Lumin or Aurender

Roon is a must for me. Therefore Aurender out. It’s a nonstarter. I have a Lumin U1 Mini and it truly is very powerful with great SQ. Plus you can upgrade it with an SBooster LPS. I have also added Noico to the interior to dampen EMI. A nice little DIY project. But if you must have an internal DAC, Lumin has those units too. 

I started streaming 5 years ago with a LUMIN D1 - the streamer and DAC ran great - and held there value ( bought the D1 for $2,000 - sold it on Avon 4 months ago for $1,200). Upgraded to the LUMIN T2 - much improved sound stage and vocals vs the D1. The T2 has the Sabre DAC- a real step up. Lumin’s app on my I Pad mini works great. I get any software upgrades automatically from LUMIN. You need an Ethernet connection to get the LUMIN on line. I stream Tidal MQA - retired my turntable - my sound quality is so good.

Trial Roon to see if you like it. I tried it, but didn’t like it. Also did not like having to have a computer running Roon Core on my network. Anyhow, also tried BluOS, LUMIN, m-connect, and Aurender Conductor. Of these Aurender is my favorite. It is very intuitive and easy to use. The pop-up menus are very easy to understand. Metadata is easy to access. File resolution can be browsed without playing the selection.  The Aurender N100 series are small form factor and can be paired with a small form factor DAC if space is the reason you want an Integral DAC. I wouldn’t go back to an Integral DAC. Too many great choices out there!  Good luck!

Love my Aurender A10.  Sounds as good as my PS Audio Directstream (streaming via their “Bridge" network card).  But aside from SQ, nothing beats that Conductor app in my book.  Can sit and play stuff from my iPad forever, constantly finding new artists, adding to faves, making playlists, etc.  And, when I’m using Roon with the Directstream the next day in my home office system, all that Quobuz metadata carries through to Roon.  

When I compared streamers, Auralic sounded better than both the Lumin and Aurender, plus their DS Lightning software was far superior. For a while I used the Lumin software against the Auralic. This is when I used the streamer hooked up to the dac by usb. Since then, got rid of the Auralic, and all the usb crap and went with Roon running on a server outside of my audio room and got a dac with a network interface, sounds better and the UI is the best. 2nd best option would be using an endpoint device that had an i2s output to the dac.