[SteveHulk]

I must say all this grief about WiFi does make my own woes about the bloody playlists seem rather trivial

On the other hand... Maybe it makes the question of playback controlled by gofigure over Bluetooth without WiFi involvement even more urgent

I can say that when I switched the WiFi hosting from the 2go to my phone it seemed that there was a bump in SQ of the sort usually associated with reduction in noise. That is to say more detail.

I also wonder if part of the whole problem with WiFi on Poly and 2go might be technical issues of shielding the audio circuit from WiFi related electromagnetic noise in devices that have such a small form factor. Maybe this kind of issue drove some of the technical choices made in the WiFi chips and not just costs.

I remember trying to use the mojo strapped to an active phone and it being impossible due to the WiFi and mobile data noise breaking through from the phone. I ended up having to use an older phone in airplane mode exclusively for the mojo - not ideal as I then had two phones to carry around.

I am finding it a little difficult to believe that in a device with a final price point of £1000 that the money saved by not using a superior WiFi chip would be significant, but it might be so. Just what do these chips actually cost?

 

[Doody]

I am finding it a little difficult to believe that in a device with a final price point of £1000 that the money saved by not using a superior WiFi chip would be significant, but it might be so. Just what do these chips actually cost?

$3 to $5 each (in volume) will more than get you there.

This of course assumes the antennas and integration efforts are on par with the less-capable chips - which one assumes they should be, but I could be wrong there.

Doody

 

[Matt Bartlett]

Ok apologies for the long posts but I'm going to try and answer everything in one go as
at the moment I am currently unable to be on Head-Fi as I would have previously been.

No one can deny that 2Go uses 2.4Ghz WiFi and it was widely advertised as such.
I won't cover the same ground again but there were technical reasons for doing this
over the option to use 5Ghz. Whilst I know it is a point of contention and widely discussed
on here we have no plans to change and 2Go will remain as it is.

The addition of the Ethernet port was based on direct feedback from Poly customers and
was added specifically for more demanding applications where you have the option
of higher speed and bandwidth than you will ever achieve using WiFi.
And before you ask yes I realise that using a cable means that 2Go/Hugo2 is no longer
portable but we know that the vast majority of customers use the products in a
fixed location where this is less of an issue and Ethernet just provides an option for
far better connectivity.

Looking at the issue with Roon then I'm afraid that I am not going to talk about it too much on here.
We will work with Roon as we always have done and find out what is going on.
However I can say that using Roon with a streaming service and upsampling at the same time will be using a lot
of bandwidth but from our testing it would appear to be working. I admit you need to
use a high performance router but this should be expected for this sort of more advanced use case.
I personally use an Netgear Orbi RBR50 and if I repeat the same tests you are running on here
it just works. Of course we understand that 2.4Ghz has limited throughput but we are not trying to stream in real time
so potentially it just about the buffering involved but that is a complex issue as it is tied into the requirements
of Roon which we will discuss with them.

For the moment I would encourage you all with this issue to email support@chordelectronics.co.uk so we can collate all the
information together.

 

[Matt Bartlett]

Moving on to upsampling in then it is fair to say that we do have a completely different philosophy.
We stand by our view that a dedicated hardware upsampler is going to outperform a software product
running on a computer.
Most examples just use a long tap length filter but that is only part of the solution and in addition you need a well
designed algorithm such as the WTA we have in M Scaler. On top of that M Scaler has galvanic isolation and because it
is designed to be very low powered using a dedicated board and power supply components it will by default have
lower noise than you will ever get by running software on an inherently noisy computer.
Our message has always been if you are not using M Scaler then try to keep music in it's native format and
let the DAC do the work for optimum performance. Of course I can't stop you using another upsampling product
and everyone is entitled to their own opinion and decisions on what product sounds best to them - that's what makes
this industry both fun and utterly frustrating at the same time.

I know there will be follow up questions and comments but I encourage you to use the support email as much as possible as
I am not able to monitor or respond to all the messages on here just at the moment.

 

[jonnyt]

Matt, so it fair to say that where on your website it says the following:

PCM and DSD Support:
44.1kHz – 768kHZ (16bit – 32bit) | DSD 64 to DSD 256 (via DoP)

It should probably also include a disclaimer that only the lowest of these settings are available over wifi and you will need an ethernet connection for the rest?

Also, could you please address the claims above that you are using a bargain basement single point wifi chip with absolute maximum rate of 65Mb/s over literally perfect conditions (with nobody in yours or any neighbouring apartments utilizing the 2.4GHz wifi band at all)?

I would love to stop the user testing I am performing for free and updating your support email with. So if you can confirm that the wifi chip inside the 2go is the low-spec one discussed above, I think we have discovered the reason for the crappy connection that most of us are complaining about haven't we?

