Sonore opticalRendu

[R1200CL]

On 5/24/2019 at 1:13 PM, vortecjr said:

We are not recommending a VBUS injector to our customers. The opticalRendu has an improved BUS power circuit compared to the microRendu and the ultraRendu and customers will want to take advantage of it. The recommended approach is to use a different power supply for the opticalRendu.  

 

For us LPS-1 and LPS1.2 users. 

 

Why not add a Vbus Power interface in next model 😀 ?

[MagnusH]

3 hours ago, Tacomadave43 said:

Got it yesterday and ran it for 7 hours. Running all day and will seriously listen tonight So far....incredible. My source was Tidal on my iMac to Chord Qutest.  So there is no question...

 

Rob Watts seems to like toslink best for his DACs (and so do I btw, but for RME ADI-2 DAC), have you compared it to toslink?

[vortecjr]

3 hours ago, incus said:

After some trouble-shooting issues with non-system optique certified SFP modules and fiber cables, I have been playing my oRendu nonstop since I got it on Thursday. Needed break-in time, for sure. Sounded thin off the bat. Now really starting to open up. To my ears so far it - like the SOtM renderer benefits from my tX-USBUltra but time will tell.. I feel I can begin by power supply tests over the weekend - but now I'm super intrigued by the new Sonore one! When will it be available?

I would not plug another piece of gear between the opticalRendu and your DAC or digital converter. This is based on what I know about the design of course. Adding more gear in between may change the character of the sound, but not likely for the better. This is not to argue your perception which matters and it's up to you either way. 

[vortecjr]

3 hours ago, R1200CL said:

 

For us LPS-1 and LPS1.2 users. 

 

Why not add a Vbus Power interface in next model 😀 ?

Just use the LPS-1 to power the opticalModule:) 

[vortecjr]

2 hours ago, MagnusH said:

 

Rob Watts seems to like toslink best for his DACs (and so do I btw, but for RME ADI-2 DAC), have you compared it to toslink?

Toslink is for CD players. I know he has a mega money CD player and/or upsampling device, but we can do all that in the server for much less money with playback completely isolated over an optical network. The computer can even be one you already own saving you even more money. For a complete solution with hi-resolution and DSD support USB is really your best bet. 

[MagnusH]

I don't agree with that, toslink in combination with battery power means 100% isolation from mains grid and anything else, so if the DAC can handle the introduced jitter good enough it is hard to beat. Yes, USB has higher bandwidth, but even when I used USB I never bothered with upsampling to more than 192 anyway.

 

And finally, toslink is source independent, provided the DAC can reclock the jitter, which means cheaper and more minimalistic system.

A streamer/transport like OpticalRendu means you don't need a "music player" near your HiFi, so it can be more practical.

 

But this is all theory, what I asked is how the SQ from the OpticalRendu compares to toslink for a DAC like the Qutest.

[incus]

14 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

I would not plug another piece of gear between the opticalRendu and your DAC or digital converter. This is based on what I know about the design of course. Adding more gear in between may change the character of the sound, but not likely for the better. This is not to argue your perception which matters and it's up to you either way. 

I respect your stance on this but I have yet to find a server/renderer that didn't benefit from the tX-USBUltra in some way. In my system, of course, etc. It is possible that as the oRendu breaks in, I will no longer need it... Doing a lot of back and forth right now...

 

One thing I can report back so far is that my unit decidedly did not like the LPS 1.2 as a power supply. The 1.2 was searing hot and the LED stayed red on the back of the oRendu no matter what I tried - and this is without any vBus requirements...

 

ALSO... and it's very early still, as the unit is still breaking in... but I am getting some improvements over the sMS-200Ultra with the oRendu. They have a different emphasis at this stage - the oRendu has the cleaner low bass and touch better tonality in the mids... at the slight expense of some airiness around the instruments and some detail at the higher frequencies... but this is changing every so subtly with each hour that passes... the oRendu is finding more and more higher frequency shimmer and detail and texture is accruing to the bass... piano right now sounds a bit better on the oRendu... at first I felt it was too clean and fast... now it's settling in and a certain ease of listening has come on... i would have said it sounded too 'solid state' at the outset but now some tube tonality is there as well as more spatial coherence to the image... that's the one place it still lacks compared to the SOtM - instrument separation and overall coherence of the image - the SOtM has more perceptible depth while the oRendu layers the instruments atop one another...

 

That's it for now... take it all this with the grain of salt that is my enthusiasm and inability not to comment on what I am hearing!

