Mesh network versus a simple Wi-Fi extender

Lots of interesting discussions on speed. But music streaming uses very little bandwidth and good streamers buffer or cache the files… so all you need is a trickle. My streamers work flawlessly when I am have had trouble loading a web page to my iPad.

I use a wired Ethernet cable to an wifi extender. I recently switched to mesh. No difference in sound quality. On my system I get vinyl quality sound from my main streamer.

High quality streamers cashe and isolate, making up for deficiencies in bandwidth, latency and such. While admittedly I have been in IT most of my life, this comes from observation of my own streamers producing simply stunning, uninterrupted sound quality from cheap repeaters. Observation to me trumps theory. I recently took a EtherRegen out of my system that performed no useful function and with two high end Ethernet cables on it degraded the sound.

With very inexpensive streamers I believe the network reliability is important. But with contemporary high quality streamers, typically it is not that important.

Streamers only need a trickle of bandwidth. My streamers are on extenders and while I can’t get my page to refresh on my iPad in unusual times of bad performance from my provider my streamers work flawlessly. I haven’t looked but I am sure they work fine on a couple mbs or so. While my wifi provides up to 500 mbs ocationally and 250 most of the time. It goes down to 20 - 35 a surprising amount of the time.