Where should I go from here with my digital front end?


Good morning

My digital front end consists of a recently purchased  Lumin U2 Mini hard wired with Supra ethernet cable from an Eero mesh unit. Modem and Eero router located on 2nd floor. My listening room is in the basement.

My listening is 100% streaming from Tidal and Quboz with a budget of under $1k

should I:

1) upgrade the supra cable

2) add an Etherregen or Eno filter

3) add an audiophile switch such as the English Electric

4) other

Thanks!

 

emil

@emil I have the same LUMIN streamer, it’s excellent. I also manufacture the ENO filter, so if you’d like to get in touch I can tell you about my experience with the LUMIN.

As others have mentioned, get a switch with its own clock, an LPS for your U2, experiment with the fiber optic route or an ENO filter, better cables, and of course a better DAC eventually. IME every step in the digital chain counts, and ignore the "its just 0 and 1s" trolls.

Does not matter what you do.  You will not be able to improve the sound quality sourcing through Tidal or Qobuz.  The signal is full of jitter from upstream connections.  Once that jitter is introduced, there is no way it can be changed or removed.  Best place to start is with your own local files PCM or DSD.  Put together a collection of your favorite music on a local disk … you can use Tidal or Qobuz for discovery.  Once you have this ‘local’ music collection in place you can revisit the hardware again.  Trying to improve the sound quality of Tidal and Qobuz is a fools errand.

@chilli42 

The signal is full of jitter from upstream connections.  Once that jitter is introduced, there is no way it can be changed or removed.

Which "upstream" connections are you referring to?

Regards,

barts