Lumin X1 or dCS Bartok

The lumin x1 that is owned by me, was purchased because of its internal dac and streamer under one roof.  I own separate dacs and found x1 to be better and may be due to internal wiring that works better than dealing with all the separate interconnects and dacs to clutter up sound path.

Nobody enjoys dealing with inserting the variety of dacs offered. Separates have their place in a high end system but the dac I found makes sense to integrate within the streamer box and lumin does it exceptionally well. It even makes poorly recorded Great classical Rock music from the 70s sound really good and that's a huge deal.

My system also has a nucleus to host Roon and I wonder if I can do better here. Any ideas? I like the nucleus but it's a computer offering lots of noise

@kingdeezie 

That is quite inconvenient for me. Yes, I want max fidelity. But, my wife will some time use her tv to listen to music and there is no connection for that.  

Thought I’d provide a 2024 refresh from an X1 owner since early 2021.  I recently auditioned the Rossini Apex in my system for 4 days as a potential upgrade to the X1.  The Bartok is the more obvious competitor, but it lost (in pre-Apex guise) back in 2021, and the purpose of this audition was to find an upgrade.  

Bottom line: the Rossini was initially quite notably superior in the areas of decay, natural timbre on drums, mid-bass presence and articulation, detail of overtones and harmonics.  But then I found that I was 4 versions behind on the X1 firmware, and that the X1 also has a DSD 128 upsampling option for 44.1 material like the Rossini was configured to use.  After applying the firmware upgrade and upsampling configuration option, the X1 was fully equal, and nearly indistinguishable from the Rossini Apex within the limits of my system and hearing resolution.    

I’ll be holding off on upgrading until I have space and budget for a Vivaldi stack (which is quite definitively better and I haven’t even heard the Apex version yet).  Bottom line, the X1 is still a phenomenal value and (at least within my limited system) matches the performance of mid-range SOTA from one of the best brands in digital.  

-Paul

System: Burrmester 948, Lumin X1, McIntosh MT-10 + Clearaudio Stradivari, McIntosh C500T with NOS Telefunkens, 2x McIntosh MC500, Sonus Faber Il Cremonese Ex3me, SF Gravis VI

I have several DACs including the X1, which I have had for several years.   It has been a very solid and good sounding piece for me.   I have not heard the Bartok.  I have thought about selling it, but have not acted on that,   Lumin has been excellent on software updates and responding to customer questions an issue online.   Leedh Processing was a no charge additional update, and is very good.  I prefer to use a preamp, Makua, which, I have preferred but not by a great margin.  I have added a new piece in my system that has a USB input and my Antipodes K50 G4 has a single USB output.   I had read an independent review and later from Lumin that USB from the Lumin could be used as a digital out where the X1 would act solely as a player and USB could be connected to another USB DAC.  I love options and tried this into the Makua USB option in the DAC (Tambaqui).   The sound is different but very, very good.   Doing this requires the user to configure output from the X1 from Analog to USB (SPDIF also an option) via the Lumin downloadable app.  Lots to like about the X1.