ThierryNK

Did you experience the dropouts before or after the speed upgrade?

Hi 3 to 7 seconds is very long... First thing I would check is the ethernet cables connectors and connexions. After that, among the possible reasons of your troubles, there is the limited bandwidth of the (usually low end) ethernet switch that are used in Internet Boxes. If people at your home are watching Youtube videos or are downloading big files, there is a competition inside the box ethernet switch between this internet traffic and you NAS to Lumin music transfer. One easy and quite non expensive solution, is to use and extra ethernet switch connected to your Internet Box for Internet connectivity, on which you connect your NAS and your Lumin. Youtube or files downloads, or any other internet traffic will not interfere with you music transfers. I have always solved this issue on a lot of home networks with this extra ethernet switch. I never tested this for streaming services as Tidal, and there is no a priori reasons that it should work, as music streaming AND other internet traffic all go through the box switch. Maybe a switch with QOS functions (prioritization of packets from NAS to Lumin) will improve the situation. Kind regards

It is because I like Lumin products very much, it is because I took part of the very first review of Lumin A1, and because this thread, as others on a lot of HiFi forums, is being hijacked by MQA people that I decided to write about MQA here. When some people on a forum repeat ad nauseam that it is up to users to decide (who could be against that?) and do not give any attention to real very basic information that can be checked anywhere, I feel very unconformable about their real goals. Kind regards

You are also free to evaluate Voodoo as in this video. Above 22 KHz, there is no audio, for microphones reasons first, even at a zillion KHz sampling. Moreover, human ears cannot listen above 20 KHz in the best case. So when someone starts its pseudo-scientific marketing by lies, lack of knowledge, confusion or deliberate will, it is also my right to report it. After that, you are free to test whatever you want. Kind regards.

Hi You talked earlier about "Chicago 17" There are at least 6 different masterings of this album as you can see here: http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=&album=chicago+17 Do you know which mastering you compare between MQA, Hi-Res, etc? You are fully allowed to put science aside. You are also allowed to scratch your head wondering how taking off information can lead to "better". As I said before, on a lot of systems, MP3 sounds better than 16/44. A small trick to finish with. As you use a Lumin D1, you should activate PCM/DSD conversion. Not because DSD is a better format than PCM, but because the WM8741 chip is more noisy on PCM than on DSD as you can see on a simple diagram as this one Kind regards

Hi This is not controversial at all. These are facts about sampling theory. The video "MQA music origami" by Bob Stuart that you can find on Youtube is just BS. Make your own comparison as I did for years on hundreds of tracks. Donwsample them by yourself from 24/X to 24/44 and listen... Never trust downloaded 24/x and 24/44 or 16/44 tracks. They are so often coming from different masterings. And you can downsample to 16 bits, because if you have the chance to listen to the microvolts coming from bits above 16, your system is part of the 0.001% that are able to achieve this. Mine is not capable of this: room acoustically treated, Jriver UPNP on a Mac Mini, Ethernet Filter, Trinnov Amethyst, NAD M2 and Vivid G3. Kind regards

OK for 16 bits versus 24bits. But.... From the frequency point of view, there is strictly nothing more between 0 and 22 KHz in a 192 Khz sampling than in a 44 KHz sampling. This is the basis of sampling theory. If you add that most microphones are limited to 20 KHz, as human ears are, then, if you can hear differences between 24/44 and 24/88 or above, it comes from elsewhere, a different mastering for example. Take any 24/X tracks, downsample it to 24/44 by yourself, and post it somewhere. If you can hear differences, I buy you a bottle of Champagne. Kind regards.

Hi I find very "strange" that people with high end Hifi gears are so interested in MQA that is a lossy format. When lossy formats appear "better" than lossless ones on a system, it makes me consider acoustic/speakers/amplifier issues but never leads me to the conclusion that the lossy format is "better". In rooms with acoustic issues, and/or poor amplification and/or poor speakers, MP3 appears also "better" than 16/44, as dynamic range is lower, with less bass and less treble, and finally less demands on room/amplifier/speakers. Kind regards

I read carefully all the thread, and every Izotope mention is about upsampling. Did I miss something? Kind regards

Do you have a link on french forum? Kind regards

Thanks odelay. It is also my understanding. Some people (who participate to this thread) claim hearing differences when modifying Izotope parameters, without using usampling and digital volume. I am trying either to review my own understanding and...hearing, or to identify another self-suggestion effect. Kind regards

