Late to this discussion but recently I trade my DCS Bartok in on a Lumin X1 and I am very happy with the switch. Not having them side by side I did not A B them. But I can tell you that the Lumin and Bartok both sound great. They both run or ran through a Mcintosh C22 and MC462.
It terms of the difference I think the Lumin just sounds more real. I am a guitar player and I notice that with the Lumin it sounds like an acoustic guitar playing in the room. It sound like high end analog without the fuss or records.
One more point I was very happy with the DCS and never felt like I needed more but I was using Sonos through the DCS for multi-zone music and I could not use Tidal and was limited to spotify. To build a multi-zone system with DCS would have been very cost prohibitive.
That led me to the Lumin X1 paired with the two M1s for my other zones. The Lumin M1 is a self contained amp dac streamer. I now have the perfect HiRes 3 zone set up.
I also run a Lumin T2 with a Mcintosh MA6500 (which has 2 zone built in) in a second home.
I love the dependability and resale value of Mcintosh. Paired with Lumin which provides ease of use, world class sound and rock solid dependability you have a great combination that will last for years.
One last comment I like the thought of having a tube component (C22) in the chain. It would be interesting to try a solid state pre in place of the C22.
Happy for now. LOL
It terms of the difference I think the Lumin just sounds more real. I am a guitar player and I notice that with the Lumin it sounds like an acoustic guitar playing in the room. It sound like high end analog without the fuss or records.
One more point I was very happy with the DCS and never felt like I needed more but I was using Sonos through the DCS for multi-zone music and I could not use Tidal and was limited to spotify. To build a multi-zone system with DCS would have been very cost prohibitive.
That led me to the Lumin X1 paired with the two M1s for my other zones. The Lumin M1 is a self contained amp dac streamer. I now have the perfect HiRes 3 zone set up.
I also run a Lumin T2 with a Mcintosh MA6500 (which has 2 zone built in) in a second home.
I love the dependability and resale value of Mcintosh. Paired with Lumin which provides ease of use, world class sound and rock solid dependability you have a great combination that will last for years.
One last comment I like the thought of having a tube component (C22) in the chain. It would be interesting to try a solid state pre in place of the C22.
Happy for now. LOL