Sonore Opticalrendu vs Auralic Aries G1.1

i would think they are both quite excellent, i think you would be happy with either - if you are a roon user, i would mention though that iirc some do believe that auralic handicaps sound quality slightly if roon is run through their streamers as a roon endpoint...

i personally have the optical rendu feed from the fmc port of an etherregen, sound is excellent -- tried network acoustic eno filter, barely perceptible difference in sq

not sure i am following

the optical rendu by definition requires a fiber/optical input to feed it its digitized music signal... which it in turn converts back into electrical form, to be sent to the downstream dac via its usb output

so i am not sure how an opticalrendu can possibly be operated without an fiber media converter in front of it

another way of saying this is the defining difference between the optical rendu and its predecessor ultrarendu (or microrendu) is specifically the fact that it does the electrical-to-optical-and-then-back-to-electrical processing, in order to remove the electronically generated and transmitted noise from computer boards/chips, power supplies, network switches and so on...