Is optical mostly a waste of time versus Ethernet?

By using a simple Linux OS focused only on doing audio, these(and many other good streamers) eliminate lots of this noise.

I believe this to be an important point.  Many of these add-on enhancers originated in response to cleaning up EMI/RFI noise resulting from computer sources.  While today's dedicated servers are essentially still computers, many have been significantly improved by using Linux OS, upgraded power supplies, and improved connection interfaces.  This may be one reason why there is such a wide range of impact and improvements reported by users of these add-on enhancers.   My server uses a Linux OS, choke power supply, and the well-regarded JCAT USB Card XE audio output board, and the changes/improvements I have heard from a variety of this stuff (such as the ENO, Gigafoil, switches, and fiber) have been subtle at most.  

@sbank Good post, one little nit, OpticalRendu requires optical cable input, thus, requires FMC, unless one's router, switch, server has optical output.

And yes, I believe highest quality lps a must to extract max potential from OR. Sonicorbiter OS very easy to navigate, easy to implement OR into streaming system.

Seems router that does optical output would be ideal and why would this not be a great ? 

Router and/or switch with optical out could be contender, one issue could be lack of choices with optical. Some claim audiophile switches superior to generic, don't know of one with optical.

Don't know if I already mentioned in this thread, but thus far I prefer ethernet vs generic FMC going to server, optical post server best for me.

Sns, you wrote about in one of your other posts about using a server with a incoming Port and an outgoing port versus the traditional Single ethernet cable that involves a 2 directional flow. I hope I’m getting that correctly.

I’m trying to understand the flow of your optical versus Ethernet Signal path and all the streaming gear that you have. I also took a look at your system and found it a Little scary because i had trouble following all that’s going on.

But focusing back on the traditional server set up using a single Ethernet Cable it does present an interesting question as to whether there is a better way to do this.

The music data flows into a nucleus and then flows back to the switch and then to the streamer/dac. Not sure if I understand the originating flow of Sonic data as it finds its way into the streamer/dac. It would seem to be a very turbulent journey for all those packets before getting to the comfort offered by a streamer.