Lumin L2 Music Library and Network Switch
- Thread starter audio.bill
- Start date
Hello again
I am wondering about the difference between a L2 and a melco ?
Has anyone tested the difference in sound quality ?
How about the ease of file management ?
Is the non linear power supply in the L2 not interfering with the switch ?
Thanks
I am wondering about the difference between a L2 and a melco ?
Has anyone tested the difference in sound quality ?
How about the ease of file management ?
Is the non linear power supply in the L2 not interfering with the switch ?
Thanks
Lumin is no longer the company they used yo be. I would suggest you to look elsewhere.
See my terrible experience below with my Lumin L2 due yo Lumin failing to provide any installation information and screws/adaptors.
I owned a P1 and bought a L2 recently. It is a pain to setup the L2. First, as said, there is no online manual and the printed manuals contain nothing about installing and setting up the SSDs. The L2 comes with no screws and adaptors, which are special types, for mounting the SSDs. As soon as I got the screws and mounting adaptors, I put in 2 4TB SSDs and turned on the L2 and the screen showed HDD error. No information could be found to resolve this issue. I fdisk the SSDs and reinstalled the SSDs. I got the HDD Error again. I removed the SSDs again and formatted them before reinstalling them. I got the HDD error again. I consider myself very lucky as I tried holding the sleep button and a harddisk formatting screen showed up. The screen turned off and nothing happened. I turned off the switch and turned on the L2 again. I saw the deadly HDD Error screen again. I tried to hold the Sleep button again and it seemed to have the SSDs formatted this time. The L2 started finally started normally but it was not the end of the nighmare. When I copied files to the L2 over the network, I got the "Error 0x8007003B".
Lumin alleged that the L2 is zero configuration which is untrue and misleading.
For those considering Lumin L2 or any Lumin products, I would strongly suggest you to look elsewhere!
See my terrible experience below with my Lumin L2 due yo Lumin failing to provide any installation information and screws/adaptors.
I owned a P1 and bought a L2 recently. It is a pain to setup the L2. First, as said, there is no online manual and the printed manuals contain nothing about installing and setting up the SSDs. The L2 comes with no screws and adaptors, which are special types, for mounting the SSDs. As soon as I got the screws and mounting adaptors, I put in 2 4TB SSDs and turned on the L2 and the screen showed HDD error. No information could be found to resolve this issue. I fdisk the SSDs and reinstalled the SSDs. I got the HDD Error again. I removed the SSDs again and formatted them before reinstalling them. I got the HDD error again. I consider myself very lucky as I tried holding the sleep button and a harddisk formatting screen showed up. The screen turned off and nothing happened. I turned off the switch and turned on the L2 again. I saw the deadly HDD Error screen again. I tried to hold the Sleep button again and it seemed to have the SSDs formatted this time. The L2 started finally started normally but it was not the end of the nighmare. When I copied files to the L2 over the network, I got the "Error 0x8007003B".
Lumin alleged that the L2 is zero configuration which is untrue and misleading.
For those considering Lumin L2 or any Lumin products, I would strongly suggest you to look elsewhere!
It seems you have had only one mission on this forum and that is to trash Lumin. You’re a troll. All of your posts are trashing Lumin. You contribute nothing else. In contrast, there are thousands of happy Lumin customers who would strongly disagree with you. Their support is outstanding. Just see all the time they spend here helping people with questions.
You’re a cry baby who had one little problem with an L2. BFD. Take your trolling billshit and go elsewhere.
Bye bye troll.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Hello
Very sorry for your Lumin L2
Is it working now ?
Has your dealer taken it back ?
Thanks for the return of your experience , and will take that into account before any purchase (I have the melco which works fine)
Cheers : hope that WKLIE helps you
Very sorry for your Lumin L2
Is it working now ?
Has your dealer taken it back ?
Thanks for the return of your experience , and will take that into account before any purchase (I have the melco which works fine)
Cheers : hope that WKLIE helps you
Michaels HiFi
Well-known member
I do not own Lumin so I have no interest in this. However I have ALWAYS been impressed with the level of support WKLIE offers. It has always been impressive.
I would buy Lumin with no concern or issue based on how many people love it and how awesome WKLIE has been with support. They appear to be a great company.
There is freedom if speech and I am free to share my true experience to alert any potential buyers. Lumin seemed to keep everything secret so you have no choice but to buy their own SSDs models. I understand you have a business interest to protect but I think I will still share my experience to alert all potential buyers and to let them know the TRUTH.
I won't be mad about Mike being rude to me because I did not allow him to earn a single cents from me and he consider me damaging his business. However, I can't imagine a Lumin dealer telling its customer that he is a cry baby who had one little problem with an L2. BFD and asked him to take his trolling billshit and go elsewhere, considering his customer is paying the dealer twice as much as everyone in Asia is paying.
