can't stream in hi-res on Roon HELP

I was told wifi was limited to 24/96 and to get higher had to be usb. Maybe that info is outdated idk, but a place to start.

I can do higher than that with Wifi, but then, I am kind of a PC tech and have great signal quality. In my modest 1,200 SQ feet, 2 floor home I get 5 bars and no competition, and I'm using 5GHz, which has a lot more bandwidth. I could do anything, but my main system will be hard wired.

Roon only needs a lot of CPU if you have it set to  upsample or convert to DSD. You can check on the core if you can view the CPU usage.  Normally playing music for me, even with a few EQ bands, runs about 15% CPU unless I do DSD upsampling, then it jumps to around 80% CPU or higher.

As I mentioned though, the core uses up a lot of Wifi bandwidth.  It needs to receive the signal from your streaming source (unless on local disk) and it needs to send it out. And it has to compete with any other Wifi traffic. If Roon is broadcasting to more than one target, each of these uses up your Wifi bandwidth as well.  So, 2 endpoints, you have 4 competing Wifi signals eating up your bandwidth.

Get a signal analyzer. Especially look for competing routers. Put your router above all your other devices.

Thanks @erik_squires I will do that.  I'm thinking maybe the bottleneck is happening where my iMac core is sending the stream to my endpoints.  I'm having no problems with 196/24 playing on Roon on my computer.  The problem is the core sending to the uRendu and blue sound.  I will get an analyzer though and try to see what's happening and see if I can optimize my system a little better