Will better Wifi router improve the sound of my Hifi system?

[Hobo1]

Haha. Good one. Totally untrue. First, RJ45 is about a connector and not the physical transport. We assume you mean Cat5e or "ethernet cable." It depends on whether it's shielded, run alongside power cables, how long, etc. Under general conditions, bit rates being the same, there better not be a difference in the digital data being carried. Thus, no audible difference. To figure out why someone perceived better audio over one medium or another, many factors need to be compared. I'd hate to see folks spend money to move to optical because you posted an opinion and perception without supporting it with all the other pertinent info.

Care to tell us more about the conditions? Post some photos of the setup?

[master]

In my experience you have a higher chance of hurting the sound by making a change to a newer router simply because of more radio frequency interference with a dual band router or router with higher power.The interference has nothing to do with the data signal, but may effect your analog components. I say MAY because it's not likely.

 

I wouldn't worry about a router change if you're looking for change in sound quality.

 

Not really an issue, but even if it is there are Android apps that will let you analyze your Wi-Fi network and rate everything from signal to channel and frequency. Very simple to manually assign channel and channel frequency if the need should arise, but then I personally let it run on auto and have never had any issues.

[tranz]

Going optical can be cheaper than a new wifi router. Try 2nd hand.

 

It was my biggest jump in a lower noise floor of the LAN gadgets tried. (medical isolation, cables, lpsu, Acoustic Revive, etc.) . The whole system does matter and there are so many possible scenarios it is hard to have a definitive solution. E.g. your neighbour could be running a ceiling fan which impacts your wifi signal, causing drop outs or other more subtle impacts. Or your renderer could better handle chip noise than another. Or....

 

One other element to keep in mind is that you want the destination to have to re-ask for a data packet as little as possible to lower electrical noise at the destination chip. You could view an optical setup as a 'Regen for LAN' which also happens to cut the copper wire connection.

[tgb]

Hello Hobo1,

sorry about my post. Sure it was too short, although I adviced to go & read the 2 related threads about it.

Haha. [...]

It depends on whether it's shielded, run alongside power cables, how long, etc. [...]

... bit rates being the same, there better not be a difference in the digital data being carried. [...]

You are totally right. I did not say that.

TCP/IP protocol does its job properly through copper network. All the data arrive to the streamer anyway. Thus no data is lost. Otherwiase you have hiccups.

The difference between optical network & copper based network is that with optical you cut the copper link.

Meaning that through double conversion copper>optical and then optical>copper, using FMCs for instance, after that double conversion you got the same data/bits at 100%, but you lost the EMI/RFI that ran along the copper network like "stowaway" besides the data.

By using an optical bridge, the FMCs convert the data, simply because they "understand" them because it is digital data ; the FMCs can't & don't convert the stowaway because it does "look like" digital data but more like noise with analogic behaviour.

Why cutting the copper continuity ? because you with copper network, the continuity goes down to the SMPS of the various devices you have connected on the network. All this creates noise that goes all around. The PC connected to the network does not care about the RFI/EMI, it keeps running like a charm, but a streamer that converts music data to analogic, here, the RFI/EMI seems to goes through the DtoA process and sound is altered by this "noise".

You can say : "there is RFI isolators everywhere thru a copper network". That's true, but in practice it shows big SQ jump thru fiber, so it looks like these isolator don't isolate at 100%...

 

I'm a scientist. I know, that is not a nice & clean way to improve stuff. We test a trick, it works, fine. Then we need experts to explain why it sounds better that way.

It would have be nicer & clever to go from theory to practice. But in that case, we go the other way around.

Not nice, but we saved time becasue we can enjoy now, better music.

Then, I let the experts to explain why it works so well. Personnaly I can't do more than the rough explanation above.

Care to tell us more about the conditions? Post some photos of the setup?

These are links to testing sessions, feedbacks eetc :

- all this story started roughly in this post : http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f22-networking-networked-audio-and-streaming/network-isolation-4265/index6.html#post401825

read next

- Regarding complete optical network it is there : http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f22-networking-networked-audio-and-streaming/optical-network-configurations-24641/

 

I relayed that threads on French audiophile forum (use Google translate, soory I did not translated them, if you thnik it could be relavant, I can do it).

It started last spring, with a lot of feedbacks, all positive. Unfortunatly, the forum crashed last sept, thus all feedbacks are losts. Thus, I re-posted the info regarding the optical stuff into 2 threads :

- optical bridge : Pont optique - Enceintes et Musiques

- optical network : Réseau Optique - Enceintes et Musiques

there you have explanations, shopping list to help people through that new devices & references, feedbacks etc...

[Maldur]

Isolated, but not completely isolated. A lightning strike will travel an Ethernet cable and ruin anything attached to it.

