Sonore microRendu

[dallasjustice]

Congrats to Amir on his purchase!

I bought the John Swenson Regen. I used it once and sent it to Amir. It became a wonderful source of entertainment for months thereafter. It was money well spent.

 

[YashN]

I kinda knew when I could get out of him his idea of what the "flawed theory" was, that we would find out where the flaws actually lay & my hunch was fully vindicated
Neither point 1 nor point 2 were actually anything to do with Swenson's theory about the Regen's operation & attributing such uninformed notions to an engineer of Swenson's calibre is criminal

Absolutely right!

 

[jkeny]

Congrats to Amir on his purchase!

I bought the John Swenson Regen. I used it once and sent it to Amir. It became a wonderful source of entertainment for months thereafter. It was money well spent.

Oh dear, it didn't give you a slap-you-in-the-face sonic epiphany & therefore was useless? Oh well, such is the world we live in.
In this world of "impress me instantly or it's worthless" there's actually no place for many devices - even the Berkeley Alpha USB converter is worthless although it costs ~ $2,000

 

[amirm]

So no one advocating this product in this thread has heard, or ordered this product?

 

[amirm]

I might and yes in the great scheme of things this is an inexpensive product.

So it is inexpensive. It is an investment. Yet you have not bought it?

Why'd you buy one

Because I don't sit on my behind and just argue about stuff with words and no data. A bunch of you have jumped up and down praising a product you don't own, nor have ordered. I like to see if the product has merit by comparing it to my server both objectively and subjectively. If it does better, then great, I will join the crowd of people recommending it. If it doesn't, I will have data to back my opinion rather than some intention to have a personal battle about some product as those of you in the first page of this thread do.

 

[amirm]

Oh dear, it didn't give you a slap-you-in-the-face sonic epiphany & therefore was useless? Oh well, such is the world we live in.
In this world of "impress me instantly or it's worthless" there's actually no place for many devices - even the Berkeley Alpha USB converter is worthless although it costs ~ $2,000

Cut it out John. This is not a thread about you battling others, or discussing products not in the OP. One thread was ruined with this kind of conduct. Don't make it two or I will have to take serious action.

Come back when you have purchased this product and have a reason to say something about it than wasting our time with bickering.

 

[Steve Williams]

So it is inexpensive. It is an investment. Yet you have not bought it?

what I buy and what I don't is none of your business. As I have said here i have played digital in my system perhaps 2x in the past 8 months. However rest assured if and when I buy it you will be the first to know. And yes in the great scheme of things it is inexpensive. Aren't you the one who boasts about your $60K of measuring equipment

 

[amirm]

what I buy and what I don't is none of your business. As I have said here i have played digital in my system perhaps 2x in the past 8 months. However rest assured if and when I buy it you will be the first to know. And yes in the great scheme of things it is inexpensive. Aren't you the one who boasts about your $60K of measuring equipment

More personal bickering. I will close the thread if there are no more constructive discussions about the product.

 

[BobShermanEsq]

So no one advocating this product in this thread has heard, or ordered this product?

Advocating? Did not know one has to purchase everything one talks about?

 

[BobShermanEsq]

More personal bickering. I will close the thread if there are no more constructive discussions about the product.

You seem to making it difficult to have any constructive discussion. Maybe you can take a look at other boards and see the conversations, they are rather normal. Why can't the same thing take place here???

 

[thedudeabides]

Can someone please explain to me how a thread that is obviously meant to invite / encourage disparaging, insulting posts against a specific forum member is consistent with the WBF TOS?

It appears to me that this is clearly meant to be a personal (throw him under the bus) vendetta against this individual.

Maybe you guys should watch the "She's a witch" scene from Python's Search of the Holy Grail movie.

 

[amirm]

Advocating? Did not know one has to purchase everything one talks about?

You can talk about. But when you gosh about it this way:

Please watch the review. It is an excellent product well worthy of an audiophile's serious interest.

You better say that you have never heard, touched or seen the product. We don't need product shills for the sake of it.

 

[BobShermanEsq]

You can talk about. But when you gosh about it this way:


You better say that you have never heard, touched or seen the product. We don't need product shills for the sake of it.

Did you watch the review? Are you really serious? Shill? Pretty disrespectful Amir. Can't comment on the review? You really feel it necessary to control the way people speak here also???

You had someone here and now on our little board who would tout products and systems as the BEST!!! without ever hearing or seeing them... and you never said a word.

Please try thinking a bit... Do we all need to act like funeral directors???

 

[amirm]

Did you watch the review?

I did. It prompted me to buy the product to evaluate. But apparently it did not have any effect on you, seeing how you are still sitting on the sideline while promoting it for others.

Are you really serious? Shill? Pretty disrespectful Amir. Can't comment on the review? You really feel it necessary to control the way people speak here also???

You had someone here and now on our little board who would tout products and systems as the BEST!!! without ever hearing or seeing them... and you never said a word.

Please try thinking a bit... Do we all need to act like funeral directors???

Yes, that is what a shill is. Someone who promotes a product but is not a customer. And promoting you have done. Have no use for that kind of cheerleading with no substance.

 

[jkeny]

Cut it out John. This is not a thread about you battling others, or discussing products not in the OP. One thread was ruined with this kind of conduct. Don't make it two or I will have to take serious action.

Come back when you have purchased this product and have a reason to say something about it than wasting our time with bickering.

I already told you, Amir that I & others have done this a while ago on another forum - experimented with & powering individual parts of a motherboard with LPS & finally with individual batteries - the final result was a significant jump in sound quality. Even doing this, SQ is further improved by a battery tweaked Regen.

