Although I cannot speak on the Lumin App I can tell you that Roon is certainly the cleanest most transparent music player I have used. It blows away all the incarnations of J River for sure.
I am curious of the answer to this as well. Currently using the LUMIN app on my D1 and I’m satisfied, but I have been wondering about Roon. I will keep an eye on this thread.
I have a Lumin T1 but I can honestly say both the Roon and Lumin app sound the same to my ears. Went with Roon because of its better integration with Tidal and the fact I’m running Two other zones which needed a single control program
I use a Lumin U1 mini and have compared Roon and the Lumin App. I find the sound quality in Roon to be much better. I do find Roon to be frustrating to use, particularly for classical music. But the sound quality and Tidal integration make it worthwhile.
I have the Lumin U1 and detect no difference in the sound between the Lumin and a Roon apps. You can tweak Roon to change equalization and DSP settings, but I leave Roon settings alone.
I am using Roon in DSD upsampling as I find it integrates well with my PS Audio Direct Stream Dac . I think probably because it gives thd Dac less work to do . I have to admit the sound now is to die for and I have never heard another PC based music system sound as good.
I use Roon and have tried the Lumin app on my U1Mini, and can’t tell any difference in sound quality. This, to me, is a win for Roon because in every other way it betters the Lumin app, without question.
I never use any upsampling, quality is always worse. Using T2 and for me Lumin app sounds so much better, that I cannot even use Roon due to the poor quality when compared.
Don't you guys find it annoying to pay a subscription fee for roon (considering its offline software) or did you buy lifetime? This is what motivates me to get a lumin device so I can use the lumin app instead.
actual sound is same if you dont use dsp but lumin app is one dimensional doesnt support zones... roon ui is much better and function more versatile, worth a lifetime subscription and has flexibility to add hqp for dsd upsample if that floats your boat
FWIW: I posed a similar question when comparing Roon vs. Lightning DS (Auralic’s control app) as I was perceiving LDS to be superior to Roon. It turns out most LDS users have concluded the same.
I share this experience here because I wonder if the native apps have an easier time managing data packets and memory buffers/cache than Roon does because the latter needs to work on multiple platforms.
There’s no question Roon is the best UI, but I don’t think it’s the best sounding. It certainly isn’t for my system and it wouldn’t surprise me if that was true in a Lumin environment as well.
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