Vortexbox Reviews

Audiostore and Sonore a match made in heaven

I wanted to move on from an Innuos Zenith II as I believed it was despite being a very good product no longer a match for the rest of my system in terms of its rendering capability Very interested in the Sonore ethos and products and after excellent advice from Martin I decided to go Sonore and go Optical I use an i7 NUC running Rock as a Roon core Audio-GD R7 DAC and Master 19 headphone amplifier with HiFiman 1000v2 heaphone On switching rendering duties to the opticalRendu I noticed an immediate and sizeable improvement in bass definition and weight with after giving the power supplies time to settle down a general increase in resolving power at all frequencies Imaging is well defined and stable with transients handled very well Tonal accuracy is another highlight with hall reverberations and air improved The Sonore opticalRendu is excellent value given the high level of performance I still have upgrade options in terms of power supplies I bought the excellently priced Audiophonics unit and the Sonore ultraDigital which will let me use the LVDS i2s input of my DAC and I look forward to maximising the obvious potential that the opticalRendu has Audiostore a very knowledgeable and custom focus company to deal with

Excellent service and brilliant product

Excellent service and brilliant products including software Support to keep older vortexbox products updated is superb I cannot recommend enough Enjoy the music

Brilliant service again

Martin is fantastic and always a pleasure to deal with Great product and service every time Many thanks

Uptone MMK fan controller for Mac Mini

Since in order to make use of this device you have to have a reasonably good Linear Power Supply LPS as well as a Mini I have to start with some comments about LPS 1 Martin has a good range of these if you are interested talk to him 2 For most audio units adding an LPS gives a noticeable improvement- I have one on my DAC and it s very nice to have the sound improvement though if need be I can manage without it for a while 3 Things are different for using a computer as a digital audio source Here an LPS can be a game changer A few years back I I spent a long time comparing various mac computers to my then Linn Genki CD but the CD won every time However when I added an LPS to a Mac Mini things were reversed even when the Genki became an Ikemi and now I rarely use CD For SACDs the sound from a CD rip on the mini beats the SACD from the player Back to the MMK I had previously installed one of these in my 2012 Mini LPS combination and since then that has been my main digital source to my DAC The improvement from adding the MMK is at least as much as that from using an LPS on my DAC and a lot cheaper I bought a 2014 Mini to try out and wired it to my Paul Hynes LPS no longer available unfortunately As I expected the sound was good but not up to the clarity and instrumental focus of my older 2012 with MMK However when I installed a new MMK the sound was immediately back to the best I can do In summary If you have a Mini LPS combination the MMK is the most cost-effective way of improving the sound If you are considering getting an LPS for your mini get one of these at the same time- it saves a great deal of hassle in making up the connection

Sonore opticalrendu hooked up to my

Sonore opticalrendu hooked up to my Mscaler and Dave combo and sounding sublime Great support from Martin throughout the process great store with fantastic service and customer focus

I was having problems upgrading the

I was having problems upgrading the software on the streamer and exchanged mails with Martin who responded almost immediately each time In the end I called him and he was fantastic - suggesting new possibilities with the new software and helping out with the install Not possible to ask for anything else

I contacted Audiostore with a view to updating my naim legacy streamer

I contacted Audiostore with a view to upgrading my Naim legacy streamer I wanted to use Roon and Qobuz First of all I purchased an Audiostore Imp with 950gb ssd equipped with all the relevant software for me to feed roon and qobuz to my naim 272 It all worked so well I went on to purchase a microrendu and power supplies that allowed me to separate the player function from the roon core and this gave a furthe4 uplift in sound quality I needed a usb to spdif converter to allow compatibility with my nac 272 which doesn t have a usb digital input I purchased the Hecate usb converter I have ended up with all the functionality I required using roon and qobuz and terrific sound quality from my naim dac and preamp sections All through this I have had excellent support from Audiostore and I am delighted with the end resulting sound system

Uptone EtherREGEN

I bought an Uptone EtherREGEN from Martin at Vortexbox He was super helpful at answering all my questions I was very sceptical that an ethernet switch could have such an impact on the sound I experienced consistent network drop outs not long after I installed the etherREGEN in my system I contacted Martin for help and of course re-read the very comprehensive manual The manual pg7 was very helpful at warning against the use of metal RJ45 connectors on both the A and B side Sure enough when I removed the SoTM ethernet cable from the A side and replaced it with a Blue Jeans with a plastic RJ45 connector The problem was solved The EtherREGEN has closed up the sound quality gap between my digital sound and my vinyl A really special bit of kit Highly recommended for those looking for the next step up in their digital music replay Thank you Martin and Uptone

Truly fantastic

I bought a music server and an optical Rendu paired with a Chord Electronics DAVE from Audiostore Martin was incredibly helpful throughout and endured my never ending questions I was impressed by his vast knowledge in the space and willingness to help attain the best outcome possible My buying experience was only trumped by the fantastic after sales service- I had no idea how to best optimise my new system Buy with confidence 10 10

Top buying experience excellent support

I have now dealt with the Audiostore team on a few occasions over the past few years My experiences have been consistently positive due to the great customer service provided Prices are also most excellent for the gear on offer Would gladly shop from on a going forward basis