So I have lots to say about the technology & the ideas that are implemented in the MicroRendu but you seem to choose to ignore my experience in this area, instead you accuse me of reading things on the internet & advocating the technology as if I have never done any experimenting or testing of my own. So it would appear that my experiments & experience in this area count for nothing in your eyes.

I don't need to buy the MicroRendu to know what it can do if the technology is implemented correctly - I don't need an NAA device & I would make it myself if I did.

 

[RBFC]

Please limit the discussion to the product and not to other members. There are guilty parties on all sides here, so everyone take a step back and cool off. The same bickering will erupt anytime a product lies outside the "dogma" of audio electronics, and it's a shame to fill our forum with trash talk.

 

[FrantzM]

Can someone please explain to me how a thread that is obviously meant to invite / encourage disparaging, insulting posts against a specific forum member is consistent with the WBF TOS?

It appears to me that this is clearly meant to be a personal (throw him under the bus) vendetta against this individual.

Maybe you guys should watch the "She's a witch" scene from Python's Search of the Holy Grail movie.

+1

 

[jkeny]

This is the technology used in the MicroRendu as mentioned in the video - he is quoting John Swenson

"The microRendu uses the iMX6 DualLite processor. It has many different power supply domains which makes it particularly suited for audiophile use.

Each supply domain gets an appropriate regulation scheme for that function. For example the processor domain uses a high quality switching regulator since it needs low voltage at high current. The on chip PLLs which generate the clocks for all the different system are run off an ultra low noise regulator. The USB subsystem takes three supplies, all of which are fed by ultra low noise regulators.

In addition the chip can be fed an external clock that bypasses the internal oscillator circuit which is not particularly low jitter. The reference clock of the PLLs can changed to point at this external clock input into which I feed a very low jitter main clock.

The result of this is MUCH lower noise and jitter at the USB subsystem."
​

The second technological idea also stated by Swenson

"The microRendu contains what is essentially a slightly improved REGEN on it's USB output."​

As well as this there is a certain amount of isolation via the ethernet transformers used to connect to the server.

In the MicroRendu we have isolation, a low noise PDN, USB signal regeneration & it uses asynchronous USB protocol. I know & have experimented with each of these technologies

So let me clarify in the next post some incorrect information presented about the theories of Swenson & about asynch USB protocol, so that members are correctly informed.

 

[thedudeabides]

Steve, perhaps you could set up a separate "put the boot into Amir" subforum. That would obviate the need for threads like this which you know full well are only intended to stir trouble.

Indeed. Then it would not be cloaked in the guise of being legitimate or reasonable versus self serving.

This thread could be considered the audiophile forum equivalent of "gang rape".

I think Whatmore is on to something. Maybe WBF should start a sub-forum called "Trash Talk".

 

[jkeny]

First thing to understand is that asynch USB protocol does not implement a retransmit function of USB data packets - if a USB packet is corrupted at the receiving end, there's no retransmission - it will usually be heard as an audible glitch. This seldom occurs & the MicroRendu & it's internal Regen does nothing to change this operation or affect this protocol.

Second, Swenson's theories have nothing to do with less activity on the computer.

I'm not saying that I agree with all of Swenson's theories about this but underlying it is the premise that (fluctuating?) noise on the ground plane of a USB device (let's say USB DAC as it's more straightforward to understand) is detrimental to the SQ of the DACs analogue output. AFAIK, he didn't specify exactly the pathway & mechanism by which this noise affected the SQ. Most people assumed that it was via the ground noise on the audio clocks resulting in excess jitter.

Swenson's theory behind the regeneration of the USB signal (Regen) is that a USB receiver (in the USB audio device) that receives a better formed USB signal (better signal integrity or SI) has less processing work to do as a result of handling the better SI USB data signal & therefore introduces less noise onto the ground plane of the USB audio device affecting the audio clocks, as above. I actually believe that this is wrong, (or at least, not the full picture) based on my own experiments. If this was the case then galvanic isolation on the output signals (including ground) of the USB receiver would solve this issue & any such device would be immune to noise coming from the PC via USB cable. But this is not the case as we see with the Berkeley Alpha USB & with other USB audio devices that have isolation after the USB receiver. I have done experiments in which I isolated after the USB receiver & before the USB receiver - the before isolation was audibly better.

IMO there are two mechanisms involved, Jitter on the USB signal & noise riding on the USB signal or generated as a result of worsening USB signal integrity (SI). A USB signal with worse SI results in extra noise generation in the ground of the USB receiver and/or the USB clock & this causes jitter on the digital output signal generated by the USB receiver. This signal is often a I2S audio signal which directly feeds a DAC or SPDIF transmitter chip or in the case of an XMOS USB receiver it directly generates SPDIF and/or I2S signals. So isolating the digital signals after the USB receiver solves half the problem - the signals already have embedded jitter. So along with isolation, reclocking of these digital signals should solve the other half of the problem, right? If we have the two audio clocks on the "clean" side of the isolator, reclocking the I2S signals, it should "regenerate" the I2S signals with the clean clocks thus removing any jitter.

Each of these approaches improve the sound but isolating the USB signal coming into the USB receiver still sounds better when using this configuration. So something else is happening in the USB receiver when receiving a USB signal of weaker SI which is neither jitter related or noise related. What it is I don't yet have a handle on

The MicroRendu, using an isolated ethernet connection as input along with a Regen-style USB output & attention paid to the important areas of the power supply makes perfect sense to me