Post by ajski2fly on Aug 4, 2021 10:22:48 GMT
The background to this is at theaudiostandard.net/post/216665/thread
On others advise I went ahead and purchased a Sonore microRendu, this was I wanted to improve my digital experience from the RPI/HiFiBerry-HAT, (this has served well and does of reasonable results).
Yesterday the little microRendu arrived late afternoon, so I set about carefully setting it up, initially with Roon to take advantage of the 2 months free trial. At present I and using a standard PSU switched to 7Vdc (voltage recommended by Martin at Audiostore), but I have a Linear one on its way that should arrive in about 2 weeks. At first I connected it directly with the supplied USB A to B adapted plugged straight into the Audiolab 8300CDQ DAC USB socket and the Rendu support underneath. To be honest I was not happy with this arrangement and this morning I have now secured the Rendu to the rear metal leg of the Hifi stand using two cable ties, I have some small rubber blocks under to protect it and allow air flow. It is now connected using my Audioquest Cinnamon USB cable to the DAC, personally I could not hear much difference between the cable and the block connecter.
At first all went swimmingly with sound coming from Roon and through the Audiolab, it all sounded great on the initial listen. The I decided to try with Audirvana so switched the software on the Rendu to MDP/DNLA, and fired up Audirvana, and this worked fine, and then I tried native Qobuz and was OK. So I then switch the Rendu back to Roon, and went to Roon on the Mac, but now now sound and it was skipping track and not streaming. After several attempts to sort it out I powered it all off went and had tea and came back to it after. I powered Mac and Rendu on switched to USB on the Audiolab, fired up Room on the Mac and presto it worked.
Brilliant.
This morning I re-position the Rendu as above, and powered up and all worked fine, and then repeated switching from one software driver on the rendu and on the mac to another and back. It worked but what I realised was each time I did so I first shut down the software on the Mac then switched on the Rendu and the fired up the new software on the Mac, and so on, each time sound remained fine. So obviously hot switching is not a good idea!
This morning I have listened to a number of my favourite test listening tracks and I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the microRendu, I have used various file resolutions but nothing less that 16/44.1 and up to 24/196. Considering the PSU is not ideal and it could do with a shorter USB cable to SQ is pretty impressive. I will be interested to hear any improvement with the linear PSU.
I suspect I will look into either etherRegen and clocking at some point, or I may look into slightly simpler set up with a Roon running on a streamer/hddrive, Martin had several suggestions for this.
On others advise I went ahead and purchased a Sonore microRendu, this was I wanted to improve my digital experience from the RPI/HiFiBerry-HAT, (this has served well and does of reasonable results).
Yesterday the little microRendu arrived late afternoon, so I set about carefully setting it up, initially with Roon to take advantage of the 2 months free trial. At present I and using a standard PSU switched to 7Vdc (voltage recommended by Martin at Audiostore), but I have a Linear one on its way that should arrive in about 2 weeks. At first I connected it directly with the supplied USB A to B adapted plugged straight into the Audiolab 8300CDQ DAC USB socket and the Rendu support underneath. To be honest I was not happy with this arrangement and this morning I have now secured the Rendu to the rear metal leg of the Hifi stand using two cable ties, I have some small rubber blocks under to protect it and allow air flow. It is now connected using my Audioquest Cinnamon USB cable to the DAC, personally I could not hear much difference between the cable and the block connecter.
At first all went swimmingly with sound coming from Roon and through the Audiolab, it all sounded great on the initial listen. The I decided to try with Audirvana so switched the software on the Rendu to MDP/DNLA, and fired up Audirvana, and this worked fine, and then I tried native Qobuz and was OK. So I then switch the Rendu back to Roon, and went to Roon on the Mac, but now now sound and it was skipping track and not streaming. After several attempts to sort it out I powered it all off went and had tea and came back to it after. I powered Mac and Rendu on switched to USB on the Audiolab, fired up Room on the Mac and presto it worked.
Brilliant. This morning I re-position the Rendu as above, and powered up and all worked fine, and then repeated switching from one software driver on the rendu and on the mac to another and back. It worked but what I realised was each time I did so I first shut down the software on the Mac then switched on the Rendu and the fired up the new software on the Mac, and so on, each time sound remained fine. So obviously hot switching is not a good idea!
This morning I have listened to a number of my favourite test listening tracks and I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the microRendu, I have used various file resolutions but nothing less that 16/44.1 and up to 24/196. Considering the PSU is not ideal and it could do with a shorter USB cable to SQ is pretty impressive. I will be interested to hear any improvement with the linear PSU.
I suspect I will look into either etherRegen and clocking at some point, or I may look into slightly simpler set up with a Roon running on a streamer/hddrive, Martin had several suggestions for this.