Hi everybody Some people claim that Izotope settings have effects on Audirvana processing and output quality, even if you do not use upsampling and digital volume. My understanding is that Izotope is only used for upsampling or digital volume. Am I wrong? Kind regards

Hi everyone I was "the one", LOL, who was crazy/stupid/dumb/insane enough to connect the M-CR510 to TAD Evolution I speakers, and then start to scratch my head about High End Audio technologies and prices. The story is quite simple. Back to November 2014, associated with Magnat Quantum Edelstein speakers, the M-CR510 was the christmas and birthday gift for my younger 27 years old son. I tested this setup in my smaller audio room, and got the feeling that the speakers were the limiting factor of this association. So I connected my Klinger Favre D56 speakers to the M-CR510, to discover both a very high level of precision AND fluidity AND "natural". The Klinger Favre D56 are high end monitoring speakers that have no mercy with any source and amplifier slightest defaults. So I took the Marantz under my arm to go down to my larger audio room and connect it to my TAD speakers… These TAD are the same kind of "no mercy" speakers as the KF, in big format. I start talking about it to my closest audio friends, and they definitively thought I was joking. But it was not april fools' day. When they visited me, they made the same finding as me… And they started to buy M-CR510 as basis for a second or third audio system. The findings were also quite disappointing to those, as me, who already spent fortunes on their audio systems. I made my public "coming out" about this Marantz, because of a guy on the french forum who was again and again and again saying that audio reviewers were all dishonest, got backsheesh from manufacturers, etc, etc. The M-CR510 was the opportunity to shut his mouth. Some other guys on the french forum were enough curious to give the Marantz a try. "MrLocoLuciano" opened a thread on the forum, and this thread is now about 250 pages. I wrote a mini review here last december: AUDIOPHILE MAGAZINE - Marantz M-CR510 What makes me quite merry is that people who could never afford 1000(0)(0)$ electronics have discovered High Quality Audio though this M-CR510, with a very easy to setup, and can focus the main part of their budget on speakers. For those who wants to "try" to understand why this Marantz is so good, here are some elements: - no computer audio, no USB impedance and electric issues, no OS issues: tracks arrive from UPNP server - no usual DAC, the tracks are directly converted from PCM to PWM which is the digital format used by Class D amplifier. So the audio path is: track-PWM conversion-amplification. Hard to design a shortest path. Of course there are limitations: distortion when the volume gets "too high" (more than about 50-60%), limited power and current. So speakers with an impedance curve that goes below 4 Ohms, or too low efficiency speakers for the room size, are not recommended. Kind regards

Hi I will also be in Munich Have a look at the temp directory of Jriver when streaming (UPNP) the tracks of an ISO. You will see the wave DoP files created from ISO extraction as I described. DoPE means DoP over Ethernet, and you can read "DoP"... To my knowledge there is only ONE software that is able to extract tracks from an ISO SACD image: sacd_extract. It is used under the hood of Jriver and Foobar. It has been compiled at least under OSX and Windows. It is not because you cannot see it as an end user that sacd_extract and DoP are not used... If you have doubts, you can ask the question on Jriver Forum. As you may know, there is a big difference when reading "real time" with an optical drive a CD or a SACD and decicated chips, and work on a file of several hundreds of MB on a general purpose processor and a general OS. The same approach: if you have doubts, look at your processor level of occupation when using Jriver on ISO, for first (and second tracks) and then on the start of every new track, and try to evaluate if your NAS processor has the ability to do the same as you laptop processor. They are not of the same class and power. To do it inside a network player would need a great storage capacity, with files that are locally stored. It is another architecture. And in my opinion, it is not a good one, as hard drives and too much electronics have too much effects on audio quality. Kind regards

As there is no software to do the job on Synology, and even if there was a software, NAS processors are not powerful enough to do it, currently, yes, Synology NAS and all NAS of the same type cannot be used to "play" SACD ISO. When I rip SACD, I extract DSF files with sacd_extract, I tag them, and use them with DSD compatible software. If you want to use only a Synokogy NAS, use Foobar with the SACD plugin modified by Lumin and convert the DSD ISO tracks to DoP files, which are PCM 24/176 files with the DSD information embedded in it. You can then use them on your NAS and Lumin will recognize them as DSD files. If you try to "play" those files on a non DSD player, you will only get "shhhhhhhhhh", a white noise. Best regards