Lumin or Aurender

hgiefman, bo1972,
Thanks for the help.
I am currently using a Bryston BDP-2 with my Hard drive attached to it.
The Dac currently is the PS Audio Direct Stream Dac. Everything works great and  with the Bryston app I can select and play everything just fine.

I have been thinking of getting a Lumin X1 or an Aurender but never could find much info as to how an attached hard drive would function.

ozzy

When we sell a modified Lumin X1. Together with the modified Lumin L1 music server+modified Sbooster and the modified Bonn N8+modified Sbooster you can easily outperform network players+DAC far over 50k. The reason for that is insight and knowledge.

We have a client who lives in Austria and he bought in August 2019 a LuminD2+Pro modification+modified Sbooster for 3798 euros. He is a member of an audio club in Austria. There were 2 of his audio friends with a networkplayer+DAC combo of 13000 and 14000 euros. They were seen as the reference digital sources of his audio club.

But when he did a shootout with his 3798 euros combination he outperformed them both. And now they see his combination as the reference digital source in his audio club. The money will never help you at all in audio. This is due to the fact that over 99,99% of all produced audio products are incomplete.

Our modified Lumin X1 outperformed the Aurender W20 with many different DAC combinations. We create many new standards in both sound&vision. For us, audio is like Formula One. All our research creates new ideas over and over again. Because for a born perfectionist it needs to be better all the time.

The 3rd of July 2020 will be the date that I work in the world of sound&vision for 22 years. When I see what my insight and knowledge are compared to when I started in 1998 it is planets away from that time. Only insight and knowledge can make you understand sound and music. This is needed to be able to understand audio.

Audio is a real profession, this needs to be done with full dedication, commitment, and most of all with all the love you feel and have for music. Even a Lumin X1 out of a box is still not an ultimate source. Because you need the skills to use the DNA of each product. I can read the full DNA of each individual product.

But when you do audio by trial&error you can never read and understand the DNA of that particular product. This is why you can only use a limited level of the full potential of each audio product when you do audio by trial&error. When you do audio by all the different aspects of sound, it gives you access to a totally different world!

@ozzy, I am happy I was able to help. I hope everything is working okay. I own the Aurender N10 Music Server and like it very much. As I stated above, Aurender Customer Support is excellent, their Conductor App is easy to use and Aurender offers Remote Internet Technical Support, if needed. Of course, its sound quality is excellent (my opinion).

I am not familiar with Lumin products and cannot comment. Some people above posted they like the Lumin unit very much. I also have no comments or experience with the modified products that @bo1972 mentioned above.

I suggest you audition both the Lumin and Aurender products in your local store and see what unit sounds best to you. Please use my server check list above to help you make a decision.

Please do NOT rush this process. Take your time and listen.

I hope the above helps you make a decision. Thanks....

"So, I ask again.
I have about 6TB of music on a external hard drive. Can this hard drive be accessed/ utilized with any of the Aurender or Lumin units?"

A bit late for Ozzy maybe; but as I have been researching these digital players, they seem to handle attached drives differently.  In the Lumin, the attached drive can only be browsed via your folders, as it does not index the music into its own database.  If you want that (because you have full metadata on your music files), you need to run a NAS into the Lumin, then it uses UpnP to provide full search by metadata.  Aurender does index attached drives, so their app will let you do full metadata searches with just any attached USB device, the NAS would be just an option.  So for people who just folder browse... they both work.  For people who want full metadata search, they are different. 

@ozzy

I have a couple of BDP-2s and a BDP-1. Both BDP-2s have factory IAD upgrade. MPD is great, and if you use Roon, it works well. I just picked up an Aurender A10 player/server. It is not Roon capable, but it’s sound reproduction is outstanding. Aurender Conductor firmware is solid. If wasn’t for Roon compatibility, I’d sell at least one of BDP-2 transports.

You can place music on the internal hard drive, access via NAS, or external USB drive.  Tidal and Qobuz services are also available.   

Cheers ——-Robert