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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.

discus99
ghdprentice
6,965 posts
 

I use a wifi extender (wall wart… $69) next to my system and plug my Ethernet cable into that. I have a very good streamer and it buffers and presents fantastic music regardless of the current status of my internet provider or the wifi.

carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

I have a good mesh wifi system.  It works well.  I stream qobuz over roon.  I consider it an interim measure until I can figure out how to run an ethernet wire across two doorways and around an exposed corner.

I do get occasionally (perhaps once a week) a blip where Roon will skip to the end of a song and start playing the next one which I attribute to ethernet bottlenecking. 

Jerry

discus99 OP
2 posts
 

Thank you very much for your helpful replies, especially erik_squires, nekoaudio, and nosualc.  I hadn't considered the idea of using a wifi to ethernet adapter. Does anyone have any experience using Google Chromecast with Roon and going through a HDMI port?

jbuhl's avatar
jbuhl
976 posts
 

My DSL wire enters my tri level house on one end and my main rig is on the other.  I got mesh nodes that have ethernet ports.   I hard wire one Mesh node to the DSL box. The 2nd node is placed in direct eye shot of the first but all the way at the other end of the house.  3rd node is at the rig and hard wired to my Sonic Transport Roon server which is then hard wired (Ethernet) to my Bryston BDP.  Before I got Roon I had the 3rd node ethernet to the BDP.   Its been purdy solid with only the occasional network reboot required. SQ is right at the door of CD/File/Vinyl sources.

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dbphd
1,628 posts
 

My router is upstairs and connected to a Google MESH network that services an Ayre QX-5 Twenty upstairs and an ultraRendu downstairs that sends USB to an Ayre QB-9 DSD. The QB-9 displays 192 for files that Roon shows as 192/24. I’ll be connecting the QX-5 directly to Ethernet by replacing the MESH node with an Ethernet switch, but I don’t expect to hear any difference.

db

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