Network Music Player of the Year
Lumin has not only garnered huge support from audiophiles right around the world in the relatively brief time its components have been available, but it has also expanded its range dramatically so that it now caters for almost all applications and covers a range of price-points.
That’s all been made possible largely because the company behind Lumin is the famous Hong-Kong-based electronics firm Pixel Magic, with its own team of highlyexperienced digital engineers, and building its Lumin-branded products in its own factory in China. But it’s also in part because it uses the same software throughout its range, as well as much of the same hardware and circuitry.
And when we say ‘much of the same hardware’, the U1 Mini is a perfect example, because it uses almost exactly the same circuitry as the more expensive Lumin U1. The only differences seem to be firstly that the U1 has a very large external linear power supply whereas the U1 Mini’s power supply is a compact switchmode type inside the chassis, and secondly that the chassis is smaller, as the ‘Mini’ name suggests. Whereas the full-sized U1 has Lumin’s ‘classic’ chassis, CNC-routed out of solid aluminium, the U1 Mini gets simply a sheet of aluminium folded and then anodised in either silver or black. It still looks very classy…just not as much as Lumin’s premium chassis.
Do we care? Not much, when it delivers abilities pretty much equal to those of the larger more expensive version! It is a network streamer, finding music stored on your home network or available from a streaming internet service, supporting Spotify and Tidal, also Roon Ready, and supporting MQA from Tidal and Qobuz (the latter not yet available to Australia) for high-res playback. Files are supported up to 384kHz PCM and DSD256. Note that its output is digital (see back panel below); there is no DAC inside, so no analogue outputs but six digital choices: AES/EBU, BNC, RCA, optical, and lastly two
USB audio outputs, which offer the highest available resolution. Nor is there any remote or on-device control — which always concerns us, given the waywardness of apps and app control; we like a back-up control system.
But the sound! It delivers such precision data to your DAC that music gets the very best possible treatment. And while the Lumin U1 retails for $9900, the Lumin U1 Mini Network Music Player retails for $3290. Need we say more? More info: www.audiomagic.com.au