@johnah5 Is the Lumin broken in? It should take 400-500 hours to settle in. For reals.
Lumin U2 mini vs Mac laptop sound test
I compared and performed a blind test for a listening friend of the following streamer set ups.
1. Router hard wire into Lumin U2 then AES into DAC
2. Wifi into Mac air, out of Mac air via cheap USB cables from my printer and an adapter to go from USB C to whatever USB termination goes into the DAC.
Conclusion. My friend could not hear a diff. I "think" I hear a difference but not confident I could pass a blind test.
Rest of system:
SPL Director DAC/Preamp
SPL S1200 power amp
Kirmuss speaker cables
Audio Solutions Figure M
I did this for knowledge and fun. Please let me know any thoughts but I can not see how spending a lot of money for a streamer makes any sound difference.
John
Love this stuff
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I never said I was using Tidal for volume control. There was a volume diff that I was able to fix but turning on a setting in Tidal that allows it to control but volume has been and always is controlled by the Director preamp. Leedh is also off on the Lumin and again the director adjusts the volume I verified sound levels with a DB meter. JH |
Yes I agree but I listened to the owner of Antipodes interviewed on Darko podcast and he explained that the packets are always sent complete and any incomplete/corruption is erased as the system re-sends the packets. He said the crucial part of data is the timing information for playback. He said noise from a computer etc will cause timing issues and smearing of the square wave which I think is from jitter. Anyway he makes a very good argument on why a streamer would matter so I was shocked to not hear an absolute night and day difference! JH |
Whoever you listened to on the Darko podcast was mistaken. Audio over USB is an isochronous transfer. This means that if bit errors are detected, the packet is dropped and not retransmitted. In this case you will hear dropouts, stuttering or pops during playback, not unlike this example - https://archimago.blogspot.com/2014/01/demo-measurements-what-does-bad-usb-or.html. Perhaps the person was conflating transferring audio over a network with a protocol like TCP/IP. In that case, TCP will guarantee reliable data transmission and resend lost or mangled packets.
There is virtually no jitter on an asynchronous USB connection (which is what most DACs use nowadays). The data is buffered and clocked back out by the receiver. Note that in the previous link, although you can hear the errors, the jitter plots appear very similar.
So what does jitter actually sound like? Here is a great website that has audio clips with varying amounts of induced jitter. Have a listen with you and your friend. See if what you hear matches what the audiophile conventional wisdom attributes to 'timing issues' - https://www.sereneaudio.com/blog/what-does-jitter-sound-like |
I think he was saying the information via packet is easily and perfectly transfered via USB. He was referring to the timing information for playback that is crucial to good sound. I would have to go re-listen to it but the guy is making and selling streamers in Australia. Thanks for the website will try and find a way to listen to it over my system or will use headphones. The jitter was easily heard on my ipad! jh
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