Review: Sonore ultraRendu

Thanks for sharing insight on the UR.  Not a fan of review bribery…seems a bit sleazy to me.  Hope for Andrew they are all good reviews 😳.  I don’t have a Rendu but I do love my Sonic transporter from them!

Nice review. I’m writing a review of the optical rendu for the same reason. I agree, this is beneath the otherwise good intentions of Sonore and SGC. In any case, I use the optical rendu in my downstairs second system, connected via an optical module. I previously had a Sonore signature rendu  and I feels the optical rendu is very close in sq to that unit. Highly recommended 
 

Caveat: I’m writing this review primarily to qualify for a free upgrade to my player’s operating system. The vendor wants upgrading users to first post an online review of a Sonore Rendu series player, otherwise pay for the upgrade. I apologize in advance for any unintended inaccuracies in the above review, in which case I’d welcome polite corrections from other posters

Same. All this to save $29.

That said, my UltraRendu is worth writing about. My friend Jay, formerly of Audio Revelation (sadly, one of the great high-end audio retailers closed up shop with Jay's retirement a couple of years ago), turned me onto the Rendu. I purchased an UltraRendu along with a SGC Linear power supply, and followed that up a year later with a Sonic Transporter. Of all the digital sources I have used - and I have tried many media-based and streaming sources, the UltraRendu, connected to an Alpha USB converter (I'm not sure the Alpha is any better than my M2Tech EVO2, and with the M2Tech Clock2, it isn't. But it is less fiddly.) is the best sounding digital source in my rig and I recommend it highly. I do plan to upgrade to the Optical Rendu. 

I'll add to this discussion. I don't normally like to write "sponsored" reviews, but I have had an ultraRendu for over 2 years and it really did make a big difference in my system, especially coming from just a normal PC core. I've never had any problems with it and it's produced incredibly clear sound quality for me, hour after hour, week after week.

One thing I may add of value here is that an addon / upgrade of dual fiber media converters (with SPF transceivers) is a very cheap way to take the sound quality to another level, by kicking out a lot of the ethernet noise. Highly recommended if you have an ultraRendu.

I'm reviewing for the same reason, and I should mention that I do not have a lot of experience with other digital options, I could not be happier with my ultraRendu. The sound is terrific, and paired with my Sonictransporter, it is flawless, incredibly easy to use infrastructure for my Roon-based listening. Highly recommend.  

Follow-up to my original post above:

The founder of Sonore Computer Audio informs me, "You can select the onboard USB output directly in HQ Player’s settings." I have not recently (if ever) tried to feed HQ Player output from my sonicTransporter (music server) directly to a USB-attached DAC, without using a Rendu player. I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who has compared sound quality with and without the Rendu (sonicTransporter-HQP > USB > DAC vs. sonicTransporter-HQP > ethernet > Rendu > USB > DAC).

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do you still run the BacchMac?
 

I have it and sold my Antipodes K50 to buy.

 Now running the MM are the core in Roon.

I am not sure what music server to replace the K50 as Edgar thinks I should get the Roon Nucleus plus.

Any thought on what to do?

I let my maintenance license expire on Bacch4Mac and do not use the software anymore. I was not hearing enough consistent improvement to justify the cost or the  complexity.  Maybe I never had it set up properly.  With Bacch-Orc (room correction) coming out, I'm a little tempted to renew and upgrade.

When I was weighing Roon Nucleus against other options, several years ago, I decided to go with Small Green Computer's Sonic Transporter as my music server.  It was a bit less expensive, more powerful, and seemed to be more flexible. The only possible downside I saw was that it ran its own proprietary operating system, not the Roon OS (ROCK).  

I haven't revisited the Sonic Transporter vs. Nucleus comparison lately, so I don't know if my conclusions from several years ago still apply.