Lumin or Aurender

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.

+1 on @three_easy_payments.  That's not a bad deal.  The A1 is a model above the T2.  I have the T1 and I've been extremely satisfied.  There isn't going to be substantial sq different between the Lumin and the Aurender - they're both great streamers/dacs.

My vote for Lumin. It gives you more options with streaming services. Lumin supports Tidal MQA decoding, Aurender don’t. However, if you live in Russia doesn’t matter...unfortunately Hi Res streaming services does not exist in Russia.