@vortecjr One more time (simply): What is the difference between the Rendu & the Orbit. I understand where the Rendu fits into the stream system - excellent diagrams on the SBD site. But, what does the Orbit do & do you still need the Rendu if you have the Orbit?
I read about something called the Silent Server a year or more ago and never really understood what it did or what it was intended to do. Christopher
@elk I had an Olive too - probably somewhere in the attic. Christopher
Will it do what I want if I use an Android device for a controller?
Hi Jesus,
Based on the flow chart on your web site, Rendu is what I want… I have NAS on wired network with Twonkey to feed PWD via wire ethernet, and I’d like to use an ios device to control it…
You can do this, but there is currently no iOS controller for gapless playback with that specific setup.
Gapless concerns aside, has anyone compared sound quality of a system using the rendu compared to the bridge? We all know the PWDII/bridge when it is not encountering gapless or hiccups sounds awesome. In other words, i have no desire to step backward sound quality wise because it doesn’t occasionally hiccup and plays gapless, if the sound quality isn’t the same or better than the bridge also.
birddogthecat said: I had an Olive too - probably somewhere in the attic.
:)
Why did you retire the unit?
Good point on SQ but at this point I don’t even bother to use the Bridge anymore… I use my Cullen modded Sonos since it just freaking works! I listen to my system to enjoy the music and relax… not get more aggravated… life is aggravating enough, when I can find some free time I just want the bloody stuff to work… SQ is important but at least for me if I’ve got to jump through hoops to get it to work I don’t enjoy the experience all that much.
Good Point EriK, I still look at my unplugged Logitech touch thinking about it not having quite the sound quality of my PWDII/Bridge, yet remembering its rock solid constitution, incredible internet radio functionality and versatility , ability to play MOG and hi bit rate streaming,and incredibly slick handheld color interface, and just shake my head wondering why someone can’t figure out how to do this all like Logitech did 5 years ago. No wonder Logitech Touches are on Ebay for twice their original retail price now that they are discontinued. Its because once people start seeing all the glitches and hiccups and gapless problems as they try to “upgrade to something higher end”, along with piss poor internet radio capability, people are realizing as you did that its hard to put a price on no aggravation and lots of features with much more than just “acceptable” sound.
And the truth is the Cullen modded Sonos sounds really good… I’d say 85% of the Bridge… if it could do hires I’d just live with it. And at this point I’ve been waiting YEARS for the Bridge to do what I want… I’m not sure that it ever will, but I’m also leary of throwing money at another product that’s going to induce more grief… If I can buy the Redue and it works without grief the way I want then I may spring for it. I also like the W4S unit but I’d like it much more if I could get it without the internal drive and get it to pull music and play gapless off my NAS… And of course there’s allways the Bryston… At this point though I’ve spent my 2013 audio budget on new speakers (Proac D30R) so what ever I do will have to wait until 2014’s audio budget 
And FWIW Istack I’ll bet you could get some of the mods that are out there done to your Touch and it might be awfully close to the Bridge…
SQ is always a personal thing and relates to both the listener, the associated hardware and the file storage types. I am certainly not in the level of some of you with regards to every subtle change to the sound, my hardware in this path is Audio Research and Dynaudio along with the PWD MkII and all of my music is stored as AIFF. After several days of listening with the Rendu over the Bridge with eLyric and JRiver. It is my opinion that the Rendu is superior in overall resolution, depth of soundstage and the bass is much fuller and tighter than before. Of course, your mileage may vary . . . I am a happy camper! And by the way, before I purchased the PWD/Bridge 2 years ago, I too was very happy with my Cullen Sonos and Cullen DLIII Mk4 and wanted the HiRes experience. I also had never even heard of the word gapless until the first large silence occurred once the Bridge was up and running. I know a lot more now.
This looks like what I've been waiting for! Reasonable price, plug and play, stream from my NAS , does gapless.. The real drag is this is what the Bridge should have done, and what the Silent Server should have been..
erikm, Paul is working on the WaveStream application and that seems to be coming along. I do want to clarify something because I'm getting emails about our Rendu vs Sonic Orbiter. The Sonore Rendu is an external bridge like device and the Sonore Sonic Orbiter is Silent Server like device. The two are completely different and thus each has a specific usage prescription...
Jesus R
I'm still not sure I get the difference between Rendu and Orbiter. Unfortunately, comparing them to PSA like Silent Server are not helpful, because I have no idea what that was supposed to be and it does not exist today.
@elk I had the unit that back in the day was the audiophile model. It did not have an app…way before app madness. The screen was small and no video out to a monitor. I couldn’t see the damn thing. SQ was fairly good. It’s probably still full of music that Olive loaded for me. I sent them 100’s of CDs on spindles & they loaded the unit. At least that is how I remember it. Christopher
@mikedc I am just as confused. Christopher
birddogthecat said: I had the unit that back in the day was the audiophile model.