[JohnDonaldson]

5 hours ago, Em2016 said:

 

Completely understand you don't want to buy all FMC's on the planet... but since you are selling the TP-Link SFP transceiver which I linked, I was hoping you could also test and approve it's own matching TP-Link gigabit FMC...

 

I understand you want people to buy your opticalModule but it might make the opticalRendu a little more affordable if you could test and  approve the matching TP-Link gigabit FMC:

 

https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/accessory/mc220l/

 

I am using the TP-Link gigabit FMC with my opticalRendu and have no problems.  The SFP is from TRENDnet.  Lots of combinations work just follow the Sonore guidance and you will have no problem.

 

• Gigabit: 1000base-SX (10/100/1000 base units are not supported, only use 1000 base)
• Interface: LC
• Fiber type: 62.5/125um Multi-Mode
• Wave Length: 850nm

[vortecjr]

9 minutes ago, MagnusH said:

I don't agree with that, toslink in combination with battery power means 100% isolation from mains grid and anything else, so if the DAC can handle the introduced jitter good enough it is hard to beat. Yes, USB has higher bandwidth, but even when I used USB I never bothered with upsampling to more than 192 anyway.

 

And finally, toslink is source independent, provided the DAC can reclock the jitter, which means cheaper and more minimalistic system.

A streamer/transport like OpticalRendu means you don't need a "music player" near your HiFi, so it can be more practical.

 

But this is all theory, what I asked is how the SQ from the OpticalRendu compares to toslink for a DAC like the Qutest.

I know different stokes for different folks...it's all good. 

[vortecjr]

7 minutes ago, incus said:

That's it for now... take it all this with the grain of salt that is my enthusiasm and inability not to comment on what I am hearing!

Part of the issue is that you are switching back and forth...just sit back and enjoy it:) 

[incus]

6 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

Part of the issue is that you are switching back and forth...just sit back and enjoy it:) 

Ah but I enjoy the switching! Not every day a kickass new piece of gear makes into my system. New dog in the play yard!

[vortecjr]

5 minutes ago, incus said:

Ah but I enjoy the switching! Not every day a kickass new piece of gear makes into my system. New dog in the play yard!

If you like testing things...I may put you on the power supply beta testing group. 

 

What power supplies are you using again? You said you had Vinnie's power supply...which one? The SOtM is a switching supply right?

[incus]

1 minute ago, vortecjr said:

If you like testing things...I may put you on the power supply beta testing group. 

I would be honored

[Michaelb4]

I have had the OpticalRendu since Noon Friday and have played it continuously since then. I am listening to Bill Evans Village Vanguard 1961 and can honestly say my system has never sounded as good-I am throughly happy. Definition is great and bass seems improved. I used to tweak Roon by adding a little bass response at about 100 hertz(?) now just listen lossless.  

 

Not much into audio stuff but have tried to investigate as I adopted streaming audio. I understand some audio equipment benefits from a break in period. Do you have break it in after every time you turn it off?  Not sure how to put OR in a standby mode I note you can power it down but not sure how you power it up or even if this is more of a problem than its worth. I put my Brooklyn DAC in stand by mode at night and it awakens when I do. 

[cat6man]

after a tour of the northeast US, the USPS found my house after all...............powered up with lps-1.2, added my optical connection, configured and had it running in 15 minutes....................letting it warm up now

 

will connect to DAC after dinner and will have to see if HQPLAYER settings.xml needs to be changed

 

NAS==>hqplayerd(nuc running ubuntu, bionic beaver)==>cat6==>24 port 1G switch==>6 port 10G switch==>optical==>opticalRendu(naa mode)==>usb into TotalDAC reclocker==>aes/ebu into TotalDAC DAC

[asdf1000]

Great reading all the reviews.

 

Would love to know what PSU’s you’re all using, if you don’t mind @Michaelb4 @cat6man

[Michaelb4]

I power the OR and the Brooklyn DAC from same Uptone JS-2. 

[vortecjr]

10 hours ago, cat6man said:

after a tour of the northeast US, the USPS found my house after all...............powered up with lps-1.2, added my optical connection, configured and had it running in 15 minutes....................letting it warm up now

 

will connect to DAC after dinner and will have to see if HQPLAYER settings.xml needs to be changed

 

NAS==>hqplayerd(nuc running ubuntu, bionic beaver)==>cat6==>24 port 1G switch==>6 port 10G switch==>optical==>opticalRendu(naa mode)==>usb into TotalDAC reclocker==>aes/ebu into TotalDAC DAC

That is great news...enjoy!

