Lumin D1vs Auralic Aries streamers

My experience is the Lumin, which has a dedicated dac, is in a different class to the Aries, which I cannot recommend. The Aries was pretty ordinary, I felt, when used as a transport.

Another contender is the Aurender N10, which is superb as a transport. And has AES out as a bonus. A tad more expensive, however.

..Lumin A1 here. Closest thing to analogue from a digital source that I've heard...good stuff!

thedudeabides said:

After much research, I think these are my two finalists. Being non tech savy, both of these are designed to "bypass" the computer, work with an IPad app., and offer TIDAL.

Any experiences on sound, ease of use and other relevant info?

Thanks in advance for any input.

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Dude, I think these are apples and oranges. Auralic is just a network bridge, and doesn't have a dac. So you can add whatever dac you like. I sense you don't like analytic gear, so you are free to explore "musical" DACs like TotalDac, Luxman, and Lampizator. I have only heard the Auralic at shows, but for the fear of sounding like a snob, a lot of guys really into high end consider Auralic "mid-fi". But I have a feeling that if you slap a good DAC to the Aries, you will have great sound.

Lumin, however, has a DAC built into the box. If you are not a fan of the dac inside the lumin box, which I think is very mediocre compared to other dacs I have heard, you have wasted some of your money, if you add a DAC of your choice to your lumin.

TAS had an article from Dr. Jeffrey Barish that explains the computer audiophile architecture and gives a lot more product options. (I imagine you can easily find this via your favorite search engine.)

Good Luck!

..the Lumin DAC mediocre? That's some funny stuff there hail Caesar...funny indeed...har har..