Article: Audiophile Style Products of the Decade

[vortecjr]

Chris, I’m honored to receive this award on behalf of the team. This team is made up of very skilled and passionate individuals who devote themselves to making these products. We also have some amazing customers as part of the family to share this award with. I couldn’t think of a better way to end the year. 
 

Congratulations to Roon and Qobuz for their achievements in the software and music catagory.
 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

 

Jesus R

www.sonore.us

[vortecjr]

20 hours ago, mwhitak said:

Congratulations Jesus and Sonore/SGC team....well deserved !

Thanks!

[vortecjr]

20 hours ago, sdolezalek said:

Chris: I believe you are missing one final piece of the package that makes the other three even better -- HQ Player. Using the Sonore products as network appliances, Roon as the user interface, Qobuz to feed content, and HQ Player to fine tune it is I believe the best available combination today (it does require some computing power 😉 )

We do have a lot of customers doing exactly this.

[vortecjr]

11 hours ago, Mercman said:

Excellent choices Chris. I have found that the Signature Rendu SE optical combined with Roon to be one outstanding combination.

Enjoy!

[vortecjr]

10 hours ago, hopkins said:

The Sonore products did popularize the use of SBCs for audio, which had been around for quite some time. Witness this article by John Swenson in 2008: https://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=pcaudio&n=42367&highlight=nycparamedic&search_url=%2Fcgi%2Fsearch.mpl%3Fforum%3Dpcaudio%26searchtext%3Dalix

 

There had been many variants around for quite some time, including the Logitech Squeezebox as early as 2003. Perhaps some recognition of this would have been appropriate ? I would not describe the sonore products, even back in 2016, as "ground braking". They are certainly well engineered, well packaged and marketed, but hardly "ground breaking".

That is a great post. The Squeezebox guys were definitely awesome. The software side of it lives on in the Rendu series with LMS and SqueezelLite running on our gear. At least consider that the Rendu series is USB audio and supports PCM and DSD output at very high sample rates. If that still doesn't pass the mustard test...no worries.    

[vortecjr]

9 hours ago, DavidL said:

While I agree with your selection of Sonore for the hardware accolade you do them an injustice. They were well ahead of the curve. I bought a Sonore Rendu ethernet-to-SPDIF converter in 2013 to convert my Bel Canto DAC to a streamer - excellent sound quality. Sonore followed up this product with a Signature version which (so I understand) gave outstanding sound quality. I guess Sonore chose this type of renderer because it had the potential to give the best SQ.

Unfortunately this ethernet-to-SPDIF/I2S/AES renderer product line was terminated in 2015(?) and replaced by the current series of ethernet-to-USB renderers, presumably because most computer audiophiles wanted to connect their computers to a DAC by USB. My personal opinion is that this is an inferior concept, requiring a high quality USB interface and associated power supply upstream of the digital to analogue conversion, but the line has certainly sold well. It will be interesting to see whether Sonore will revisit their original idea and implement an ethernet-to-SPDIF renderer taking advantage of subsequent technology advances. I enquired if this might happen when I wanted to upgrade my renderer this year - no such luck yet, so I opted for a dCS Network Bridge instead.

I hear you load and clear on wanting a network-to-SPDIF/I2S/AES renderer product;) Saying the USB solution is inferior is a bit misleading though. From my perspective it's just trading one protocol for another and each has it's pros and cons.   

[vortecjr]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

I've moved on from the Sonore Rendu products.  A new decade is about to begin.

I hate to see anyone move on:(

 

We started woking on the new decade months ago so you never know what cool things will show up in 2020. 

[vortecjr]

1 hour ago, audiobomber said:

I believe SPDIF and AES are technically inferior to USB and I2S, because there are two clocks, sender and receiver, vs a master clock with USB and I2S. Some manufacturers get USB wrong, but that does not make SPDIF right. 

In the end each will develop into i2s which feeds the DAC chip. Some implementation are good and some are not. 

[vortecjr]

1 hour ago, audiobomber said:

I enjoyed reading the best of decade article very much, but I would have liked to see a single product instead of a manufacturer for product of the decade. The microRendu would be my choice, so not far off. Interested to see what Sonore comes up with next, although I suspect the future belongs to integrated streaming and/or ethernet DAC's, not separate streaming solutions.  

