Single band, tri-band or quad-band mesh for streamer

Thanks all for your feedback.  I was looking at the Asus xt8 system.  If I get three units I can have one on each floor of my home and serve our main floor office and TV and streamer upstairs and the music and video streamers associated with my main system in the basement.  It may be overkill, but my wife is a designer and has to deal with large file downloads and uploads.  I can experiment on where the modem connection provides the best service overall for our needs.

I’d absolutely go with option #2 no question as it could likely offer not only the best sound for your main system but also may be your cheapest option. As mentioned earlier, a direct Ethernet connection to your router would provide the best sound through your streamer so moving your router to the basement makes a ton of sense from that perspective. Also, if the other remote areas in your house don’t require an uber-quality connection you may find relatively cheap — but still quite good — WiFi extenders will be more than sufficient and less costly than a Mesh system. TP-Link extenders get very good reviews, and I just got these (see below) for my two sons’ bedrooms — one of which is two floors away and on the opposite side of the house from the router and they work perfectly fine for only $35 each. Get them through Amazon and If they don’t happen to work in your situation just return them and go Mesh, but I think odds are good these will work just fine. Anyway, just my $0.02 FWIW, and best of luck.

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0971BBYSN?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

@carlsbad is right, the extra band is a dedicated backhaul between the satellite access point and the main access point which is connected to your ISP. Having this dedicated channel increases throughput of the devices connected to the satellite since the satellite doesn’t have to contend with devices connected on the main access point. These days with 802.11ac and 802.11ax, speeds are fast enough for any hi-res file you’d want to play, whether connected through wi-fi or Ethernet.

I have an ASUS XT8 tri-band mesh LAN. The streamer (a Raspberry Pi running moOde) is hardwired to the main access point. The music library sits in a shared folder on a Mac mini connected via wi-fi to the satellite. I don’t have a problem with streaming hi-res Qobuz from my phone through the RPi using UPnP / wi-fi or listening to my music library. The sound I get is equivalent to disc-based playback through my Oppo UDP-203 with VanityHD digital output board.

I chose the XT8 802.11ax system because my internet connection is ~1 Gbps and wanted max throughput. Using 802.11ac, I usually get speeds around 580 Mbps over wi-fi. Note that even for uncompressed PCM 24 bit / 768 kHz sampling rate, the max bandwidth you’d need is ~37 Mbps. Even Fast Ethernet can handle that.

The only adverse effects you’d notice if you didn’t have enough network bandwidth or bit errors during transmission would be dropouts and glitches / pops during playback. Otherwise, the data is getting from point A to B intact.

Hopefully someone who knows more about wireless will chime in.  

I have read up on it and to the modern internet crowd, that would make me an expert.  It doesn't.  But I can share my experience.

1.  Everyone says, including vendor literature from streamers, that you will get best results if you hard wire it to your router and if that is an easy option, I'd say decision made.

2.  In my case, doors and obstructions make it very hard to get hard wired internet to my streamer.  So I have been running wireless.  I bought a linksys mesh system that says it will cover a house twice the size of mine.  I still had some issues with download speed at times, even though my router is only 20' from my system.   

3.  I put one of the mesh satellites at my streamer and hard wired from the satellite to the streamer and have had no problems at all since.  This seems to be a workable solution. 

My mesh system is triband and as I posted earlier, i think the triband improves communication between the base and the satellites. 

Jerry

Sorry, let me provide more context.  I am setting up a streamer in my main system for the first time.  Whatever streamer I choose is likely to require an ethernet connection to access the Internet.

I have several choices to accomplish that:

1. set up a mesh system associated with my current modem/router which is in a different room and centrally located in my house, and hard wire the streamer to a mesh satellite.

2. Move my current modem/router to my basement where my main system is and hard wire all Internet dependent devices in that room including a new streamer to it, and use a mesh system to serve computers and any other streaming devices on upper floors.

3. Buy another modem/router and attach it to an Internet coax cable from my provider that is already installed for my main system that previously fed a TV set top box, hard wire the new streamer to that, and pay Xfinity a monthly fee for another modem connection.

4. Run a 40ft. ethernet cable from my existing modem/router to my new streamer in my main system.  This would likely require punching a hole in my exterior walls twice, and factoring in concerns about long wire runs and cable quality.

I am currently leaning towards option 1, using a mesh system to get Internet service to my new streamer in my main system.  I have rejected the possibility of using wifi extenders, and pretty much rejected the idea hard wiring ethernet from my current modem.

So, back to my original question, “In theory or practice is there any advantage to going with multi-band mesh system to support an audio streamer?”

Specifically, would there be any advantages for Sound quality for streaming in going with higher band mesh systems for this application?

I also have concerns about adding more digital/wireless devices into the environment that may affect the sound quality of my main system, but not so worried that I want to hassle with installing a long cable.  Would higher band mesh systems potentially cause more harm than good?

What I am looking for is the simplest and cheapest mesh solution that would support quality streaming in scenario 1. described above.  I hope that helps and thanks for any suggestions or advice.

kn

????  Pretty sure the extra bands apply only to communication between the base and the satellites. I would be surprised if any streamers have extra bands as they would have to interface with the proprietary mesh system.

Depends entirely on what bands your streamer supports.