[GearMe]

I could be wrong but I think he is being facetious.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

I could be wrong but I think he is being facetious.

Or snarky.

 

[winders]

Except that the sound stage is much more expansive in a wireless setup than it is running through a cable...duh!
I've got bronze ears and a limited audiophile vocabulary but the best way to describe it is -- kinda like the difference between open and closed headphones...on steroids

(think about it...the music is everywhere)

This makes no sense at all. But you go ahead and believe that if you want.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

This makes no sense at all. But you go ahead and believe that if you want.

Then what's your vision on this?
I think remembering you would go for wire too.

 

[winders]

First of all my post is the sarcastic answer to a sarcastic post....

Anyway, yes I prefer hardwired (UTP) to WiFi because it is generally more consistent and reliable. Also, the wireless hardware is generally noisier which is not a positive. The downside to hardwired is the noise that can be passed along with the packets. A quality switch certainly helps here.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

A quality switch certainly helps here.

Yes, the Netgear trick. Did that and made an improvement there.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Wavelength Audio will come with the Ethernet Spacelator an active Ethernet filter and reclocker for isolating Ethernet DAC’s and streamers.
No idea what that brings.

 

[Rensek]

One issue with wireless is signal strength. so if your signal integrity is affected then yes it can be an issue. If you don't have signal issues then there is no reason not to use wireless.

That's why I spoken up about 2.4 vs 5 GHz . 2.4 is less affected by walls and other structural things, its fast enough for audio. 5ghz is faster, but signal doesn't carry as well. The other thing to consider is many consumer devices run on 2.4ghz, so alot of devices in one area running on that bandwidth can cause negative interactions. Examples being cordless landline phones, video game controllers, baby Monitors, etc.

 

[Roy G. Biv]

On Spotify, not sure about Qobuz or Tidal. youtoob has a nice version of him doing a solo, kinda greasy version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

Yes, also posted it on "what are your listening to thread".

 

[ScubaMan2017]

Wondering how viable it might be to go all 5Ghz on the Nighthawk to reduce interference but not sure your clients can do that freq.

Thanks for the musing, @BobSmith8901 . I'm going to fart around with the wireless adapter on my elderly laptop, and try to have it broadcast/receive on 5GHz. My nooks down a concrete hallway from our office (with the Nightgear, that's by a window, anchored on its own little elevated shelf). Ideally, my nook's laptop should be in line-of-sight for the best results. Meh... will fart around with it.

Wonder if you could avoid the issue with something like this: https://smile.amazon.com/NETGEAR-PowerLINE-Gigabit-Pass-Through-PLP1200-100PAS/dp/B00S6DBGIS/

I've looked at the 'internet-over-the-AC-powerlines' option. Thanks, @wabe I'd chose either that or go the "mesh" option ([link to HTG] as I understand it, these little boxes act like tiny little cellular-phone-towers in my home... and hand off my device from box-to-box). If I'm serious about the going-off-the-grid-thing when I retire, I wonder which technology works best in the woods. Stay tuned!

This is the newer model. I can personally attest that they work well. My father gets 30Mbps with them
https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Powe...+powerline&dpPl=1&dpID=41h-Pw90SlL&ref=plSrch

Okay, @KoshNaranek ... THAT'S impressive. When it's time to upgrade our network, I'll consider it.

I went to https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop and bought a download and was immediately sent an email inviting me to sign up for a free one month trial of Quobuz Studio (had to give a credit card.).........{snip}.......Give it a try the sound quality really is better than Tidal.

So my media collection's going to be sourced from a mish-mash of entities. Some on CD... some stored on hard-drives... some leased from streaming services. I wonder if Quobuz is available here in Canada?

Interesting opinion tbh.
Shouldnt wireless be less noisy than direct cable connection? I mean if you look at it wifi is less susceptible to electrical noise. Of course this all depends on the specific setup.

Variables upon variables upon variables. Yeesh. Interesting musing, @dieslemat

You can use flat under carpet Ethernet cables (google it) or run somethng along/behind the baseboards. Just did that with some speaker cables and while not fun it looks little like a submarine. Although @Ableza might prefer the submarine look......{snip}........Ethernet runs are usually rated for 300M and are transformer isolated so no electrical noise.

