If you stream music from the internet, I can't recommend this more highly


I had been using a Roon Nucleus to stream Qobuz, with my Chord Qutest directly connected to the Nucleus. I thought I was getting pretty decent sound quality. And then I got a marketing email from Small Green Computer touting some of their optical gear. The basic idea is that normal cables and connections used to stream from the internet pick up noise of one kind or another (radio frequencies and electromagnetic something or other). But fiber optic cables and their connections/interfaces do not. I don’t know anything about anything, but it made theoretical sense to me, it wasn’t a huge amount of money ($1,400), and with a 30 day return policy I figured I could always return it if I didn’t hear any improvement. Well, I didn’t just hear a slight improvement; it was like turning on the lights in a dark room. Much greater clarity and detail, much better micro and macro dynamics, better timbre to acoustic instruments -- overall just more lifelike. Two quick examples: I’ve listened to some of Steely Dan’s top songs 100s of times over the course of my life, and this is the first time I’d ever noticed a particular and very subtle sound characteristic of Fagen’s keyboard in Babylon Sister. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like there’s a slight sound of air being exhaled by it. The other example: the specific timbre of whatever percussive instrument is used at the beginning of Copeland’s "Fanfare for the Common Man" (a recording by the Minnesota Orchestra). There’s more of a metallic sound than a drum skin sound to it that I didn’t know was there before. The metallic sound starts in the center and then projects out and to the sides, like a wave washing over you. Anyway, I’m just thrilled about having stumbled upon the whole "optical" thing and felt obligated to let others know about it. If you stream music over the internet, I highly recommend giving it a try. (The product I got was the opticalRendu, with the linear power supply option, and the Fiber Ethernet Converter Bundle option.)
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Count me in as another happy OpticalRendu owner. I’m using a pair of very high efficient horns which magnify every bit of noise in the system. Using optical ethernet definitely brought a level of blackness to the background that I didn’t have before
gkr7007: Please let us know how it goes.

som:  It's good to hear that others can confirm what I'm hearing. What brand/model are your horn speakers? My speakers aren't horns, but they're very detailed/revealing nonetheless (Raidho D3.1, purchased secondhand), and they're thriving with the optical gear.

I wonder though, before getting the optical in place, all I had in my digital chain was the Roon Nucleus, with my DAC directly connected to it.  So maybe some of the improvement I got was just from adding a separate streamer (the opticalRendu), instead of having the Nucleus do all the work?  It makes me think that people who don't already have a separate streamer might get a bigger boost from the opticalRendu than those who do. 




Kind of new to the streaming thing.  How might this be different from/superior to using the optical input from a Sonos Connect to your system? Just the quality of the hardware or is there more?