Effect of Internet Service Quality on Streaming?

@nyev I don’t see anything in recent posts as to whether you’ve gone back to your ISP to have your ONT checked. That’s the converter to change fiber to either coax or RJ45. Fiber itself doesn’t use a modem,

Your previous post said that you’re using the ISP provided fiber modem and wifi router. Is the modem truly a fiber to RJ45 or coax to RJ45 connection? If it’s coax to RJ45 then get the ISP to get you a connection into your house that’s an RJ45 ethernet connection (they can do this if the outside connection is an ONT panel that’s a Motorola or Calix which they can set to provide both). The problem with the coax is that it’s usually using the old RG6/RG11 that’s interconnecting throughout your house through a number of splitters. The ISPs usually like doing this because it means that they don’t have to rewire your house when they put the fiber in.

As far as the ISP provided router is concerned, dump it and get something decent. The ones provided by the ISPs are usually cheap (for them) Arris or Actiontechs that probably cost them about $2 each. Go buy a decent wifi router such as a Netgear Nighthawk X5400 or TP-Link Archer X5400 or a mesh system such as Netgear Orbi, Eero Pro6, or TP-Link Deco. You’ll probably find that this is where your problem was. I’m surprised that with all the money you’ve spent on filters, conditioners, and the like that you didn’t do this first.

Occam’s razor time.

@nyev you’ve appear to have spent a lot of money and time on everything but a new router and good Ethernet cable. Dump the router from your ISP as they are worthless. Also, change out whatever Ethernet cable you’re using to Cat-8. As cheap as Cat-6e but super shielded. Check Amazon.

You’ve also mentioned that your problem occurs in the late afternoon, after your kids get home and hit the internet. Sounds like the crappy ISP router can’t take the load and is dropping out (high chance one of your internal connections is bad and causing excessive packet retries which drag down a cheap router). Also the cheap routers don’t have any sizable ring buffers so they can’t queue things up well.

Remember that 4k video requires 34Mb of bandwidth.  Add on whatever else you’ve got streaming (phones (cellular using WiFi and VoIP), internet streamers/radios, television, etc. and you’re probably using 50-74Mb bandwidth easy. Bet the router you have came from when you had 100Mb or less internet. 

@nyev If you play an equivalent local file at the same time you have bad internet quality and it’s bad too, then it’s definitely something internal. Whatever’s causing it will be between the source and the receiver.

In normal circumstances if your source and receiver are both connected to the same Enet switch then you’d troubleshoot by swapping ports, that is moving the devices to a new port, one at a time, and seeing if the problem clears up, because ports on switches can go bad. However, you may have a problem with doing this if both the server and receiver are on your Innuos switch as it’s only got 3 ports. In that case you’d swap in a temporary switch to see if the problem clears up.

I then ask, since it appears that you have more devices then the 3 on the Innuos, what are you using in front of it as your main switch, how is it connected in circuit, and are your server/receiver both on the Innuos?

@nagel You are right that the problem you had would be caused by a rogue radio, CB, or ham operator (in my day, when the FCC would actually be chasing these guys down they'd operate out of a mobile location (n.e. car/van) to stay ahead of them).

The problem you had is called "rf rectification".  Simply, what you heard was a subharmonic of the RF signal that a non-shielded electronics is picking up and "translating". Shielding speaker wires will get you nothing as it's actually a bi-product of incorrectly or insufficiently shielded electronics.

Although I haven't run into this is a long time the cure used to be putting aluminum foil around the receiver, installing a numetal shield, or replacing the piece of electronics.