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
To extend Ethernet to remote location, are Powerline extenders or Mesh systems better?
I am trying to get Ethernet into a listening room that is not prewired, and it is not practical to run the hard cable through the old house into that room. I am planning to use a new music streamer that requires Ethernet connection (no wifi).
For hifi purposes, for passing the music signal, not just for computer equipment, are ethernet over powerline units better, or are wifi mesh router systems (which bring an ethernet port into a room using wireless transfer between the mesh devices) better?
For Ethernet over powerlines, I am worried about contaminating the power lines feeding the stereo preamplifier/amplifier, I don’t know if hifi power conditioners will filter out that super high frequency noise well enough.
For wifi mesh, it seems that the wireless handling of the music signal to feed the remote Ethernet port might somehow degrade the sound and introduce other problems that a connected wireline would avoid.
I am not a person that understands these technologies deeply, so I would value perspectives from others here who are users and who may be technically more qualified to understand this stuff.
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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. |
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. |
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... |
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