Point of diminishing returns for a Network Streamers?

@rman9 that is correct.

@kray thanks.. So was your setup the Ropieee pi4 dropping bits to not sound as good as the Lumin U1 mini? 

I had the Lumin U1 mini for a while before I traded it for a Lumin D2, now I am trading that for a Hifi Rose RS150.. Lumin was great, but the demo unit of the Hifi Rose that I brought home is fantastic.. 

I wanted to chime in as I studied this and other threads before upgrading my digital front end recently. My former streamer was the BlueSound Node130 with upgraded power supply, quality cabling, and was hardwired to ethernet. The BlueSound was going into a Denafrips Terminator Plus via coax.

After a ton of research, I found a member selling a Lumin U1 and decided to take the plunge. The rest of setup hasn't changed besides the Lumin, first feeding the DAC via coax and after appreciating the improvement. switched to AES. The difference was not subtle in terms of improvement versus the Node. 

Biggest change by far is the improvement in low and mid-range response, the bass is much more full and the mid-range filled in much more so with the Lumin. Other improvements are what fellow members noted like better detail, blacker background, better separation of instruments and layering, and the soundstage was improved.

So even if you have a good DAC and other gear, a streamer definitely brings big improvement at least for me.

@christianb5s4 agree completely. Between the Gold Note DS10 and the Lumin U1 mini when I used them both as pure streamers feeding into the Luxman D03X DAC, I found the Lumin U1 mini so much better than the Gold Note DS10, (Gold Note was a lot pricier and I tried several of it's filters to no avail)

@rman9 

I own an Aurender N100 and W20SE. My systems are shown under my UserID.