Sonore Opticalrendu vs Auralic Aries G1.1

i would think they are both quite excellent, i think you would be happy with either - if you are a roon user, i would mention though that iirc some do believe that auralic handicaps sound quality slightly if roon is run through their streamers as a roon endpoint...

i personally have the optical rendu feed from the fmc port of an etherregen, sound is excellent -- tried network acoustic eno filter, barely perceptible difference in sq

Thanks for the input.  I'm going to see if I can set up a demo for the opticalrendu over the weekend.

While I don't own Auralic, I have a Zenith MK3 and also had an opticalRendu before I sold it. I compared the Zenith and opticalRendu side by side and found the Zenith to be better. They're both good but Zenith gets you much closer to the so-called "analog" sound signature than opticalRendu. Just my 2 cents.

The OpticalRendu is great streamer, especially if matched with OpticalModule (just became available again and top grade LPS on both. I use Uptone JS2 with my OR. Observe many others using Sonore optical equipment with top echelon streamers/servers for two computer setup. In my setup I vacillate between using my custom build streamer in one computer setup, in this mode streamer connected directly to dac via usb. In two computer setup custom build streamer connects to OM and OR, OR connects to dac. At the moment I'm preferring second setup with OR streaming Roon via Squeezelite.