I’ve been using WiFi in my HeadFi rig through my iDevices using Qobuz and was happy until I brought my CD transport up from my big rig to spin some discs not available for streaming. I was very disappointed to hear the CD transport sounded better than streaming through WiFi, and the feedback I got was that going wired to a decent streamer will close the gap, so that’s my next move. So, in my situation I found WiFi to be compromised. Hope this helps and best of luck.
Wireless vs. Ethernet for Streaming
We live out in the country and we have just recently been able to upgrade our wireless service to something approaching "civilized." (Our speed tests range from 70-300 Mbps, from a TMobile cell tower via the ether.) Our house is rather long and spread out, so I installed a Google Nest mesh network, and we now have a strong wifi signal, even in the far corners of the house.
I want to start streaming high resolution music from Qobuzz. I have measured the latency of my wifi signal and it's strong--latency runs between 6 and 12 ms at my stereo. But everything I read online says that streaming requires an ethernet connection. Unfortunately ethernet is problematic here, simply because it would require a run of 140' from my main router. (The mesh nodes do not have an ethernet port.)
My current digital setup consists of a Bryston BDP-2 that feeds digits to a Bryston BDA-2 D/A converter. I have ripped all of my cds onto a hard drive that is connected to the BDP-2 via a USB port. I control the BDP-2 with my laptop via a Bryston wifi USB dongle.
If I can indeed use wifi to harvest digits from the ether I am tempted to purchase Bryston's new(ish) BR-20 preamp/DAC/digital source combo. They recommend ethernet for streaming but offer several accessory USB ports.
What is your experience/opinion regarding wifi vs. ethernet? How would a long run of ethernet compare to our wifi setup? Is it even realistic to expect to play high resolution music over wifi?
Thanks in advance for any replies.
Showing 3 responses by soix
@dbphd I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts after going hard wired. |