Some DACs are starting to look like receivers to me with plug-in modules. I'm presently working on a new i2s scheme which will allow for one to have a DAC without all those unnecessary inputs. This allows the source and the DAC to each be as good they can without interfering with each other. I'm not going to say to much more but the master clock will be exactly where it needs to be. 

[vortecjr]

39 minutes ago, Raimund Heubel said:

Chris,

as you can see in the 1st picture both the „arfi-stream“ renderer on top as well as the „artiflex“ DAC below have multiple non-optical outputs respective inputs a customer can choose from when ordering such devices from the company „artistic fidelity“.

From my meanwhile years of experience in using these devices I can however say I sound wise clearly prefer the optical I/O over SPDIF, AES/EBU or USB. Only the ethernet RJ45 format - if properly implemented - comes close.

But if customers want Toslink I/Os they can have them, for me there is no turning back.

We use to build music servers with USB, SPDIF, or i2s and each was preferred 1/3 of the time. 

 

The Toslink is hard to enjoy with high sample rate PCM and DSD so people will also be divided on that. 

[vortecjr]

33 minutes ago, hopkins said:

Several other manufacturers are doing this, as it is the only way of offering perfect isolation between the source and the DAC. PSAudio is implementing some form of fiber connection ("Air Gap Audio Interface") I believe. I have been using  optical connections with the ECDesigns product, and their latest implementation ("ElectroTOS") is quite impressive. The devil is in the details, as always, and all the technical aspects go way above my head. 

 

What I do find exciting is the idea that DACs my finally become "source immune" with these types of connections, meaning an inexpensive source will be sufficient, without the need for all sorts of tweaking upstream (for example, Audiophile network switches, the latest craze). 

I heard that project was not moving forward?

Which optical connection have you been using?

You may still need an expensive source depending on what it is. 

[vortecjr]

Chris those are optical Toslink. 

[vortecjr]

1 minute ago, Matias said:

MSB has been isolating their DAC inputs with their proprietary ProISL fiber as well.

 

http://www.msbtechnology.com/accessories/prousb/

In this category (expensive/proprietary) you could also include Playback Design. What i’m working will be inexpensive and we may release it as open hardware...TBD.

[vortecjr]

Ayre was using an opto-isolator on the i2s signals generated by the USB receiver.

[vortecjr]

I started a new thread to discuss optical solution:

 

 

[vortecjr]

I found this interesting article on Dante and AES67 clocking:

https://www.shure.com/en-US/support/find-an-answer/dante-and-aes-clocking-in-depth

[vortecjr]

Chris, can you clarify this for me...does our award extend to the Rendu products with Ethernet input with SPDIF and SPDIF/i2s output?

[vortecjr]

5 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

The Rendu I reviewed back in the day with Ethernet in and S/pDIF out, wasn't anything like the current custom designed hardware and software solutions in the Rendu series I'd say the award only applies to the newer devices like this. If, you have an Ethernet to S/PDIF in a similar class to the other current Rendu product it may extend to that.

Understood and agree. On those products we were not able to control the vertical to horizontal and that limitation was one of the reasons for discontinuing the line. 

[vortecjr]

19 hours ago, Osterberg said:

You guys make everything over complicated, much like life. With your Asynchronous USB – DSD – Jitter - Adaptive USB - Fixed frequency clocks -Dithered digital volume control - Firmware -Bit Perfect testing – Jitter Simulator - S/PDIF, blah,blah,blah

You should just sit back, turn everything else off & listen to a record.

 

It's not really complicated...it is Asynchronous USB, DSD is supported, no jitter that isn't inherent, no one uses adaptive anymore, no dither here, new firmware = new features, it's bit perfect, SPDIF only as needed.

 

I donated the few records I had to my dad's friend. He is enjoying them.    

[vortecjr]

40 minutes ago, Ran said:

For me, software of the decade is MPD. Hardware of the decade falls on any gear with Ethernet input for streaming.

I'm using MPD right now.

 

BTW Every Linux based Sonore music server and renderer built to date has had MPD on it.