To extend Ethernet to remote location, are Powerline extenders or Mesh systems better?

The bandwidth required by streamed music is tiny. Good quality streamers cashe the files, basically isolating you from all but the most unreliable data streams.

My streamers perform completely reliably through wall wart extenders while I cannot get my iPad to refresh the page. Providing top vinyl level sound quality with a minimum of throughput.

You can see my systems under my UserID.

All ethernet extenders, wired or wireless will reduce your available bandwidth by half. Not a point of discussion, it's just inherent in how they work - there's no free lunch. Mesh Networks do not exhibit that characteristic, and those with a dedicated backhaul channel work best of all. Use WiFi 6, if possible, which supports parallel network streams, as opposed to time-slicing a single stream like all previous ethernet, wired and Wi-Fi. Luckily, digital audio is very undemanding network load, with CD quality requiring less than 1Mbit/sec, and 24-bit 192K needing under 5 mBits/sec. 

Over the years I’ve had two sets of Powerlines, and they’ve worked, but are limited.  I never used powerline while I had a high-end hifi.  Therefore, I would question how a high frequency powerline signal on your mains might affect your hifi components.

I now have a Netgear Orbi mesh system, and can get ~700Mpbs over the 5G backhaul. There’s no competition here.

The Orbi is a technically very good option. I just don’t like the company. Their support, in my experience, seems to prioritise upselling you. They also dabble in sharp practice. For example, they’ll email you to inform you of an impending re-subscription to their Armor protection. No mention, though, will be made of the price. Want to raise a complaint? Then you’ll have to subscribe to their support option. Want to use the "family protection" service? That’s another charge. I should add that my Mesh system (1 router, 3 satellites) was ~£1k

To panzrwagon

Your input and expertise is helpful. Do you have a point of view on Ethernet Over Powerline systems, and whether that technology, even if it passes the network signal well, will add noise onto the AC line that hifi gear and related power conditioners will fail to properly filter out? 

Also is it fair to assume EoP will have superior speed over mesh and wifi extenders as the signal never goes through the air?

Almost 30 years experience as a network architect for Very Large Network company.

Avoid network extenders - they do extend range but at a cost of 50% of your throughput. As you add devices, this catches up with you and performance and reliability degrades rapidly.

Mesh routers are vastly preferable as they seek the hub with the strongest signal and lightest load.

As Wifi 6 is adopted, its improved parallelism will support more devices and higher throughputs

The best mesh implementations use a wired backhaul to the main hub and 3 wireless channels (not 3 ip subnets).  

In the context of a domestic LAN, issues of jitter and latency are not meaningful, although packet drops are sumptomatic of range and load limits, as well as defective infrastructure, bad cables or connectors.

In short, nothing an extender does ultimately helps SQ. Everything a mesh router and Wi-Fi 6 do can help it. 

Assuming your have Coax wired through your house you could also consider using a MoCA network.   I switched from Powerline to a MoCA 2.0 network and the frequent Roon hangs and random streaming skips went away.

I have Verizon Fios and TiVo and they both rely on MoCA and I noticed my TiVo streaming worked much better when I had it MoCA enabled vs its Ethernet setting (using Powerline).   So I purchased a couple of MoCA 2.0 adapters (e.g. https://www.actiontec.com//products/ecb6200/) and have been very happy with their performance for music streaming including many hi-rez files stored on my NAS two stories away from my dedicated listening room.

Cheers

@ericsch Hi, sorry for the delayed response. We were off visiting her family for the holiday.

Yes, I use a Conrad Johnson Premier 6 pre-preamplifier. If you Google for it the pdf is available on their website. It's quite sensitive to RF and when I switched it on, it would send a fairly horrible noise downstream! Remember the coded transmissions Jeff Goldblum discovered in "Independence Day"? :) I tried moving the node as far as I could within the cabinet but it didn't matter. Still noisy. So I installed the node in a book case that doubles as LP storage that is about 15' away and ran a good quality Cat8 cable from it to the Node2i.

The base/Main node is upstairs next to the cable modem so the mesh network is providing excellent throughput all the way downstairs to the node in the living room. And as the remote node is hardwired to the Node2i, I get excellent performance.

A happy side benefit is that my Green Mountain Grill smoker with wifi now gets better signal outside too. LOL

Feel free to message me directly if you have any questions.

Happy listening!

Those network adaptors look promising.

Will look at installing one next year.

