How does the presence of the coaxial cable influence the stream to the Lumin?
I’ve not tried Wi-Fi at all with my streamer- only AES output directly to the dac. There have been other comments made with regard to what I’m noticing on the Audiophile Style forum- which I’m still parsing as that thread has been going on for years.
Lumin’s rep made the suggestion of adding a switch in order to isolate the specific device but of course it seemed to be an approach that requires changing the placement until an improvement is achieved. Sounds more like throwing darts to me.
If what @Fatcat is suggesting is the best methodology I think I’d prefer to continue as I have all along- Naim/coaxial BNC to dac and Lumin/AES to dac and manually switch inputs at the dac.
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I noticed an interesting thread on another forum where the owner assembled a battery powered switch for use with his Taiko Extreme setup. Honestly, it looked kind of clunky to me but whatever works right? Have seen/experienced any examples of this- what are your thoughts?
Well you could use batter power if you really wanted to.. I can honestly see no benefit what so ever just drawbacks, but hey it’s a free world for many of us… but a switch has to use DC to DC converters if fed by a single power feed. DC to DC converters function like switch mode powersupplies.. sometimes referred to as current pumps.
But either way the key thing would be to earth the switch to provide an optimum path to ground for induced common mode noise… you don’t want that current (sometimes referred to as ‘RF’ in some audiophile circles.. flowing to ground through your streamer.
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I was thinking along the lines of… with your current setup, you MIGHT have created a ground loop via the two coaxial cable??? It’s not difficult to test.
If by chance that is the problem, you can run a good quality optical (toslink) cable from streamer to dac.
After giving this some thought I decided to follow the paths coming into the house and from there to the equipment. I’ve now realized that the streaming portion is definitely Wi-Fi.
Our home is over 100 yrs old now and is not equipped for a local network. We have high speed internet fed to the house by a coaxial cable which through a lengthy path connects to a modem. We have 3 routers in the house to provide the needed coverage, one connected to the modem and two others acting as mesh.
The Uniti Core only supports Ethernet so it is connected via CAT5 to one of the mesh routers. The Lumin streamer is connected to the same router. So the Lumin is streaming via Wi-Fi and the communication between the Naim and Lumin is directly through the mesh router.
It’s sounding like I need to figure out a way to get a direct LAN connection down to the equipment and bypass the mesh router completely. Placing a switch in place of the mesh router to provide the necessary Ethernet connections would satisfy the needs of the gear- the only question remaining would be if the effort involved allows an audible benefit to be realized.
You will have only ONE router and that will likely be with your access modem. Its sounds like you have three wireless access points that are wirelessly meshed.Home audio protocols will only work typically in a single subnet, ie using only a single router to connect to the internet.
Yes if you want ethernet you will need to take an ethernet lead from one of your broadband router switch ports and pass through to the room where your streamer components are. It would make sense to put a switch in that room, so you can connect muktiple devices together and have one lead back to your router.
Yes it relies on a bit of planning and is equivalent of wiring traditional telephone extensions or electricity mains.
My house is over a hundred years old too and it possible with planning., some Ethernet cable is flat so you can lay under carpet etc which can be useful.
Are you sure about that? I own a Lumin P1 and it does not have a wifi option. Which Lumin do you have, because I think none of them have wifi?
Also, have you checked the settings on the Lumin in the App? It is possible you need to change something there, but hard for me to say what, without seeing your settings.
Edit, I see you have a U2 mini… looked it up and I see no mention of wifi.
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Right- what I was describing was the overall configuration of modem/router/mesh in the home and the fact that the Lumin is connected to a mesh point- therefore receiving the streaming data over Wi-Fi.
The sound quality of the Lumin streaming Qobuz hasn’t really been in question but rather the sound quality of local files when played/streamed through the Lumin from my Uniti Core. Both devices are connected to one of the mesh routers via CAT5.
I loaded the Core’s library into the Lumin to try using the Lumin app as an interface and noticed that the tracks played with considerably lower sound quality. Wondering if bringing a direct line to the room would improve the situation there.
When you say this, I assume you mean that you loaded some music from the Core into the list at the left side of the screen? The Lumin does not have onboard storage, for that you need an L1 or L2. You can also load a USB drive in my P1, not sure about the U2.
I took a photo of my settings, these are under player options.
In the U2 mini there is an icon that loads the library from the Uniti Core when selected. It shows the titles in list form or icons of album art. After the Lumin builds the library it stores the titles for playback similar to what you would see in a favorites list in Qobuz.
I’m assuming that when I play a title in this fashion that it streams the music from the core I don’t have to change the input selector on my dac.
When I playback in this fashion there is a huge drop in sound quality..
Honestly I don’t bother with stored/local music any more. Spotify sounds just as good in my setup. I have a thumb drive with high quality recordings I listen to occasionally.
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Spotify is certainly good enough for many people’s hearing. That’s why it’s so successful.
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I usually don’t push music from my Uniti Core to the Lumin- I just tried it out to see how well it worked. What got me is the difference in sound quality and the question as to why it’s so different from streaming Qobuz.
I’ve heard different ideas on a solution but I haven’t yet been able to give it a try. Honestly, even though the networking in my house may not be optimal, I find it kind of lame that there is so much disparity between two different sources playing from the same device. It’s almost as if the Lumin is optimized for streaming services only and local drives were kind of an afterthought.
No big deal though- I’ll continue to use them as separate sources as I always have until I can get more information.
I once owned a Core myself when I had other Naim gear too. I ended up trading it in on other items I wanted, can’t remember what though.
I never found that it sounded any better than Tidal, which I used back then.
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I feel that about Qobuz through Roon. I have 500GBs of ripped CDs and older purchased digital files, and almost never play them. Streaming Qobuz sounds great through Roon to my DAC.
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I don’t think you should be questioning the ability of your Lumin Streamer here, after numerous threads and posts on this Forum, it’s pretty evident that the Core is optimised to work with Naim Streamers and has been reported many times that it does not work very well with other manufacturer’s equipment.
Nearly bought a Core myself, but was put off by the information about it on this Forum, as I don’t have a Naim Streamer.
I do have a Lumin P1 and a Lumin P1 Mini and they both work very well with excellent sound quality when streaming locally stored music/files.
I think your limitation is the Core in your use case with your Lumin Streamer.
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Ahh- interesting perspective. So are you saying that it might be the way the Core processes the data on a local stream? I guess the test here would be to try playing the same music from another local drives through the Lumin to see if there’s a difference. Not sure of what I have laying around but it would be an interesting test.
I find that my rips played back from NAS to EE8 switch to my Auralic streamer to my Dave sound better than Qobuz . The Rips sound smoother and easier to listen to, Qobuz sounds more digital. All of my Ethernet cables are AudioQuest Diamond. Although I may change the last Ethernet cable from the EE8 to the Auralic to Shunyata Sigma X
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When I finally moved from my CDP555 to the ND555 and into the world of streaming I invested in a Naim Core to rip all my CD’s. Initially I found the Core to be superior to streaming from Qobuz by a fair margin. However, over time and after investing heavily in limiting noise in the streaming pathway the two have got much closer. In fact I’d say that many Qobuz streams can now sound better than my stored music. I also found that running my Core via ethernet cable and switch, rather than DC1 coax cable, to sound marginally better. I mentioned this to my dealer who has since discovered a coax cable that he thinks is far better than the DC1. This alternative coax cable has re-established, for him, the dominance of the Core and stored music over streamed music, so I’m not sure the lines are drawn quite yet!
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