Wifi vs ethernet revisited

@fastfreight Thought just occurred to me, you should try eliminating both switches and/or just the Dejitterat and simply daisy chain your whole house wifi to your Verizon modem which if I understand you correctly is also a router, wifi remains disabled in Verizon. You still have your clean side, your Roon remote/ipad will see the entire network including streamers, and you can experiment with no switches, one switch or keep the two switch setup.

I have basic wifi and don't stream...but use it for my internet, you tube ,movies and really no problems...I have Optium .

Hi folks

The topic caught my attention, and I'm glad it did and I read thru to the latest post.    There were many things I read I had a xomment in mind, but too many to remember, so this is more general.

Firstly, I use WiFi to connect to my Devialet Pro, which is my streamer and DAC (andamp). The roon core is Antipodes CX Oladra with a few enhancements.  I have concluded (so far) that the benefit is ...  not connecting another wire to the Devialet.  The wifi is a Mikrotik mAP lite, powered by usb battery.  It is a foot from the Devialet to ensure strong connection.  Nothing else uses that wifi.  It is connected to Etgerregen Side B via Shunyata Sigma.  Basically it 'floats' between the moat and wifi and AC.  There other tweaks to it.  This has evolved and far superior to when I first tried wifi for this connection years ago and someday I try plugging the Sigma into the Devialet.

ER Side A connects to the CX and via fibre to my Router - Mikrotik CRS 305, a little brother of the model used by Dejitterit Switch X.  I got that idea from Audiophile Style 'Optical Network' thread which highlights the benefits of the 10G spec (low jitter, perhaps why Chris chose it for SwitchX). The CRS 305 is obviously better than the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X SFP it replaced - it was a straight swap.  The CRS 305 connects to the ONT (1G national broadband).  It also connects via fibre to a FMC > Cat 6a UTP > TP Link WAP to provide wifi which I use to control roon.

My network has no other traffic when I listen to music, except me browsing a bit online.

The ONT and CRS are on a separate AC circuit, AC isn't optimal, but I use ifi AC purifier as AC conditioning and ground treatment.  However the ER is on the dedicated audio room AC (JPS labs, Furutech AC, 20A breaker) and has its own conditiioner (Shunyata Sigma > Cyclops > Synergistic Research Atmosphere Level 3 > W4S LPS > Synergistic Research DC cable).

All network hardware is on Synergistic Research Tranquility PODs, and grounded to Synergistic Research Ground Block SE or passive block, mostly using Hi Def Ground cables.

In all this context, my wifi is doing very well.  It is not preventing me from hearing the benefit of every tweak, roon update and even increasing my ISP upload speed from 4 to 12mbps.

But I would recommend keeping a mesh wifi outside the direct route from ONT (or whatever you may have) and the audio gear.  Unfortunately it seems every bit of the network can be optimised to improve sound quality outcomes.  I have taken the route of optimising rather than adding more switches - I still have more that can be done.

I am intrigued by the SwtichX, it could be a router.  Synergistic Research Router functions as a 2nd router that separates the audio traffic/activity from the rest.  I gather uses a 1G Mikrotik Routerboard, however it's jitter might be lower than typical 10G due to all the 'treatment' it's wrapped in.  I think Network Acoustics Router is 10G.  On the topic of routers, a problem is firewall and other security is much easier with mainstream gear.  Maybe there a way to have one router in the direct route to audio that operates very simply, but with 'something' connected to it doing security outside that direct route.

I hope all this is thought provoking and useful in some way.

@dbastin yes, all very useful for me as I think about how to reconstruct my setup; thanks.

Quick question: you write that "ER Side A connects to the CX and via fibre to my Router - Mikrotik CRS 305." What are the transceivers you are using?

@dbastin In quickly perusing your setup the only issue I see is the wifi RFI issue in both Mikrotik and Devialet. Now I can see heroic issues taken by manufacturers to shield other circuits and components within devices, don't know if that case with these devices. My other issue is with the wifi receivers themselves, this especially vs a cleaned up and optimized ethernet input in a streaming device. This what my server accomplishes via my JCAT NetXE card. In my early days of streaming I went through a series of three different diy modded Mac Minis, won't go through all the permutations, but at one point was doing wifi with the 1st mini, eventually one of the mods was going to hard wire input, another subsequent move was to remove wifi antenna and disconnect circuit board connection to wifi receiver. In direct comparison there was an incremental improvement I could detect even in this relatively low level streaming setup. Not saying the Mikrotik and Devialet may have superior RFI suppression in their components. My own conclusion is absolutely no wifi on 'clean' or audio side of home network.

I'd also add RFI is likely an issue for us even with a 'clean' network for audio streaming. Most of us live in a very rich RFI environment, what with all the radio frequency equipment used on a mass scale. Some years ago I had located a Linn Mimik cd player in this one particular place in my listening room where I was picking up an FM station through my stereo system, moved the player no more issues. Dimmer switches are another source easily heard.So point is while this extreme example think how much RFI is masked, we simply don't hear it as an FM radio station of whatever, I presume very few of us really fully hear the full potential of our systems due to environmental RFI. I don't doubt are physical health impacted to some degree as well, plenty of info out there on this. In any case there are reasonable steps we can take to minimize it's impact on our stereo system.