As far as I know the only way to connect Audirvāna to microRendu is with DLNA. Is Audirvana able to work its magic sound quality through that connection? Or does it need to work closely with the hardware that is connected to the DAC?
I’m always trying to get absolute best sound quality—it’s an addiction 
If you are in pursuit of the “absolute best sound quality” from your system employing Audirvana, you will connect your computer to your DAC with a very short and noise-free USB transmission path, in a electro-mechanical environment that is aiming to mitigate inducted and radiated noise into the power/ground/earth connections, signal interconnects and your DAC.
The question is whether Audirvāna talking to the DLNA renderer in microRendu is as good (or better) than a wired USB connection to the DAC?
It’s about as good. There are some advantages to running similar setup when compared to USB.
If you can try both USB and DLNA/UPnP. The more convenient might be DLNA/UPnP since you can go wireless. But for best SQ you should compare both and please share your impressions.
Matt
I’m not a fan of wireless. But I have heard that the network provides an isolation that improves on direct USB connection?
I like WiFi.
My set-up is Qobuz/Spotify > ISP router > wifi > MBP Audirvana 3.5 > USB > DAC.
Works like a charm!
Matt
I wouldn’t go as far as “better in DLNA than USB”, but there’s no quality issue with ethernet UPnP (in my case, WiFi just doesn’t work, I wouldn’t count on it).
Now, if you’re a purist, of course you should produce your own electricity first (some people split atoms at home but I wouldn’t recommend it because it can produces audible interference in the high mediums) and use 5cm long silver cables sank in unicorn blood for 2 days (actually I think 1 day is enough, I can barely hear a difference).
The real drawback of UPnP is the unreliability of Audirvana’s UPnP “brick” (in terms of playback, not in terms of audio quality). No idea how it works with microrendu, give it a try.
Yes I’ve to confirm the same conclusion, sound of AS (v2.2.3) is very good but UPnP module (is my case on MacOS system - Monterey 12.6) bring an instability of this “package”, which avoid a reliable and satisfying experience. Tracks stops somewhere and then basta…
It should be interesting to get a report with comparisons with different Microrendu configurations, particularly because solution is all but not a cheap solution currently…?
I saw in the recent posts that Audirvana does not work well with uPnP softwares. Yes this is correct; It did not work with Volumio software I was using. Now I got the opportunity of installing Gentoo player software into my streamer "Mano Ultra MkIII with Farad Power supply, and now my Audirvana origin works fine with this uPnP.
I have used Studio to stream to a Sonore Signature Rendu SE Optical with excellent sonic results. Unfortunately, Studio randomly disconnects from the Sonore requiring me to access the Sonore software to fix the connection.
IF UPnP works, all is fine with sound quality. I have a hit ratio around 50% when using UPnP with Audirvana. Streaming to that same Sonore device. I will definitely quit if Audirvana doesn’t get it to work properly. Right now it is just hope and pray.
I gave up UPnP entirely. No matter what I tried, RopieeeXL or GentooPlayer (also Devialet’s strange AIR protocol), I just couldn’t get it to work reliably, sadly enough. In all fairness to Audirvana, other players had problems, too, with UPnP. These might be related to my setup, inasmuch as my Devialet powers down to idle and this seems to disrupt my UPnP network. The only player remaining rock solid during these power down/up cycles was Roon.
So I took the plunge, dug out an old MacBook Pro and connected it straight to the USB port of my Devialet. Since then, no problems whatsoever, absolutely stable operation of Audirvana Studio. And the sound is extremely nice!
Glad to have brought myself to connecting my rig straight via USB, despite against all recommendations of using endpoint architecture to improve sound quality (see Roon recommendations).
Enjoying Audirvana Studio to the fullest!
Congrats Sailor,
another contributor on ASF and WBF with a very sophisticated network mentioned also that the USB input of the Devialet is the best sounding one.
Enjoy your new set-up!
Matt
Unfortunately my purpose in raising this point has not been answered yet. I was hoping that one of the Audirvāna engineers would be able to confirm that when using DLNA over a network, there is enough control of the network device (microRendu) that Audirvāna can ensure as good a sound quality as via direct USB to a DAC.
@Antoine can you comment on this?
Thanks
If you peruse the available threads about connectivity via Ethernet versus USB, more-likely-than-not, you will come to the conclusion that a USB connection (especially a USB 3 → USB 2) provides a rock-solid, high integrity digital-audio signal, transmission-path to your DAC… It appears that UPnP/DNLA does not provide the robustness of more sophisticated transmission protocols like Ravenna or other proprietary peer to peer systems… The integrity of the digital-audio signal is what you are looking for, as it is directly translatable to the final audition… Obviously, the reliability of the signal-flow is integral to realizing a frustration-free listening experience… Distributed audio systems via networks, by nature of architecture, compound the potentials for interruptions and signal degradation in the listening experience… The quality of USB performance will largely depend on the performance of the USB receiver in your DAC architecture.
It appears that UPnP suffers from the existence of some bad implementations, which may be due to ambiguous requirements (I just suspect this, not being very familiar with the standard itself).
I observed it sometimes with my Marantz NA11-S1 which I’m forced to reboot completely when it is stuck for an unclear reason.
For the rest, I discussed with the manufacturer of my DAC and he advised me to use a network connection to the DAC, instead of an USB link from my MAC. I don’t remember the technical reasons but I’m now connected to a streamer, which itself is connected to the DAC through an AES/EBU cable.
OF course, transport of data either through USB or through ethernet has the same level of reliability: data are preserved through the entire connection. But, what may count, is at the level of digital to analog conversion with possible degradation in the time domain (Jitter) and noise coming from different sources.
This statement is naive and not true… Digital-Audio “Data” is an electrical signal waveform pulse that is susceptible to corruption along the transmission path, by virtue of component to component electro-mechanical transitions, RF/EMF interference, power/grounding architecture misconfigurations, etc… A DAC only works on the “data” it receives, whether this is corrupted or not… The object is to get the digital-audio signal from Audirvana, to the DAC, with the fewest potentials for corruption of the electrical pulses that are your digital-audio data, for best playback fidelity…
That’s something strange what you say: there are error correction mechanisms implemented in USB or TCP/IP protocols. Without this, how can you ensure that the file you copied on an USB key, or the one you sent to the printer, has been transfered correctly?
Anyway, audio data are processed in the same way at the level of the interface: data are data and they will be processed according to their nature by the SW at the other end of the interface.
So, I don’t think that data loss or data corruption can happen. This may happen for digital audio when you read data from a CD whose surface has been damaged.
Then, from an audio perspective, having the right data available in memory does not mean you will be able to generate a correct analog signal. And, as I said, timing accuracy is a major factor that may affect the quality. On some CD players, they replace the quartz clock with other solutions that are more stable in the short term (Stability and accuracy in the long term is less an issue).
Timing accuracy will affect the way the DAC can generate the analog signal (Less synchro with the original audio signal initially sampled ). Then, external interferences may polllute that signal from the output of the DAC down to the preamp.
Just my two cents.