Calling Clive !

Not as such, just always reading and researching what could be next in the never ending pursuit of digital perfection.  An ultraRendu looks like the perfect kind of 'super-Asus' streamer with more attention to detail than a general purpose microcomputer can offer.

I'm just looking for weak spots and I sense that my digital chain is very strong with the streamer probably representing the bottleneck now.

Don't get me wrong - my system is performing fantastically well at the moment.

I never wanted to corner myself into expensive or dead-end products that the system relies on as you never know when development might stop.

Not guilty. I don’t have a microRendu. 2 Lindemanns, ATB and I’m trying out the latest Orchard PecanPi with it’s internal dac.

I’m much more of the opinion nowadays that digital transports make less difference than they used to. This is because the receivers in DACs are much improved and the associated internal layout is better too. That’s not to say that better SBCs, reclocking and resampling etc aren’t beneficial...it’s just that there aren’t gross differences any more...with most modern DACs. The app to play music is a bigger issue...less sonic difference means the app becomes the focus. I know @martin you did not ask for my views....but I wanted to chuck in my POV.

Understood Martin, that’s why I was saying there are benefits still to be had.  What I was trying to get at but wasn’t explaining well...is that we’ve moved on from the days when some transports were just awful and this is probably more due to DAC improvements than transport improvements, which have come along also.

I found an ultraRendu for sale in Italy at a good price, so I've snaffled it.

It'll be interesting to compare the Rendu running DLNA/BubbleUPnP versus the Asus running Volumio.

It runs on 6-9V so I'll have to use its own PSU for initial testing. If it sounds promising, I have spoken to Tony about converting my QP-1 PSU to 7.5V to run it.

Home page



MPD/DLNA Settings

First impressions from last night are that the ultraRendu works very well and sounds superb. In every way that I could evaluate it, from vocal clarity through to sweet highs, no harshness, bass depth and power, dynamic clout, low level detail and note decay, it sounds as good as the Asus/Volumio streamer.

I'm not going to mention user interface right now as it depends on the app tested, but using the uR in MPD/DLNA mode with the BubbleUPnP app for Android works well for Qobuz hi-res streams and ripped files played directly from both OneDrive and Google Drive.

So, more listening is needed but the uR sounds pretty much the same as the Asus/Volumio combination. However, that is in my system where I already have two reclockers - one before and one after the streamer. These could be masking differences by raising the performance of both to be roughly equal, even though I suspect the Asus is likely to be noisier as it is not a dedicated hardware design.

There is a MUCH BIGGER caveat, though.

1. The uR is running from a standard Chinese LPSU set at 7.5V (the Asus runs from the Coherent QP-1 supercap PSU running at 5V).
2. The uR is not getting the benefit of my Black Ravioli grounding box as it is a USB one and there is no spare USB port, so I need an alligator clip
    to use it on the DC power plug.

Both of the above require a commitment to the uR since the QP-1 will need to be adapted to 7.5V and the BR will need to be modified with an alligator clip. It means a return path to the Asus would not be easy.

The message is: they sound the same at the moment, but the uR is not nearly as optimised as it could be. I need to do some more listening before committing to changes that have no easy path back. I am also aware that the Asus Tinker Board S plus a decent case costs around £120 while the uR costs £875. That's a fairly hefty cost difference which goes to show what an absolute steal the Asus is for high quality streaming.  I expect the uR to ultimately pull ahead and sound better but that's a leap of faith that I need to think about.  There is also the consideration of Volumio development compared with the more open MPD/DLNA standards used by SonicOrbiter.  The last thing I want is to find development stalled for my chosen way forward.