Flatened CAT5/6 cable?! I didn't even know that was a thing. Thanks, @artur9 ... @Ableza can do the submersible thing, and I'll respect that. Lake Huron gives me all the cold/dark/icy/free-flowing-from-overbreathing-christ-which-way-is-up underwater theme I need.

Someone mentioned switching your WiFi to all 5ghz band. I'd argue to route all audio through 2.4ghz if you can, especially in a building full of concrete. The 2.4ghz band has longer reach and will not be degraded as much by walls and floors as the 5ghz band will be. Also, consider having another router act as a repeater, or buy one of the many products that offers refined whole home wifi, Google makes a product, so does netgear. The Google ones look like little hockey pucks.....{snip}.....I switched all my Chromecast Audios to run off 2.4 gig band on my netgear nighthawk, and the sound quality is subjectively better and objectively more reliable/stable with less lag, then 5 GHz. I wonder if audio codecs handle buffering and packet loss differently then video codecs like the ones used for Netflix or YouTube......{snip}......I prefer Hardline as well if you can swing it.

Interesting, @Rensek . I'll see what I can do with some frequency tweaking. While hardline's indeed the most reliable, I'll keep tweaking (and perhaps eventually convince my wife that MESH systems are the way to go for us.

The router we're talking about (netgear7000) can be set to combine both 2.4 ans 5 band together to one {edit: access point}.....It will always choose for the fastest way.

I also set my Netgear 7000P to blend/mould the 2 frequencies into one 'entitiy'. Once the (Canadian) prices come down for the MESH systems, I'm leaning toward that upgrade. Mind you, once we get the hell out of the city, the radio spectrum's much quieter. I can have my own "Supreme Soviet Of Sound-And-Stars" in the woods (@Baldr 's interview quote... not mine).

I don't download or stream music so I have no idea whether it would be quieter than over my hard wired connection and I'm not sure from a technical standpoint which should be quieter. I have no noise issue with anything electronic in my house. The only wireless connection I have is my laptop, everything else is hardwired from phone to PV's to cable TV. Tried a wireless arrangement for my PC's internet connections and printer and it just was not as fast (responsive) or reliable. Never tried for my TV and wouldn't bother as I don't think I could do better than what I currently have. There may be better, faster wireless equipment available but I'm already paying too much for all this connectivity monthly.

@FLTWS ... and you are NOT exaggerating that. Re: paying for connectivity. Look, I get it. The company's put in a lot of money to set up these internet/ARPnet/... infrastructure. Here in Canada, we're spread out and it's expensive to run cable & have towers (Tubes, by Andrew Blum is a good read about WHO keeps this web running, btw). What would be the consequence of nationalising internet-service-providers and making it a right-of-citizenship?

Hi there. In general, wireless and Ethernet are both subject to the same sorts of electrical noise because the main source of it is in the receiving device not in the transmission itself. Wireless can be impacted by other RF in the area, but that is rare - as is induced noise in an Ethernet cable. In general the downsides to using wireless involve bandwidth and signal strength, and in a HT or multi-room setup latency can be an issue. But in general, if you have good signal strength and we are talking about 2-channel audio there is no technical reason not to use wireless.

And when you're referring to 2-channel, that's the traditional speakers (that would use a Schiit Vidar to power), right? Christ almighty, this is good educational schiit, @Ableza . I don't teach the physics 12 course; however, I occasionally help out with Science Olympics. I'll tuck this conversation into my deep storage to pull out for my next 'creative-smart-weirdo-teenager'. No kidding.

I use a good wireless connection (Router>MacMini) then ethernet cable direct (MacMini>microRendu>EITR) ... sounds good and it happens to be more convenient in my setup. The music is buffered in Audirvana so I'm not sure why either should be better over the other in that situation, other than the points mentioned by @Ableza

You've given me an idea, @Charente . I'm going to investigate my media players (Foobar2000 and VLC) and see if there's a buffer feature that somehow stores music and reduces weird jitter (Foobar does have a buffer; however, it's advertised as a way to affect visualizations {unhelpful to me}). I'll hit Foobar/VLC's discussion boards and report back to my fellow schiitheads.

