Sonore microRendu

[rickca]

18 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

We are not going to biggie size people like other companies around here:)

That's the most promising thing I've heard so far.  

[Al Jones]

Received two chips Wednesday and plugged them in Thursday as instructed.

 

Everything powered up and performed perfectly.

 

To my surprise, there was an immediate step up in sound quality, so I've put a few hirez albums on repeat and will let things simmer a few days.

[vortecjr]

Canada Day promotion notice:

 

Between now and July 1st we are offering our neighbors in Canada a special rebate on a microRendu. This rebate is meant to ease the pain of the currency exchange rate between the US and Canada. 

 

Some rules apply:

1. One unit per Canadian residence.

2. The unit most be delivered to a Canadian address.

3. Offer can't be combined with any other offer. 

 

If you are interested in this promotion please e-mail [email protected] with the word "Canada" in the subject line.

[Peti]

I've heard so much (exclusively good) about this little thing and I must admit I have been using a Fiio X3 First Gen through Coax as a music source. My setup is the following:

 

Fiio X3 (coax) Chord Mojo (RCA) DNA Stratus Sennheiser HD800. Would the Sonore be an audible upgrade to my system?

 

Especially that I will be getting a Gungnir Multibit in the foreseeable future to replace the little Mojo.

[jaaptina]

4 hours ago, Peti said:

Fiio X3 (coax) Chord Mojo (RCA) DNA Stratus Sennheiser HD800. Would the Sonore be an audible upgrade to my system?

MicroRendu isn't a source. The microRendu input is ethernet only. So you need a Ethernet connected NAS or pc as a source to replace the Fiio. With microRendu you will get Tidal streaming as an extra. 

 

Don't know if the Fiio is more noisy than a  Ethernet set up with microRendu.  

[Peti]

Thank you. My wording was incorrect.

[canali]

guys....question: trying to use the mr to also play music from various sites

when i'm surfing (let's say on youtube)..(currently i'm using roon and tidal and iFi's micro idsd, using tidal streaming).

 

linn's songcast was recommended but i've had glitches with it: was rejected by my norton antivirus...then when i overrode norton to allow it to operate no luck: it still wasn't playing

(despite making it the default playback device on my windows 10 laptop)

..i was going back to the MR app switcher to use the DNLP but no use.

 

any other apps one can suggest please?

[mrvco]

On 5/18/2017 at 1:17 PM, Confused said:

Yes, my LPS-1 is pretty hot, you can hold your hand on it and it does not burn, so nothing to worry about, but it's hot enough to make you think your hand might slowly cook.  My LPS-1 is also powering the USB input of a Mutec, so it's at the upper end of current draw.  

 

I agree that the 'side by side' configuration should be fine, heat rises.  So stacking is not so good.

 

On 5/18/2017 at 1:54 PM, Cool3r King said:

 

Yes mine is hot too. It's certainly not warm! My mR is hot also, but all seems to be working fine and sounding rather good at the moment I must say. My iFi 9v/2a is nowhere near as hot as the LPS..

 

Very strange, I just checked both my µR and LPS-1 and both are barely warm to the touch.  They are the only two things on a shelf in an open rack, so airflow is not restricted at all.  I did try stacking them briefly and they both did get very warm in that configuration.  I'm using the ~$20 power supply that's available with the LPS-1 rather than the iFi that I bought with the µR.

[Confused]

4 hours ago, mrvco said:

 

 

Very strange, I just checked both my µR and LPS-1 and both are barely warm to the touch.  They are the only two things on a shelf in an open rack, so airflow is not restricted at all.  I did try stacking them briefly and they both did get very warm in that configuration.  I'm using the ~$20 power supply that's available with the LPS-1 rather than the iFi that I bought with the µR.

Not that strange I think.  In my case the LPS-1 is powering the microRendu and the USB input of a Mutec MC3+USB.  The USB input of the Mutec does take a lot of current.  (relatively speaking)  If I use the LPS-1 with just the microRendu, they both run at very modest temperatures, almost cool.

[Cooler]

@JohnSwenson @vortecjr do you know guys, is for mR enough 100mbit ethernet for DSD512?

Thanks

[JohnSwenson]

16 hours ago, Cooler said:

@JohnSwenson @vortecjr do you know guys, is for mR enough 100mbit ethernet for DSD512?

Thanks

DSD512 uses around 50Mb/s, which is half the bandwidth of 100Mb/s Ethernet. So theoretically it should work, but there may be network equipment that can't get the full throughput through the network which might cause a program. So its iffy, it may work, it may not.

 

John S.

[Cool3r King]

Just done an update on the mR. Does anyone know what may have changed? Or what 'has' changed?