Yes, but this lightning is too much HiEnd for everyday use (at least for me ) I think...

[plissken]

Going optical can be cheaper than a new wifi router. Try 2nd hand.

 

It was my biggest jump in a lower noise floor of the LAN gadgets tried. (medical isolation, cables, lpsu, Acoustic Revive, etc.) . The whole system does matter and there are so many possible scenarios it is hard to have a definitive solution. E.g. your neighbour could be running a ceiling fan which impacts your wifi signal, causing drop outs or other more subtle impacts. Or your renderer could better handle chip noise than another. Or....

 

Highly unlikely if you spend anytime paying attention to setup. I did a wireshark packet capture of my 150n Belkin wireless whilst playing audio. ~3.2GB worth and zero lost/retransmits.

 

I even offered to make the capture available to others here to run analysis on. Guess how many decided to take me up on this.

 

There is too much conjecture, innuendo, and voodoo going on around here vs good solid sleuthing.

[yincr]

"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.". Yogi Berra

I tried optical fiber, and found a significative improvement, lowering the noise floor. As an engineer, I think, sometimes it is more cost effective, doing real tests, than talk. You just have to ordered the products from Amazon, if you feel that is not benefical, just return them. Argueing is not very cost effective either, jaja.

[r_w]

+10

 

Optical LAN is a simple and cheap sonic upgrade, just do it, you'll be glad you did.

 

:-)

 

hi

people who say that rj45 is fine with audio are wrong.

in theory they are right, but not in practice.

 

if you have any streamer, insert an optical bridge between it and your router and you will listen to the nice and big difference.

Change your rj45 based network and switches, and use an switch with SFP ports and connect your devices to it using FMCs, and then you will have a even better SQ than a simple optical bridge.

 

i don't talk about theory, this is the conclusions of testing. See the 2 threads about this.

it sounds better through optical fiber.

A lot of people implemented an optical bridge and 100% say it brings a lot, and it is far more efficient than galvanic isolators.

A lot of people, thus all kind of network architecture and quality of power supply. Thus copper (and wifi) are supposed to be fair enough against EMI RDI but a change to optical network shows that they are not.

Simple as that.

Rgds

[eganz]

+10

 

Optical LAN is a simple and cheap sonic upgrade, just do it, you'll be glad you did.

 

:-)

I already have a small wireless bridge feeding my aurender N100H (currently using the provided tiny SMPS, although eventually to be replaced with an LPS).

Do you think that I will benefit from using optical isolation in this case?

In particular, do we expect the noise introduced by the FMC and its power supply to be substantially less than that from the tiny 150 MHz IOGear type N wireless bridge?

 

E

[tboooe]

I already have a small wireless bridge feeding my aurender N100H (currently using the provided tiny SMPS, although eventually to be replaced with an LPS).

Do you think that I will benefit from using optical isolation in this case?

In particular, do we expect the noise introduced by the FMC and its power supply to be substantially less than that from the tiny 150 MHz IOGear type N wireless bridge?

 

E

My system is like yours. I have a wireless AC bridge downstairs wired to my control PC. I plugged the included smps into my AC power regenerator and had huge gains. Using an lps for the wireless bridge did not change anything. I am going to try optical between my bridge and PC. I am not too keen on adding 2 smps for the FMC so I will use my lps for these. Hopefully I will experience an improvement.

[r_w]

Can't say, haven't done the comparison, only that I NEVER use SMPS on anything connected to the system. It just worked for me that's all I can say (I used an LPS for the FMC from the get go).

 

;-)

 

I already have a small wireless bridge feeding my aurender N100H (currently using the provided tiny SMPS, although eventually to be replaced with an LPS).

Do you think that I will benefit from using optical isolation in this case?

In particular, do we expect the noise introduced by the FMC and its power supply to be substantially less than that from the tiny 150 MHz IOGear type N wireless bridge?

 

E

[Mihaylov]

hi

people who say that rj45 is fine with audio are wrong.

in theory they are right, but not in practice.

 

if you have any streamer, insert an optical bridge between it and your router and you will listen to the nice and big difference.

Change your rj45 based network and switches, and use an switch with SFP ports and connect your devices to it using FMCs, and then you will have a even better SQ than a simple optical bridge.

 

i don't talk about theory, this is the conclusions of testing. See the 2 threads about this.

it sounds better through optical fiber.

A lot of people implemented an optical bridge and 100% say it brings a lot, and it is far more efficient than galvanic isolators.

A lot of people, thus all kind of network architecture and quality of power supply. Thus copper (and wifi) are supposed to be fair enough against EMI RDI but a change to optical network shows that they are not.

Simple as that.

Rgds

 

Hi! Would the gain in sound quality the use of optical isolation between Lan port "Player" and streamer in the case of Melco N1Z and a patch cord AQ Diamond?

Serge