No Robert here

Also have a coax cable installed, that I never used. Are either of these cables able to run internet to my streamer, so I eliminate streaming via wifi?

https://us.hitrontech.com/learn/how-fast-is-ethernet-over-coaxial/

Flat roof from modem to stereo means I cannot install ethernet cable. I do however have cable that used to run Sky Cable to a T-Box for my TV.

Also have a coax cable installed, that I never used. Are either of these cables able to run internet to my streamer, so I eliminate streaming via wifi?

I was never Robert.

I am not sure about the implementation details of ROON Core but if I were to write the streaming engine for it, I would not be writing anything to disk. I would be writing to super-fast RAM for TIDAL or Qobuz and for streaming from disk-based FLAC files, I would write nothing to disk. So mostly fast reads in both cases.

WIFI should not have any issue with the CORE other than the quality of WIFI could degraded the transmission of the TCP Broadcast of the bits. Here again I am assuming the Broadcast protocol is used for ROON Rock.

WIFI is OK until the inventible when it totally fails on music streaming. This was a regular occurrence when I tested out ROON WIFI streaming with a Matrix Mini I-3 Pro DAC. It was my WIFI and not ROON that was the weak link.

Oh, yeah, Roon core really consumes the Wifi bits.  The issue is that it has to read and write at the same time, which bogs it down.  I keep my core on wired Ethernet and the devices vary from wired to Wifi.  All is good this way.

My issue was related to the extra bandwidth requirements of hi-res. I had no issue in the past with non-highres. However, now I have solved the issue for highres.

Hello,

I found out that Nordost has this QBase power supply system that powers 4 QPoints and two other selectable pieces like a Roon Core and maybe your DC powered tt. I realized at that point that some of these Roon products are DC based power with basic switch mode power supplies or wall warts. If you are not doing the Q Nordost products then maybe get an SBooster linear power supply for you Roon. The SBooster is nice. When you power it down it can take a minute for the green light to turn off. This means there is a constant power to the Roon unit or your favorite DAC or piece of gear. Computers do not like interruption in power. This SBooster could really solve a lot of Roon issues. Plus you should get better sound. You do have to order the correct power output when you order one. These are sold all over. If you are in the Chicagoland area this store is a dealer. 
holmaudio.com

So if you want to take out some of the Roon headaches and improve the sound for around $400 this seams like a no brainer. 
I hope this helps. 

@yyzsantabarbara wow... i have heard that same sort of distortion at times in my system, a sort of ’brownout' on the upper(usually) frequencies.... i am sure it is caused by the main internet connection or my ethernet network...

I used to have my ROON Core behind a Powerline network. I also had my living room system’s DAC streamed via this same PowerLine. I even have this PowerLine in my garage with a bunch of heavy-duty computer servers.

When the new George Harrision remaster of ALL THINGS MUST PASS in high res came out, I was getting some distortion at a particular part of a track, when George was whistling. I could ALWAYS reproduce the problem at the exact time in the music. So, this was very helpful for me to figure out the cause.

It turned out to be my ROON Core being on the PowerLine network side of my home network. I guess the Powerline’s bandwidth could not keep up to speed with the whistling bits. So, I moved the ROON Core machine to my non-Powerline part of my network and the problem was solved.

I now forgot if my living room system has this issue still, since it is on the PowerLine as a ROON-READY endpoint. I do not think so, which is interesting. I confirm this with another post.

PowerLine works for me when the ROON Core is in the non-PowerLine part of my network.

As background.... I'm using a Netgear range extender to feed my Streamer (and 2Tb HDD) unit and that has worked well for years. There's not much else working off the range extender so it has plenty of bandwidth for the streamer.

As far as audio quality.....I recently read that it is important to use a well shielded Ethernet cable from the extender to the streamer to reduce noise from the nearby electronics. That led me to upgrade the Ethernet cable to a nicely shielded DH Labs Silver Sonic - Reunion Cat8.

Before I put in the new ethernet cable both streaming and locally stored music (all .wav) both sounded nice and about the same, but now the Reunion has made the streaming a more lively experience - especially on the higher bitrate streams (192k+) streams. 

Good luck with however you solve this!

@soix Yes to all you ask. My recommendation is in my post, either will work, you just need to clean it up afterwards using a buffer switch and passive Ethernet Filter.

Disclaimer. I make the ENO Ethernet Filter.

I actually use both in the sense that I use a TP powerline for the ethernet connection to my DAC(main floor) but use comcast mesh for roon to connect to my core (computer in upstairs room). Router is in basement.  It drops occasionally (connection to roon core)  but sounds great. Big house so had to deal with distance issues. Wi fi for my setup for the DAC seemed to not work as well.  If you are willing to make the effort you could buy both and do an AB to see which sounds better, then return the device you didn't want to use.