[iLguapo]

16 hours ago, Michaelb4 said:

I power the OR and the Brooklyn DAC from same Uptone JS-2. 

I’m powering a Mac mini and the OR with the same JS-2

[Sonic77]

Finally got some time to listen to the opticalRendu last night, even though I received my oR on Thursday. I thought it did sound different when I first hooked it up then when I listened on Saturday night, so maybe some break in happened there. I am using hqplayer desktop 4.0.3 as the software playback which I purchased earlier this week. The sound is extraordinary, I'm hearing lots more detail then before, the songs almost sound like different songs because of all the new detail, where sounds blurred together I'm getting more separation of instruments and clarity of voices. I am using the starter kit while I wait for the opticalModule, I didn't have a problem with set up, since I already own the microRendu, and ultraRendu, using sonicorbiter which was already set up on my computer, just had to choose the opticalRendu as the rendu to play back using hqplayer. My power supply is the Sonore signature power supply, my dac is the Resonessence Mirus Dac, my preamp is PS Audio BHK signature preamp, my amps are the PS Audio BHK 300's monoblocs, my interconnects and speaker wires are Iconoclast, my Ethernet cable is AQ diamond. I'm looking forward to other peoples reviews.

[Doak]

56 minutes ago, Sonic77 said:

Finally got some time to listen to the opticalRendu last night, even though I received my oR on Thursday. I thought it did sound different when I first hooked it up then when I listened on Saturday night, so maybe some break in happened there. I am using hqplayer desktop 4.0.3 as the software playback which I purchased earlier this week. The sound is extraordinary, I'm hearing lots more detail then before, the songs almost sound like different songs because of all the new detail, where sounds blurred together I'm getting more separation of instruments and clarity of voices. I am using the starter kit while I wait for the opticalModule, I didn't have a problem with set up, since I already own the microRendu, and ultraRendu, using sonicorbiter which was already set up on my computer, just had to choose the opticalRendu as the rendu to play back using hqplayer. My power supply is the Sonore signature power supply, my dac is the Resonessence Mirus Dac, my preamp is PS Audio BHK signature preamp, my amps are the PS Audio BHK 300's monoblocs, my interconnects and speaker wires are Iconoclast, my Ethernet cable is AQ diamond. I'm looking forward to other peoples reviews.

Speakers?

[Sonic77]

6 minutes ago, Doak said:

Speakers?

Magnepan 3.7i with synergistic blue fuses 😀

[JohnSwenson]

On 5/25/2019 at 1:09 PM, incus said:

 

One thing I can report back so far is that my unit decidedly did not like the LPS 1.2 as a power supply. The 1.2 was searing hot and the LED stayed red on the back of the oRendu no matter what I tried - and this is without any vBus requirements...

What were you using as the feeder supply for the LPS-1.2? What you are describing is what happens when the feeder supply cannot supply enough power to the LPS-1.2. If you are NOT using the supplied Uptone Audio branded SMPS give that a try and see if that fixes the problem.

 

John S.

[André Gosselin]

6 hours ago, iLguapo said:

I’m powering a Mac mini and the OR with the same JS-2

@Barrows You warned against powering both an opticalrendu and optical module with the same power supply. Is there a similar concern also with powering both an opticalrendu and its associated USB Dac with the same PS ?

Regards,

[barrows]

1 hour ago, André Gosselin said:

@Barrows You warned against powering both an opticalrendu and optical module with the same power supply. Is there a similar concern also with powering both an opticalrendu and its associated USB Dac with the same PS ?

Regards,

There are a couple of things to think about here:

 

First, anytime you share power supplies one is making a compromise, even internally inside a DAC, one of the main differences between good DACs, and really superb DACs is the number of separate power supplies internally, which provide separate clean feeds to different sections of the DAC-for example, Ayre's latest DAC has 4 transforms internally, and a Bricasti M1 has 3.

 

So anytime you can provide dedicated supplies it is going to be an advantage.

 

Secondly, in this specific example, let's assume our USB DAC has a galavanically isolated USB interface.  In this case, if you power the opticalRendu and the DAC from the same power supply, you have now defeated the isolation designed into the DAC, so you have compromised the performance designed into the DAC.

 

Bottom line is, if one is looking for best performance, dedicated supplies, with really clean, low output impedance, are going to be an advantage.  this is one of those cases of "no free lunch".