Minimum Broadband Speed Necessary For Uninterrupted Qobuz and/or Tidal Listening?

I appreciate the answers so far. There is only my wife and myself sharing our connection and she is often streaming movies whilst I’m listening to music. We use an Asus small-enterprise wireless N router that was advertised as supporting up to 20 users (probably overkill for just us two) and no one else has access to our network - Nearest neighbor is about 1/2 mile distant and our network is locked down.

I now really think my issue is just crappy DSL service from the local telco.

Six months ago I was using the same Bluesound Node 2i and Asus router in a townhouse in Raleigh with 200Mb cable service from Spectrum and we never even had a hiccup. We sold the townhouse and moved to the “sticks” and I’m paying $45/month for 25Mb DSL service while with Spectrum I was paying the same for 200Mb cable service.

I think the comment from Tomcy6 identified my issue when he noted he had a dropout once in a while with 50Mb, twice my speed. Thank you, Tomcy6 as your comment is extremely helpful.

I was hoping to get by with 25Mb but it would seem I need a faster connection for streaming lossless music. And I’m going to hypothesize Qobuz requires faster and/or more bandwidth than Tidal because much of Qobuz’s content is higher resolution music.

One thing I’m curious about is if the stability of a broadband signal at the same speed is the same on DSL, coaxial cable, and fibre optic? Is one of these three broadband transmission mediums more stable and/or consistent than the other? Since I can move up to either fibre or cable, I’d like to pick the one that will be the most consistent.

gdnrbob, jrh1970, and jond,

Thank you for your feedback. - I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

To answer your questions:

(1) I’m using only a hard-wired connection from my CenturyLink modem/router combo to my Bluesound Node 2i. The output of the Bluesound is hard-wired to an input on my preamp. So the Qobuz signal comes in on my DSL line and is sent via a wired connection from my modem/router to the Bluesound which in turn sends the Qobuz signal via a wired connection to my preamp. At no point in this process is the Qobuz signal sent wirelessly, it’s only handled via wired connections.

(2) I only use 5Gb channels when possible on my wireless router. I’m in a rural area and my closest neighbor is over 1/2 miles away. No networks other than my own show up on a network scan. My wireless network hosts 2 iPads (always on). 2 iPhones (always on) 1 PC (used about 2 hours.week), 1 Amazon Fire Tablet (always on, used to control Qobuz and Tidal), 1 Nest thermostat (always on), 1 Ring doorbell (always on, hard-wired for power), 1 Apple TV (always on), and 3 Echo Dot’s (airways on).

(3) The maximum number of wireless devices not at rest and in actual use at any given moment by either myself and/or my wife would be 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, 1 Amazon Fire tablet, and the Apple TV. The Nest, the Ring, and the three Dot’s are almost always in a dormant state.

tomcy6’s response to my question was also very helpful when he noted “I stream Qobuz with a download rate of 50 Mbps and have a dropout once in a while.” This suggests that I need more speed, particularly if the wireless devices in use in our home are having a negative impact on my music streaming even when they are in a dormant state.

I suspect when a manufacturer conducts Alpha and Beta testing of their internet devices that they likely test them in a lab environment devoid of any other internet connectivity. This would permit them to say my device will work properly at an xxMb broadband speed. And I would suggest when you begin adding additional devices to a network carrying a Qobuz signal, the impact of these devices, even when dormant, requires a faster Qobuz signal so it will have no dropouts.

No manufacturer of a device that connects to the Internet can foresee if the environment in which their internet device is to be used is going to be a congested network environment or a non-congested environment.

Ergo, it’s in their corporate interests to specify a usable connectivity speed devoid of any network devices competing for bandwidth on the tested devices’ s network.

So that means we consumers of devices that are used on the Internet in our home have to look at the IoT for all network devices in our home network and purchase sufficient bandwidth so everything operates smoothly and without hiccups. So, as we add more IoT devices to our home network we have to purchase more bandwidth to accommodate these additional devices. And I guess we have to do this by trial and error.

So I must conclude there is no easy answer to my original question.