This is back in the beginning of servers/players when the emphasis was on analog out as much as digital. This was one of the first.
Mine is the next generation with a nice color screen, a mobile phone app and a browser interface. I have never listened to the analog outs, but the digital outs sound very good.
@birddogthecat Umm, well it isn't something we can just "fix". If you'll remember the Bridge was never designed to have the resources necessary for gapless. It is just something we never considered when we designed it and had our goals set on streaming the best sounding music we knew how to do. So it isn't as if there's something wrong with the bridge, it just was never designed to handle gapless in the first place, thus we can't "fix" a problem the Bridge doesn't have.
To get the Bridge to natively do gapless takes a whole different processor and memory allocation and a whole different player - basically a whole different device. The Bridge is a great sounding piece and does what we originally intended it to do quite well. The gapless issue is something we intend to solve with WaveStream which utilizes the available resources of the Bridge, keeps its sound quality intact, and adds the ability to play gapless. We will give WaveStream to Bridge owners for free.
Paul, it's worth mentioning that eLyric Music Manager does allow gapless playback to the Bridge or any other renderer including the Rendu. I had tested this combination and forget to post the solution, but I think it's a valid one. I'm using here and it's working fine....
Jesus R
@vortecjr One more time (simply): What is the difference between the Rendu & the Orbit. I understand where the Rendu fits into the stream system - excellent diagrams on the SBD site. But, what does the Orbit do & do you still need the Rendu if you have the Orbit?
I read about something called the Silent Server a year or more ago and never really understood what it did or what it was intended to do. Christopher
elk/birddogthecat, to help with some of these question about the Sonic Orbiter vs the Rendu I have developed a Google spreadsheet comparing the two. I added link on my website and I'll post one here for you guys. It's easy to update so as additional information is requested I'll expand it...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgVhKcl_3lHfdEpCY0lrckNicmQ0cEs2YkFlQTI0a0E&usp=sharing
Jesus R
Will it do what I want if I use an Android device for a controller
erkim, it will work fine with Bubble UPNP on Android. Also, today I'm adding eLyric Music Manager (EMM) as a gapless solution in combination with the approved controllers for iOS and Android. Please visit the site to get the list of approved controller. Understand that EMM combines the titles at the server level for gapless playback....
Jesus R
Good Point EriK, I still look at my unplugged Logitech touch thinking about it not having quite the sound quality of my PWDII/Bridge, yet remembering its rock solid constitution, incredible internet radio functionality and versatility , ability to play MOG and hi bit rate streaming,and incredibly slick handheld color interface, and just shake my head wondering why someone can't figure out how to do this all like Logitech did 5 years ago. No wonder Logitech Touches are on Ebay for twice their original retail price now that they are discontinued. Its because once people start seeing all the glitches and hiccups and gapless problems as they try to "upgrade to something higher end", along with piss poor internet radio capability, people are realizing as you did that its hard to put a price on no aggravation and lots of features with much more than just "acceptable" sound.
lstack, you are 100% correct about the Logitech system. It's unfortunate that the Touch hardware was discontinued. However, the system behind the hardware is very much alive and the server (LMS) and it's controllers are the foundation of the Sonore Sonic Orbiter. The difference between the Touch and the Sonic Orbiter is that the Sonic Orbiter has a linear power supply, USB output and supports sample rates up to 384....
Jesus R
Gapless concerns aside, has anyone compared sound quality of a system using the rendu compared to the bridge? We all know the PWDII/bridge when it is not encountering gapless or hiccups sounds awesome. In other words, i have no desire to step backward sound quality wise because it doesn't occasionally hiccup and plays gapless, if the sound quality isn't the same or better than the bridge also.
lstack, please refer above for comments from member gswaul....
Jesus R
SQ is always a personal thing and relates to both the listener, the associated hardware and the file storage types. I am certainly not in the level of some of you with regards to every subtle change to the sound, my hardware in this path is Audio Research and Dynaudio along with the PWD MkII and all of my music is stored as AIFF. After several days of listening with the Rendu over the Bridge with eLyric and JRiver. It is my opinion that the Rendu is superior in overall resolution, depth of soundstage and the bass is much fuller and tighter than before. Of course, your mileage may vary . . . I am a happy camper! And by the way, before I purchased the PWD/Bridge 2 years ago, I too was very happy with my Cullen Sonos and Cullen DLIII Mk4 and wanted the HiRes experience. I also had never even heard of the word gapless until the first large silence occurred once the Bridge was up and running. I know a lot more now.
gswaul, thanks for taking the time to post about your experience with the Rendu.
Jesus R