Continuing the discussion from Roon Music Dropouts - Sonore opticalRendu:
I recently added the OpticalRendu and I too experienced the same drop outs after adding the OpticalRendu. So I removed the it and the drop outs disappeared. I will be returning it.
…had the same issue with the OpticalRendu! The gliches started to happen as soon as the devices reached temperatures at the level of 120°F (outside). I do not want to know the temps inside the body of the SOR.
Why should a media-converter becoming such hot. I bought a media-converter and not an electric heater. I send it back and replaced it with a SOtM-SMS-200-neo. And, I’m super-happy with it, it just works!
I understand your frustration. I returned the opticalRendu and purchased a Lumin U1 Mini. I just fired it up today and the manual advises a 200 hour break in. I noticed the music from Qobuz seems to sound better than Roon when playing directly through the Lumin. I prefer the Roon player, so I have to see if there is a way to get the Roon SQ up to par to match music played using the Lumin app. I may purchase an SoTM for comparison to the Lumin.
How is the customer service with SoTM? Can you get support by phone? Any recommendations who to purchase SoTM from? Thanks
Hey gents! I moved this over to Gear Talk/Sonore to help keep the Support page tidy. Hope you don’t mind. If we can help with anything Support related please don’t hesitate to reach out! 
I spoke at length with Andrew about your unit and what can be the issue. I had him set up everything and test the equipment. Unfortunately, he was not able to replicate the issue in the lab. Based on the information…I would say some kind of network incompatibility or a DAC firmware incompatibility. In most cases we can play with the network hardware or update the DAC firmware, but this takes time.
Keep in mind that the opticalRendu has 11 linear regulators and light input on the optical network. It’s going to run warm, but that is the design. Some of the components run best when warm and we use an industrial rated processor so no worries. We recommend 6 or 7 VDC input to keep the unit in the optimal range and keeping it way from heat sources like amps etc.
also having drop-out problems with opticalRendu…
prior to getting an opticalRendu, my ROCK server / transport had worked FLAWLESSLY for three years. it was connected directly to my DAC via USB and everything was converted to DSD512 with roon DSP without issue – ever.
after putting the OR into the system almost constant drop-outs became an issue when playing files converted to DSD512 as described above. dropping down to DSD256 or DSD128 eliminates the drop-outs save an infrequent one or two.
the SQ improvement provided by the OR is significant and causes me to keep it in the system and run at DSD256 while still trying to solve the problem. to date, i have done a huge amount of troubleshooting and have not yet been able to determine the exact cause or source of the drop-outs.
observations so far which my be helpful to others:
at DSD512 the drop-outs are experienced as soon as play starts – so this would at least seem to rule out heat issues with the OR.
multiple network configurations with a variety of different hardware has not solved the problem. also DSD512 should fit well withing the capabilities of a gigabit network. more work to do here but seems unlikely the network is the cause.
using the processing speed metric provided in roon signal path display, it takes materially more processing to stream over an ethernet network than using USB out directly to the DAC: DSD512 processing speed via USB is ~3.0x …this drops to ~2.3x when outputting over the network. still, 2.3x should not overwhelm the server which has an i7 processor (with higher single-core base-speed processing specs than the nucleus+ or those specified for a NUC based ROCK server).
the troubleshooting continues – any help or insights here would be most welcome!
Email me so I can start looking at your particular issue.
As a follow up to aKnyght’s issue…we observed that his unit was not initiating flow control over the network. Some networks support flow control and some don’t. Also, most all managed switches support flow control if user enabled.
The opticalRendu Lite (aka RoonReady only version) needs flow control to regulate network packets with high sample rate streams. To remidy this issue aKnyght upgraded his unit to a full version of the opticalRendu that has build in flow control so he doesn’t have to rely on his netork to provide flow contol.
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