import company as well as our retail side.

Tomic we do a lot of testing of products that interest us, we want to keep the lines fresh and always find products which represent our core values

1: Musicality, tonality, soundstaging,
2: Techologically advanced designs.
3: Fair pricing for what you are getting.
4: Feature set.
5: Hopefully visibility in terms of marketing and doing shows.
6: Plays well with our loudspeaker lines
7: Reliability
8: Ease of use, ease of servicing, resale.

You are welcome to come in for a visit if you are ever in our neck of the woods, we have one pretty cool little shop with many of todays hottest products on display if you notice in our 15 year history we have added and subtracted many lines as we are not wed to the manufactuer we are wed to the concept of finding the best products for our client and these products need to reflect our core values as listed above.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