Ethernet or WiFi?

[NipperDog]

I'm still trying to understand streaming and I have yet, another question.

 

With everything else being equal, am I better off connecting a particular streamer via Ethernet rather than through WiFi or would a WiFi connection give me better fidelity? Or would there be no difference at all.

 

If one of these methods is better than the other, can you tell me why this would be?

 

Thanks for any contributions you can make to my limited understanding of digital audio. ?

[davide256]

Actually the answer depends

 

5g Wifi is pretty high bandwidth, as long as you have good signal works well for streamer traffic including DSD rates. And its electrically isolated since there is no wired router

connection. Just don't move any tall metal furniture around if you are using wifi. 2G works ok for PCM rates.  Don't use it for a server, servers are more demanding on bandwidth.

and reliability.

 

Wired gives the highest bandwidth/reliability but can degrade performance in a streamer if the switch/router attached is dumping electrical noise into the Ethernet connection. Hence why some use optical Ethernet for the streamer connection.

 

But both of these use your router as the switching point. Sound pretty much the same if neither has problems.

 

Oddly enough, if your music server supports two Ethernet adaptors, bridging these, one to your wifi router and  the other to your streamer sounds  better than connecting through the  router. Who would have that that more compute power at the switching point could make a difference? Again, optical isolation a "nice to have" for the streamer connection. See CA's biggest running thread's 1st post for a kick off on network bridging

 

 

 

[NipperDog]

4 hours ago, davide256 said:

Actually the answer depends

 

5g Wifi is pretty high bandwidth, as long as you have good signal works well for streamer traffic including DSD rates. And its electrically isolated since there is no wired router

connection. Just don't move any tall metal furniture around if you are using wifi. 2G works ok for PCM rates.  Don't use it for a server, servers are more demanding on bandwidth.

and reliability.

 

Wired gives the highest bandwidth/reliability but can degrade performance in a streamer if the switch/router attached is dumping electrical noise into the Ethernet connection. Hence why some use optical Ethernet for the streamer connection.

 

But both of these use your router as the switching point. Sound pretty much the same if neither has problems.

 

Oddly enough, if your music server supports two Ethernet adaptors, bridging these, one to your wifi router and  the other to your streamer sounds  better than connecting through the  router. Who would have that that more compute power at the switching point could make a difference? Again, optical isolation a "nice to have" for the streamer connection. See CA's biggest running thread's 1st post for a kick off on network bridging

 

 

Thanks for the explanation. I...guess I'm in good shape because I do have 5G WiFi and my router is located in the same room as my audio system with no obstructions.

 

I'm going to try to wade through the thread you mention to see if I can glean anything from it. 

4 hours ago, davide256 said:

 

 

[plissken]

I think WiFi is the answer to most peoples streaming audio.

 

There are only two things to consider: Throughput as measured in bits per second and latency as measured with the Ping command and is in milliseconds round trip.

 

For $100 I have a dedicated WAP and WiFi adapter I have setup on it's own SSID and Channel for streaming music. I routinely hit 38MB/s and 2ms ping. I can transfer an entire CD in ~ 20 seconds. 

 

The important piece is how your client playback device is setup. I use JRiver and use 1GB of system memory to simply cache everything up. I can put the system into airplane mode and the music still plays.

 

Remember you aren't playing on the network adapter. You are playing back out of system RAM. Even dedicated streamers operate this way. NAIM with their Unity series touts about 2-3 minutes of cached playback. 

 

 

 

 

[jcbenten]

The biggest issue for wifi for me was channel interference.  Even in a low density neighborhood (1.5 acre lots) I had 4 neighbors using the same channel.  I ran an ethernet cable for other reason so I piggybacked my SBT onto the switch.  Once I had switched wifi channels I had no issues but it seems just a bit faster with the direct connection.

[davide256]

Saw this article  posted the other day, in general I agree with it

 

https://darko.audio/2018/08/ethernet-or-wifi-which-is-better-for-high-end-audio-streaming/

 

[chrisc]

I noticed that you "must" use the 5GHz band for wi-fi streaming.  There is a lot less interference (I can detect no other 5GHz signals where my system is) and it is generally faster.   There are 14 x 2.4GHz SSIDs visible, and some have a -70db signal

 

For streaming DSD64 you need a fast device as the data transfer is much faster.

 

I configured the router, which does both 2.4GHz and 5GHz, to use a different SSID for each band, so its easy to determine to which stream you are connecting

[plissken]

40 minutes ago, davide256 said:

Saw this article  posted the other day, in general I agree with it

 

https://darko.audio/2018/08/ethernet-or-wifi-which-is-better-for-high-end-audio-streaming/

 

 

It's Darko so I take anything he says or passes on with a grain of salt. Remember he can hear the difference between two 3 foot Ethernet cables (which is just laughable). I've certainly offered Darko my $5000 to his $1000 to prove this by bias controlled evaluation.

 

Either wired or wireless, when designed properly, will be indistinguishable. Now if I were to desolder the magnetics package from a wired Ethernet adapter and wire direct you will hear all sorts of stuff. If high cost audio vendors just use Intel packages and their reference designs they'll be fine if they are a decent EE.

 

What can't be argued is that Wireless breaks the physical loop.

 

I have a problem with Auralic's statement:

 

" The Ethernet cable is [also] a big problem. It runs long and can pick up low-frequency noise which cannot be filtered out. This noise will introduce jitter at low frequencies which no PLL circuit can get rid of and it will affect sound quality a lot. "

 

Both the Seimons paper "The Antenna Myth" and T.I.'s paper "Reducing radiated emissions of 10/100 LAN Applications" would be at odds with Auralic. As a matter of fact "The Antenna Myth" talks about Ethernet cabling being 'Noise Immune' down at the double digit Hz range. Their words, not mine.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, plissken said:

 

It's Darko so I take anything he says or passes on with a grain of salt. Remember he can hear the difference between two 3 foot Ethernet cables (which is just laughable). I've certainly offered Darko my $5000 to his $1000 to prove this by bias controlled evaluation.

 

Either wired or wireless, when designed properly, will be indistinguishable. Now if I were to desolder the magnetics package from a wired Ethernet adapter and wire direct you will hear all sorts of stuff. If high cost audio vendors just use Intel packages and their reference designs they'll be fine if they are a decent EE.

 

What can't be argued is that Wireless breaks the physical loop.

 

I have a problem with Auralic's statement:

 

" The Ethernet cable is [also] a big problem. It runs long and can pick up low-frequency noise which cannot be filtered out. This noise will introduce jitter at low frequencies which no PLL circuit can get rid of and it will affect sound quality a lot. "

 

Both the Seimons paper "The Antenna Myth" and T.I.'s paper "Reducing radiated emissions of 10/100 LAN Applications" would be at odds with Auralic. As a matter of fact "The Antenna Myth" talks about Ethernet cabling being 'Noise Immune' down at the double digit Hz range. Their words, not mine.

 

Just received this via email from TAS. Relevant to the topic at hand.

 

http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/system-clarifiers/ 

[Ralf11]

Optical fiber for performance

 

WiFi for convenience