 

Thank you

[rickca]

I think this has been asked before ... is there a way I can leave my microRendu in place and play stuff directly from my Chrome browser, like the sound from CNN video clips?  I use the same desktop monitors for this purpose when I'm not listening to music.

[vortecjr]

2 hours ago, rickca said:

I think this has been asked before ... is there a way I can leave my microRendu in place and play stuff directly from my Chrome browser, like the sound from CNN video clips?  I use the same desktop monitors for this purpose when I'm not listening to music.

With Sonicorbiter 2.5 you can use the MPD/DLNA output mode which now includes Songcast support. However, there will be a delay between the audio and video.

[mttbsh]

To anyone who is using the Spotify Connect app to play music through the Microrendu.... I've just installed Spotify premium and have switched from MPD/DLNA to Spotify Connect in My Sonicorbiter, but can't figure out how to get Spotify to recognize and play through the Microrendu. Is there a menu option in Spotify that lets you select the player? I haven't been able to find one. I also have Spotify Connect on my iPad and would like to use that as my remote control just as I use the iPad JRiver app to play music through the Microrendu in the MPD/DLNA mode.

Many thanks for any help.

[Ultrarunner]

1 hour ago, mttbsh said:

To anyone who is using the Spotify Connect app to play music through the Microrendu.... I've just installed Spotify premium and have switched from MPD/DLNA to Spotify Connect in My Sonicorbiter, but can't figure out how to get Spotify to recognize and play through the Microrendu. Is there a menu option in Spotify that lets you select the player? I haven't been able to find one. I also have Spotify Connect on my iPad and would like to use that as my remote control just as I use the iPad JRiver app to play music through the Microrendu in the MPD/DLNA mode.

Many thanks for any help.

In the Spotify app on your iPad there is an indication of available devices at the very bottom.  If you have used your microRendu app switcher to switch to Spotify, it will show up as an option on your iPad.  The iPad will be the control device.  I'm listening that way right now.

[stevebythebay]

I believe I have a suddenly defective microRendu.  Everything was working fine and suddenly (no changes whatsoever in the hardware/software setup of my system) high res (typically 192/24) albums started experiencing some rather bad symptoms.  Songs that normally load quickly were taking upwards of 10 seconds to start playing in Roon.  And then I received a popup message from Roon: An audio file is loading slowly.  After a few seconds the music stopped altogether and while it was trying to play it was getting really garbled.

 

Luckily I have two microRendu units.  I checked out playing the one connected upstairs and it had no issues.  

 

The one with the problem is wired into a switch (Cisco 8-port) along with my MacMini running Roon Core.  Also, my QNAP NAS TP-251 with all 4 TB of music is wired into the same switch.  And of course the microRendu is wired into the same switch.  Additionally, a wire leaves the switch for my WiFi access point which allows for headless access to the MacMini and Roon app.

 

The upstairs microRendu is wired into a very same model of Cisco switch along with the same WiFi access point (Eero mesh network).

 

When I tested playing the same songs on the upstairs system, no problems arose.  I even tried swapping out the software card (older version 2.3 kept).  Same result.  Finally just to be certain I swapped the two microRendu units from one system to the other.  Wanted to be certain there was no other reason this might happen (though the upstairs device is getting its data stream via WiFi while the downstairs is mainlining all wired).

 

Currently have the "bad" microRendu connected to an Audio Alchemy DDP (DAC).  

Here's the diag for that which I attempted to capture while playing a high res song:

 

USB output

Set DAC to MAX volume

DAC description: Audio Alchemy USB Audio 2.0      2b5e:0002

Diagnostic information for this DAC

Audio Alchemy Audio Alchemy USB Audio 2.0 at usb-ci_hdrc.1-1.1, high speed : USB Audio

What else would help identify what's happening?

[mttbsh]

3 hours ago, Ultrarunner said:

In the Spotify app on your iPad there is an indication of available devices at the very bottom.  If you have used your microRendu app switcher to switch to Spotify, it will show up as an option on your iPad.  The iPad will be the control device.  I'm listening that way right now.

 

Hey, thank you Ultrarunner! took me all of 35 secs to be listening on my big rig once I found the list of devices, I appreciate you pointing me to it. For being less than perfect resolution Spotify sounds amazing through the Microrendu. Thanks again!

 

Matt 

[Ultrarunner]

10 minutes ago, mttbsh said:

 

Hey, thank you Ultrarunner! took me all of 35 secs to be listening on my big rig once I found the list of devices, I appreciate you pointing me to it. For being less than perfect resolution Spotify sounds amazing through the Microrendu. Thanks again!

 

Matt 

You're welcome. I find it a great way to discover new music, through playlists like Discover Weekly.  And for background the sound quality is pretty good.