...it sounds bad, thin, edgy, image is in a letterbox between the speakers

That doesn't sound promising. Hopefully the switch I've bought will begin reducing the noise. Then considering a SOtM Cat6 Isolation Filter, or Acoustic Revive LAN isolator RLI-1GB-TRIPLE-C.

Hello,

I use the Eero mesh. This is the 2.4/5G versions. I have heard the 6g might have issues. I even bought the wall holders which is really cool. I am bot a fan of putting more DC powered stuff on my power lines. I want to keep thinks clean as I can. If you have no choice then you will have to put the LAN over the power lines. I also like the mesh system because I can add a (puck) where I need it. The Eero has two out puts. To me it is so clean because it starts out wireless then gets converted to wired. I hope this helps. 

@musicfan2349 Can you go into more

detail on how the mesh point affected

your MC preamp/playback. I have one 

near my turntable. 

I use powerline extender with UpTone Audio EtherREGEN, works great!  The only problem with the powerline extender is they do add noise to my phono preamp, and I simply unplug them when playing LPs….

I have a headache after reading all the contradictory assertions here.  @richtruss you seem to have done the most rigorous comparisons between the various options.  If I’m reading you right, either WiFi or powerline options are compromised and you can only mitigate their compromises after the fact.  No?  I assume you’d say same for Mesh?  Sounds like you’re advocating hardwired from router if at all possible — yes?  If not possible, what’s your best recommendation?  Thanks!

I had a Cat5 hardwired extender-router until the unit failed and I had this rigged totally with a plain Cat5 cable running from the main router, out one widow, outside then back into the masonry house .... I got a powerline extender and use the wifi from the outlet wart to connect my 2012 Macbook Pro > stream Tidal> wired USB to DAC etc and it sounds great and exactly the same as the Cat5 wired extender to Wifi>Macbook Pro> USB to DAC.... every few months I have to reset the node in my listening room or even less, both nodes. I never have to pair them again even after a power loss....

I did not choose the wifi route.  Currently using a CAT 6 from the router to the streamer.  Can I bypass the router and install a coax to ethernet switch?  What are some things to look for or some good brands? 

I've been using the top of the line TP -Link powerline adapter for a few years now , it's noise free and flat out stable and reliable, it also sounds fantastic.

+1 mesh.   A high performance wifi 6 system on 2.4/5G band will work as good as wired if setup properly.   Chose 2.4 if in a low density area like a house or 5 in a higher density area.  
Ethernet over power lines is fine too but has more ways to fail than wifi mesh imo.   It will not affect  your power used for hifi gear.  It’s modulated between 1.5 and 80  mhz.   None of that will ever go through any power supply.   A power supply is an extreme low pass filter :-).  Hifi or not.  
 

Doesn’t Roon insist on a wired connection between the box that it is running on and the endpoint? But you can use wifi to control Roon. I think.

I used to use TP link  extenders, but it all was a bit flakey. Some drops. And they used to die at regular intervals.

I am having success with Devolo Magic 2 wireline devices. Seems stable. Roon is happy. Sounds better to me than running the Roon NUC straight into my DAC.

Too bad you committed to an extender... A mesh network is much better for many reasons, not the least of which is throughput: An extender will typically HALF your throughput b/c you're going from one "network" to another. With mesh it's all one network. I got a mesh node and put it in my stereo cabinet in the living room. (The main node is upstairs.) The problem was it generated so much RFI my MC pre-preamp was unusable for LP listening!

So I compromised. I put the mesh node across the room and ran some Cat8 from it to my Node2i. Sounds great! And as could turn off the LEDs on the node, it's practically hidden in the bookcase even though it's in the open. The added benefit is better wifi coverage downstairs for the telly and anything else.

Happy listening...

@richtruss

optical will eliminate noise from the source, the problem is though, it sounds bad, thin, edgy, image is in a letterbox between the speakers

Maybe this is system-dependent since it is not evident in my system. I have both Ethernet and optical 45-foot runs from my main router to my server/streamer so I can directly compare the two. My comparisons over the past year have indicated the sound is virtually identical between optical and Ethernet, and both sound fine - I certainly couldn’t pick out which method is being used in a blind test. My optical is implemented using two TP-Link convertors. I use a switch but no other specialty boxes with Ethernet. I have also not heard about other people experiencing thin/edgy sound when using an optical set-up similar to mine or other optical options such as the Sonore opticalRendu.

