Review of ultraRendu / opticalRendu

The OpticalRendu is not difficult to setup. At one time I had 3 of them streaming ROON throughout the house. I used PowerLine adapters (recommend TP-LINK not Netgear) to get the bits to the different rooms of the house. The oR is much better than the microRendu (I have it somewhere gathering dust)

I sold 2 of the OpticalRendu’s since I sold off gear. I ended up buying 1 more afterwards, because I got some new gear and I think they are great streamers.

For the OpticalRendu, I use a network switch that has a SFP slot and that has proved to be the most reliable. The other cheap Ethernet to optical converters I owned all broken down fast. This is also the easiest way to setup the OpticalRendu.

I had a Lumin X1 DAC/Streamer | Playback Designs Streamer-IF | OpticalRendu all in the house at the same time. I did some comparisons, and they were not the same sonically, nor was anyone of them better.

The X1 was loud, brash, and a great listen, the opticalRendu sounded more refined. Both were using fibre optical. The sleeper was the Streamer-IF which sounds in-between the other 2 and also sounds great. I am not even using optical (yet) on the PBD. I am using SPDIF out of the Streamer-IF.

Once I get the PBD Dream DAC and can use the fibre optical of the Streamer-IF I think that streamer will be the best one. There is some magic going on inside the Streamer-IF, to make SPDIF sound so good.

BTW - with the OpticalRendu, it does not matter if you use a cheap computer as your music server (far from your system). It does not matter if you use PowerLine adapters to get the bits to the destination. This is because the glass fibre cable kills any noise from getting into the DAC. Well not exactly since there is a conversion to USB that makes theOpticalREndu less than perfect. A perfect solution is the Lumin X1 DAC and the PBD Dream DAC I want to get to pair with the Streamer-IF. The OpticalRendu gets you close to perfect though at a reasonable price.

I have the microRendu, which I use with my Small Green Computers Roon server. I like it very much, but have thought of upgrading to either the Ultra or Optical rendu. I can't decide if going one step up to the Ultra is only incremental, and it would be better to spend the extra $$ and jump past it straight to the OpticalRendu. There is more complexity going that route, with a different optical switch (iirc), and the SGC website doesn't really explain it well (or I haven't explored it enough). 

Thoughts? Thx

Not a fan, returned both. Both had shoddy support that was shoddy for me. They had no player OS, depending on Roon.

Glad it works for you.