I won't be mad about Mike being rude to me because I did not allow him to earn a single cents from me and he consider me damaging his business. However, I can't imagine a Lumin dealer telling its customer that he is a cry baby who had one little problem with an L2. BFD and asked him to take his trolling billshit and go elsewhere, considering his customer is paying the dealer twice as much as everyone in Asia is paying.
I have been using Lumin products for a long time. Currently I have a D1, P1, two L1s and a L2. I ordered the L2 without knowing the price because I have always had confidence in Lumin. However, I take great exception to their attitude to keeping essential information on their product secretive. I have read many posts posted by wklie on Lumin products with many tricks and valuable information. However, I do think that some of the information shared by wklie are actually essential information that should have been provided to the users directly in the first place. E.g. they still regard the procedures to format the internal HDD of L1 (snd now L2) their top secret. I don't think they know how much trouble it will cause to the users by withholding such essential and necessary information.
I knew and expected to be harassed by those having an interest in Lumin's business. The more harassment I received, the more posts I will post.
I knew and expected to be harassed by those having an interest in Lumin's business. The more harassment I received, the more posts I will post.
You had one bad experience with one product. You should see what I see in a daily basis from dozens of brands. I had stupid SimAudio explaining that the reason the customers CD player went bad was because he clearly must have plugged the RCA cables into an AC wall outlet! Now that’s what I call asinine.
In the end, shit breaks. Again, get over it. An L1? BFD again. It has moving parts for christs sake. It’s susceptible to errors. Have you NEVER had a hard drive go bad? Of course something could go wrong. I’m sure Lumin did everything to make it right. Given the mountain of support this company has given over the years, one bad apple won’t spoil the bunch.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
I am an experienced computer user with four NAS setup at home and three other music servers. My network gears are unifi that requires experience to setup. I am still unable to setup the L2 properly because Lumin withhold all necessary information in installing and setting up SSDs. And they have failed to put in the screws and adaptors in my box because I am one of the earliest to place an order. How do you know what to do when the screen showed HDD Error.
twm3
New member
I recently purchased a Lumin L2 with 4TB storage pre-installed and integrated it into my system using the fiber networking method shown in the second diagram at this page. I'm using all Lumin-recommended equipment in this networking: TRENDNet switch, Startech modules, and Corning clear curve cables. In tandem with the Lumin X1, this set up provides yet-better sound than I was achieving before using ethernet connections filtered by a GigaFOILv4 just before the X1. There is yet more detail and three dimensionality and even less high-frequency harshness. I'm very pleased with the result.
However, I think that some changes need to be made to the instructions to allow greater ease of set-up of the L2. At least for me with my Mac computer (a Mac Studio with M1 Ultra running the latest Sonoma 14.3.1 MacOS), adding music files to the L2 was not simple. I struggled for a couple of hours without success trying to get my Mac to drag and drop music files to the L2 using the recommended USB connection.
I consulted my dealer. He suggested the problem might be caused by the fact that the L2 comes with NTFS formatted hard disks. Even it you install your own discs, apparently the auto-formatting function of the L2 will format the files to NFTS.
While Windows computers can read and write to NFTS-formatted discs, Macs do not allow native writing to NTFS-formatted drives. They can read files formatted in NFTS, but not write to such a drive. I suspect many Lumin users, like me, use Mac computers rather than Windows.
Nothing in the L2 instructions notes this issue. There are various third-party programs/apps which claim to allow Macs to write to NTFS. Some of these work only with Intel-based Macs, not Apple Silicon like my Mac Studio. There are articles which discuss the pros and cons of some of these third-party programs; here are links to a couple of such articles: Top 7 Best NTFS for Mac Reviews in 2023 - SYSGeeker and NTFS for Mac: Everything You Need to Know - TrustedBay
My dealer suggested I try the slower SMB recommendation for adding music files to the L2. This did work eventually. I was asked for a password for a "Registered User" but I was not able to come up with that password; it was not any of the passwords I use to access Lumin or my Mac computer. I instead added files as a "Guest." Doing so created a folder inside the Lumin L2 Music Server named "Public" which did not inspire confidence. But that folder did accept my music files and the L2 was able to reconstruct my music library file structure after rescanning my library. Loading 1 TB of music files took about 7 hours using the SMB method on my gigabit network.
I must say that I have never before encountered problems clicking and dragging music files to a USB drive or other external drive from my Mac. Of course, I was not using a drive formatted to NTFS.
It was only in the midst of loading the music files on the L2 via SMB that I discovered the existence of third-party apps which may allow a Mac to write to an NTFS-formatted drive. I think it would be helpful to new L2 users for Lumin to recommend a particular program or programs which would allow Mac computer users to drag and drop files to the L2. At the least, the instructions for the L2 should be modified to note the issue using the USB method with a Mac.