I use a Netgear Powerline 2000 adapter to connect my DCS Dac and find it to be quite good. No problems over the last year and a half.

I’ve never had success with any type of extender, and I live in a relatively new house with clean wiring. They have been flaky and unreliable. I now use an Orbi mesh router with three satellites. I know I got it right because I no longer think about it; it just works. “Flawless Basics” as we used to say at work. Hardwired would be optimal, but it’s a pain and there’s no driver given that the Orbi system does the trick.

I run the Roon core hardwired off a switch in my office and plug the Lumin into a port on the back of the Orbi satellite in my living room. 

I tried using power line extenders.  It turns out that they are sensitive to transition zones in your fuse box.  In order to get from my router to my listening room there is a two zone drop and then additional drops for other areas of the house.  The adapters failed after a few months.  I bit the bullet and ethernet wired the house and everything has worked great since.  I have also heard good things about the WiFi mesh

all these options, buy via best buy, amazon, ...

decide, order, works, or return it!

order two types, keep the best, return the other.

If you can implement a wired extender or I prefer adding a wired bridged router, then these will work much better than a wireless extender. You might have a weak signal to the wireless extender and then from then on, you will have a Wei signal.

I would run a wire your room, a qualified technician can run a wire to your audio room, then you will have the best connection

You should have no worries.  Ethernet over power lines work very good.

These work perfectly well, as long as both units are on the SAME circuit.  They will still work otherwise but their speed and noise immunity will be less.

@jerrybj  using optical will eliminate noise from the source, the problem is though, it sounds bad, thin, edgy, image is in a letterbox between the speakers. The reason for that is the very process of converting light back into electricity (at the receiving end) generates more noise and jitter. Keeping it all electrical and passively filtering out the noise is much better than using optical. I’ve done extensive listening tests on this to draw this conclusion.

I used extenders for quite a while, but as more and more devices and apps started using the wifi it eventually couldn't service everything, and my streamers were struggling on and off  Put a mesh system in and haven't looked back.

Will have a listen to this. If there is noise, the switch I'm getting has optical, which I've read is a way to eliminate noise. 

I'd read that mesh was better than an extender. But space is limited, so have gone for a TP-Link 650 wifi extender.

Yet to set it up, but taking ethernet out to a switch (just buying that now) to my streamer.

All extenders, either WiFi based or ‘over the mains’ based will put unwanted noise out along with the Ethernet signal via their RJ45 socket.

If you using either of these devices then simple steps can be taken to remove as much unwanted noise as possible.

1. Use a ‘decoupling switch’ - any switch is better than no switch. A simple 4 port D-Link or TP Link switch will do, with an iFi iPower PSU. Plug a RJ45 cable from the extender into the switch, and then another RJ45 cable from the switch to the streamer. This will reduce noise quite a bit and will give a lift in sound quality, makes it more natural sounding.

2. Use a good passive Ethernet Filter on the leg between the switch and the streamer. This will further reduce noise giving even better, bigger, more enjoyable sound.

+1 for TP Link. Get the top end model, not costly and works flawlessly with extender 20' (as the wire runs) from the streamer that it feeds.

+1 for TP-Link. Have (2) on Lumin streamers at opposite ends of the house and they sound as good as my other hardwired streamer. 

Mesh or powerline. My wiring is pretty new and being on the same circuit as the router, the powerline worked the best for me. I found the powerline much easier to set up then the mesh I had. Extenders for me were always a headache. TP Link is what I have used with the most success and least amount of trouble.

Mesh systems are much better than extenders.

TP Link makes good ones as does Google.

I have 3 Google mesh access points and they work great in my plaster & lath walled house... where extenders always fell short. I have the ethernet-out port wired to a gigabyte switch so a 4k TV and music streamer can have wired connections. No, I haven’t tried both at same time...but throughput is 90-100 mps so it would probably work.

I should add that until a month ago, I had gigabyte ethernet hard wired to that switch. The mesh system is working great, to my surprise and relief. 

Orbi mesh system with a main and 3 nodes here for about 3 years now.  Although I run fiber directly from the main to my main system, I run an outdoor/garage system by a short wire connected to one of the mesh nodes and Apple TV for HT from a different node.  Strong wi-fi throughout the house and even outside.  There are probably newer/better mesh systems out there now but this has worked perfectly for me.

Mortar drill bit. Ten bucks. Wired is best.