(and to clarify, I don't upsample at all)

 

[SteveHulk]

Moving on to upsampling in then it is fair to say that we do have a completely different philosophy.
We stand by our view that a dedicated hardware upsampler is going to outperform a software product
running on a computer.

So just to clarify...

For hugo 2 owners your preferred solution for streaming at home is to use 2go (on ethernet) >> 2yu >> mscalar >> hugo 2 >> headphones?

A bit of a cocktail of form factors, isn't it?

 

[jarnopp]

There are no gradual improvements possible. This is a HARDWARE problem NOT a FIRMWARE problem. IT IS UNFIXABLE. Anything above 96k is at risk of glitching with the current WiFi chipset... and over 192 forget it. This party is over. Chord has led the entire community on for years starting with Poly. I now also better understand the rationale behind MQA.... yet rob watts would rather wage a religious war.

I still say if Poly can do it, it should be possible for 2Go, unless the chipset is not the same and worse than Poly’s. Poly is working near-flawlessly. When I first trouble-shot with my original router a few years back, channel 1 seemed to work best (had the least interference from neighbors). @radnor, once there is a vaccine, I’d invite you over to try 2Go on my simple but working network to get another data point. If you are in Oakland, you might even be able to access it from where you are.

 

[SteveHulk]

... 2.4Ghz has limited throughput but we are not trying to stream in real time
so potentially it just about the buffering involved but that is a complex issue as it is tied into the requirements
of Roon which we will discuss with them.

I am confused.

Even with buffering the average data rate still has to be sufficient to support the rate required by the audio stream. So with buffering the times when no data is being transferred and the buffer is emptying have to be made up for by an even higher data rate when the buffer is being replenished.

Buffering does not increase average data transfer rate, it only removes the requirement that the channel be connected all the time, and enables devices that transfer data at different rates to synchronise with each other.

Have I missed something?

 

[jonnyt]

Have I missed something?

No, I don't think you have.
If these connectivity issues are due to roon buffering issues, i will eat my 2go...

I get exactly the same connectivity issues when trying to stream from Tidal.

I imagine Chord are currently trying to come up with multiple, plausible-sounding reasons why their premium hi-res streamer is unable to stream without having to admit they cut corners by installing a bargain basement, not-fit-for-purpose wifi chipset.

I also don't think the user base on this forum is going to fall for it.

Telling us they get good connectivity in lab conditions isn't much use for those of us who don't live in labs, who have neighbours and kids using the wifi.

And telling us that using their £4k mScaler is better than trying to stream upsampled data is entirely irrelevant while the rest of us are discussing issues with simple FLAC streaming through the 2go's cheap, single band, low-capacity wifi chip...

 

[canfabulous]

If these connectivity issues are due to roon buffering issues, i will eat my 2go...

LOL, could be a bit chewy!

 

[Luvdac]

And before you ask yes I realise that using a cable means that 2Go/Hugo2 is no longer
portable but we know that the vast majority of customers use the products in a
fixed location where this is less of an issue and Ethernet just provides an option for
far better connectivity.

Not my use case scenario. Does this mean I need to join the 'majority camp after spending 1200$ of my hard earned money to accommodate your company's failings???

Our message has always been if you are not using M Scaler then try to keep music in it's native format and
let the DAC do the work for optimum performance. Of course I can't stop you using another upsampling product

I'm getting skips and dropouts on natively encoded 24/192 and dsd 64 files. Nothing to do with upsampling. I have been reduced to idiot geek status in the house because I manically run around asking family members to make sure their devices are not on the 2.4 ghz band when I'm listening to my music. By the way that does seem to do the trick, at least for as long Im on the music juice, usually an hour or two. But seriously c'mon. This is waaay too geeky. I thought this was supposed to be a plug and play device.

 

[Luvdac]

On an aside, I just found out that my galaxy note 9 locks on to the 2.ghz band when I'm outside on the lawn but won't switch back to the 5ghz band when I'm back in the house. This adds to the 2go's streaming woes. The only way to remedy this is to toggle the WiFi off/on in the phone settings...
Man, Chord is making us Work.

 

[Doody]

If Chord uses a very standard networking chip, it's not at all unlikely that there's a 'better' version of that chip with the same pinouts. A higher-end chip with multi-channel 2.4 support could solve the problems perhaps, and it's possible it wouldn't require any firmware changes. It would require someone brave enough to crack open their 2go and unsolder/solder the chips. That's not me, unfortunately.

Doody

 

[gryffe]

After whinging incessantly that Matt didn't respond to any questions etc, I'll say openly - Thanks for replying Matt.

Doubt many are happy mind you.

 

[joshnor713]

Not my use case scenario. Does this mean I need to join the 'majority camp after spending 1200$ of my hard earned money to accommodate your company's failings??

Reflects the neglect of Google Cast support, because the 'majority', and I guess anyone who matters, has an Apple device.