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.