I don't see a technical reason for "noise" in a wireless connection. Packets are packets and they arrive or they don't. Uncompressed cd quality needs about 1 megabit of bandwidth. Well below all but the poorest wifi connections. If one still ends up with packet underrun I guess different things can happen. Most audio players buffer at least a few seconds of audio and simply pause until data catches up. I've never heard odd noises injected in such cases but I guess it's possible based on a given player. I am still surprised if it's not handled smoothly since random delays due to competing traffic are unavoidable in a general purpose network. That's not to say constant pauses or skips to catch up wouldn't be annoying. In any event, the audio that does gets played should be identical regardless of the type of network link.

I tear at my bear in frustration, @porchwizard . These bizarre artefacts are happening in a condominium suite's that's ~1100 sq. ft. I really hope the technology improves before we set up our compound-cabin-in-the-woods.

Funny how such a simple subject can generate so many opposite opinions.
I guess it's also the system whether you can or cannot hear a difference between WiFi and cable.

My wife teaches Theory Of Knowledge (ToK) at her IB high school. My perception of music isn't just my inner-ear doing its mechanical-thing. I think it's one of her topics she covers in class {that freaks the kids out [mind-blowing & humbling]}.

First of all my post is the sarcastic answer to a sarcastic post....{snip}.........Anyway, yes I prefer hardwired (UTP) to WiFi because it is generally more consistent and reliable. Also, the wireless hardware is generally noisier which is not a positive. The downside to hardwired is the noise that can be passed along with the packets. A quality switch certainly helps here.

Yes, the Netgear trick. Did that and made an improvement there.

@Pietro Cozzi Tinin ... I'll review the thread and figure out which tweak the gaggle's referring to.... enable/disable/restrict device's radio frequencies; all 2.5GHz, or only 5GHz; use a WiFi analyser to figure out which channels are somewhat quieter in this f$$king building {the little bastards try to do the Warz-Kitty probing thing on my network... dozens of SSIDs piled on top of each other}

 

[Rensek]

If you have any old wiress routers laying around, most models sold in the last ten years can be setup to act as repeaters or range extenders. After I bought my current netgear nighthawk I took my old netgear to my dad's place, and set it up as a range extender so we could get WiFi outside on the patio/firepit area.

Basically the same as the newer marketed mesh products, just not as easy to setup.

 

[wabe]

I've looked at the 'internet-over-the-AC-powerlines' option. Thanks, @wabe I'd chose either that or go the "mesh" option ([link to HTG] as I understand it, these little boxes act like tiny little cellular-phone-towers in my home... and hand off my device from box-to-box). If I'm serious about the going-off-the-grid-thing when I retire, I wonder which technology works best in the woods. Stay tuned!

Just for clarity, they connect to each other via your electrical wiring, not wirelessly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_over_Ethernet

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

@Pietro Cozzi Tinin ... I'll review the thread and figure out which tweak the gaggle's referring to.... enable/disable/restrict device's radio frequencies; all 2.5GHz, or only 5GHz; use a WiFi analyser to figure out which channels are somewhat quieter in this f$$king building {the little bastards try to do the Warz-Kitty probing thing on my network... dozens of SSIDs piled on top of each other}

The tweak thread starts her where @winders begins to explain a tweak with a Netgear switch. I posted some pictures too.
I did exactly what he described and was pleasantly surprised by the not so small affect it had.
I'm still grateful for that.
Here's the link: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/wha...n-robert-hunter.784471/page-587#post-14423582

 

[Roy G. Biv]

Has anyone had any success/failures using fiber optic in place of ethernet? I'm thinking specifically of this article: https://www.audiostream.com/content/electrically-isolate-your-networked-audio

 

[Paladin79]

Has anyone had any success/failures using fiber optic in place of ethernet? I'm thinking specifically of this article: https://www.audiostream.com/content/electrically-isolate-your-networked-audio

I use it in a couple applications and I have fiber in. It can be pricey if you buy equipment retail and you need to understand bend radius.