I own both a Node 2i in a cabin system, and an Auralic Aries G2 in my primary system. I used to have a Roon subscription but dropped it (see below). I’ve auditioned Lumin and Simaudio and formerly owned Aurender.
For user interface in terms of preference, I’d personally rank them 1) Roon, 2) Auralic, 3) Aurender, 4) Sim, 5) BluOS and 6) Lumin - my preferences only. Candidly, there were small gaps between the interfaces of 2-6. Roon was clearly a step up.
However, on sound quality, I’d put Roon last. I had a subscription to it for nearly a year and tried various settings and was generally satisfied with it. Then, for grins, I compared the same tracks (whether streamed via Qobuz or played from a file) first on Roon and then via Auralic lightning DS. No contest. I dropped Roon the next day.
Before someone suggests Auralic doesn’t “play well” with Roon - it’s a Roon certified endpoint. Operation was flawless. LDS is just clearly making better use of the buffers and topology of the hardware. I can’t say whether others would experience something similar with Lumin, BluOS or Sim.
Best,
For user interface in terms of preference, I’d personally rank them 1) Roon, 2) Auralic, 3) Aurender, 4) Sim, 5) BluOS and 6) Lumin - my preferences only. Candidly, there were small gaps between the interfaces of 2-6. Roon was clearly a step up.
However, on sound quality, I’d put Roon last. I had a subscription to it for nearly a year and tried various settings and was generally satisfied with it. Then, for grins, I compared the same tracks (whether streamed via Qobuz or played from a file) first on Roon and then via Auralic lightning DS. No contest. I dropped Roon the next day.
Before someone suggests Auralic doesn’t “play well” with Roon - it’s a Roon certified endpoint. Operation was flawless. LDS is just clearly making better use of the buffers and topology of the hardware. I can’t say whether others would experience something similar with Lumin, BluOS or Sim.
Best,