[stevebythebay]

6 hours ago, stevebythebay said:

I believe I have a suddenly defective microRendu.  Everything was working fine and suddenly (no changes whatsoever in the hardware/software setup of my system) high res (typically 192/24) albums started experiencing some rather bad symptoms.  Songs that normally load quickly were taking upwards of 10 seconds to start playing in Roon.  And then I received a popup message from Roon: An audio file is loading slowly.  After a few seconds the music stopped altogether and while it was trying to play it was getting really garbled.

 

Luckily I have two microRendu units.  I checked out playing the one connected upstairs and it had no issues.  

 

The one with the problem is wired into a switch (Cisco 8-port) along with my MacMini running Roon Core.  Also, my QNAP NAS TP-251 with all 4 TB of music is wired into the same switch.  And of course the microRendu is wired into the same switch.  Additionally, a wire leaves the switch for my WiFi access point which allows for headless access to the MacMini and Roon app.

 

The upstairs microRendu is wired into a very same model of Cisco switch along with the same WiFi access point (Eero mesh network).

 

When I tested playing the same songs on the upstairs system, no problems arose.  I even tried swapping out the software card (older version 2.3 kept).  Same result.  Finally just to be certain I swapped the two microRendu units from one system to the other.  Wanted to be certain there was no other reason this might happen (though the upstairs device is getting its data stream via WiFi while the downstairs is mainlining all wired).

 

Currently have the "bad" microRendu connected to an Audio Alchemy DDP (DAC).  

Here's the diag for that which I attempted to capture while playing a high res song:

 

USB output

Set DAC to MAX volume

DAC description: Audio Alchemy USB Audio 2.0      2b5e:0002

Diagnostic information for this DAC

Audio Alchemy Audio Alchemy USB Audio 2.0 at usb-ci_hdrc.1-1.1, high speed : USB Audio

What else would help identify what's happening?

 

Tried to edit this.  Seems I was wrong.  The microRendu move did not fix the problem.  The one I thought was bad and moved to the upstairs system is running fine.  The one from upstairs that I moved downstairs is not.  But I guess it's not a microRendu issue.  

 

Presently I'm baffled.  I can play Roon internet stations up to and including 320kbps without a problem.  But no matter the quality of the music from the NAS that I choose, including Redbook, I get the same problem as before: namely slow loading of music into the MacMini / Roon environment and eventually (within seconds) failure.  

 

So, currently I'm in the process of eliminating the NAS by reinstalling a USB drive after disabling the NAS pointer in Roon and restarting the USB drive pointer in Roon.  Will take overnight to get things back in place and settled down.  I'm not optimistic this will change the symptoms.  

 

And I just started playing a 192/24 song and it died.  Same song plays fine not only the upstairs microRendu engaged system, but also on my iMac via a Geek Out device that can also handle high res.  

 

So, if it's not the NAS or local source (files are good), then I'm wondering just where the problem might be.  I've even swapped Cisco switches to eliminate that possibility.  I doubt it's the downstairs Berkeley DAC or its companion D to D converter.  But I cannot rule either of these out.  Of course there might be some weird networking problem going on, but things are basic, with the MacMini only having a single Ethernet and no WiFi active.

 

Hope someone out there has an idea or two.  Attached latest diag for the system that's failing.

Roon Ready Diagnostic information BACK to Menu .docx

[vortecjr]

Is it a managed switch?

[Theobetley]

45 minutes ago, vortecjr said:

Is it a managed switch?

No

[stevebythebay]

On 1/27/2016 at 9:48 AM, Storytime said:

Jesus:

 

How would you describe the differences between the microRendu and the Sonic Orbiter SE? Did you envision two different target audiences when you created these two products?

No it's not.  Specifically it's the Cisco SG200-08 8-port Gigabit Smart Switch (SLM2008T-NA) which is pretty bare bones.  

 

Also, in testing my MacMini with the USB attached drive I can play anything under 176/24 bit such as other 24 bit quality.  Seems that once I hit the 176 threshold Roon stops after trying to play for 10 seconds or so.

[rogue3092]

Is there anyway to "force" a USB device/DAC connected to the MicroRendu to use USB 2.0 instead of USB 1.x? My USB -> SPDIF converter, a Yellowtec PUC2, only supports 16bit/48KHz by default in Linux due to USB 1.x limitations, and this severely limits what I can do with this device in conjunction with the uRendu. I can post a capture of the DAC diagnostics if that helps.

 

BTW this is a related thread: 

 

[R1200CL]

9 hours ago, stevebythebay said:

So, currently I'm in the process of eliminating the NAS by reinstalling a USB drive after disabling the NAS pointer in Roon and restarting the USB drive pointer in Roon.  Will take overnight to get things back in place and settled down.  I'm not optimistic this will change the symptoms.  

 

Why not install Roon on your NAS ? ?

 

My friend use a HS-251 with 2GB menory without any issues. 

 

You can can easily switch between the Roon cores.