Have other Mac L2 users encountered such problems loading music files to the L2? If so, how did you handle the situation?
Is there a way to reformat the L2 discs to a file structure natively compatible with Macs such as ExFAT? I have to wonder why Lumin chose NTFS as the file formatting for the L2 knowing that Macs cannot write to such a file structure without the addition of third-party software.
However, I think that some changes need to be made to the instructions to allow greater ease of set-up of the L2. At least for me with my Mac computer (a Mac Studio with M1 Ultra running the latest Sonoma 14.3.1 MacOS), adding music files to the L2 was not simple. I struggled for a couple of hours without success trying to get my Mac to drag and drop music files to the L2 using the recommended USB connection.
I consulted my dealer. He suggested the problem might be caused by the fact that the L2 comes with NTFS formatted hard disks. Even it you install your own discs, apparently the auto-formatting function of the L2 will format the files to NFTS.
While Windows computers can read and write to NFTS-formatted discs, Macs do not allow native writing to NTFS-formatted drives. They can read files formatted in NFTS, but not write to such a drive. I suspect many Lumin users, like me, use Mac computers rather than Windows.
Nothing in the L2 instructions notes this issue. There are various third-party programs/apps which claim to allow Macs to write to NTFS. Some of these work only with Intel-based Macs, not Apple Silicon like my Mac Studio. There are articles which discuss the pros and cons of some of these third-party programs; here are links to a couple of such articles: Top 7 Best NTFS for Mac Reviews in 2023 - SYSGeeker and NTFS for Mac: Everything You Need to Know - TrustedBay
My dealer suggested I try the slower SMB recommendation for adding music files to the L2. This did work eventually. I was asked for a password for a "Registered User" but I was not able to come up with that password; it was not any of the passwords I use to access Lumin or my Mac computer. I instead added files as a "Guest." Doing so created a folder inside the Lumin L2 Music Server named "Public" which did not inspire confidence. But that folder did accept my music files and the L2 was able to reconstruct my music library file structure after rescanning my library. Loading 1 TB of music files took about 7 hours using the SMB method on my gigabit network.
I must say that I have never before encountered problems clicking and dragging music files to a USB drive or other external drive from my Mac. Of course, I was not using a drive formatted to NTFS.
It was only in the midst of loading the music files on the L2 via SMB that I discovered the existence of third-party apps which may allow a Mac to write to an NTFS-formatted drive. I think it would be helpful to new L2 users for Lumin to recommend a particular program or programs which would allow Mac computer users to drag and drop files to the L2. At the least, the instructions for the L2 should be modified to note the issue using the USB method with a Mac.
Have other Mac L2 users encountered such problems loading music files to the L2? If so, how did you handle the situation?
Is there a way to reformat the L2 discs to a file structure natively compatible with Macs such as ExFAT? I have to wonder why Lumin chose NTFS as the file formatting for the L2 knowing that Macs cannot write to such a file structure without the addition of third-party software.
If you are a Dealer are you not required to have that in your signature?
Rnrmf
Member
I don't have the L2 but the Lumin L2 product page has this:
"*USB connection requires a computer with a USB 3.0 port
Note: The 8TB HDD version uses NTFS format for the internal HDD. On a Mac computer, additional software may be needed to access NTFS formatted HDD."
That could be the source of issues with your USB transfers.
I've used Tuxera to use NTFS drives with my Macintosh with perfect results.
I own the Lumin L1 which does allow reformatting to a MAC compatible format.
I see you're making a whole bunch of noise about this, I find it hard to believe that you haven't been able to resolve it with the help of Lumin or your Dealer. Do you want to provide an update?
twm3
New member
Thanks, Christian, for noting the footnote on the L2 product page about the necessity for additional software, as well as your experience with Tuxera. Apparently the 4 TB version is also now NTFS formatted. I once had the L1 and had no problem reformatting it or loading music files onto it from my Mac.
Puma Cat
Well-known member
Yeah, I'd be interested in an answer to this, too. I've been using ExFAT-formatted HDs with music files to connect directly to the U2 I had in for review, and for my own P1.
Just did a search, and there's also an app called iBoysoft that lets one use NTFS HDs with Macs.
Ref: iBoysoft NTFS for Mac | Full Write NTFS Drives on macOS
L2 needs to be formatted using L2 internal format function. It cannot be formatted as anything else via a computer USB connection (unlike L1).
Using network to copy file into L2 is usually preferred to USB copy (unlike L1 which does not support network file system).
Using network to copy file into L2 is usually preferred to USB copy (unlike L1 which does not support network file system).