Network config for Roon/Tidal/Youtube/Netflix and 3 teenagers in the house...wired or wifi can make it?

[LewinskiH01]

Yeap, the 3 teenagers in the house is the kicker!

 

Up until now I was using a dedicated server with JRiver, directly connected thru USB to my DAC, and used JRemote on phones and iPad to control JRiver over wifi. Worked well, despite kids watching Netflix and/or Youtube stuff simultaneously.

 

In recent couple weeks I'm experimenting with another (old) PC running Roon core and streaming to the same server mentioned above, now to HQPlayer. Everything is temporary as I wanted to try the concept, which I'm liking. But clearly the wifi network as setup today is not up to this. Stutters the whole time, big time, unusable for music.

 

So one natural solution I think about is wiring the Roon core PC and the HQPlayer PC to the network. I'm sure it will work, but it will be a pain/impossible to make the wires invisible and hence I will be given a hard time. So wondering if others are doing similar tasks over wifi and how you do it? Are there high speed wifi networks? Use a separate network for audio? Does wifi degrade sound somehow? In my mind it shouldn't, but then so many times in audio I have discovered things weren't the way I thought

 

How do I know if the bottleneck is the downloading speed (internet service provider) or the internal network speed?

 

Thanks!

[tboooe]

What wifi are you using at home? Also, are you sure the stuttering is due to the wifi? Perhaps its the server not being able to handle HQplayer. Are you up sampling to DSD128, 256, or 512?

 

What I do at home is use a dual band wireless AC router. One band is for general use while the other is used only for my audio. By the way, AC is overkill. I am able to easily steam 1080p videos with my wireless N router.

[LewinskiH01]

What wifi are you using at home? Also, are you sure the stuttering is due to the wifi? Perhaps its the server not being able to handle HQplayer. Are you up sampling to DSD128, 256, or 512?

 

What I do at home is use a dual band wireless AC router. One band is for general use while the other is used only for my audio. By the way, AC is overkill. I am able to easily steam 1080p videos with my wireless N router.

 

Hey tboooe.

 

No, it's not the server handling HQPlayer. Said server is the one on my signature here, currently used to upsample only to 192/24 and convolve into 6 channels. When playing 96 or 192/24 files it cruises under 10% cpu load.

 

I thought maybe the older PC running Roon could be the bottleneck. But when nobody is watching Netflix, for example, I get no stuttering from 44/16 files in the old pc hard driver, nor when streaming from Tidal>Roon.

 

But one somebody starts watching Netflix, stutter starts. So I'm thinking it's either the downloading speed from the service provider or the home wifi capability.

 

My router is wireless N, and I can also easily stream 1080p movies. But I never tried a 1080p plus Netflix simultaneously...

[tboooe]

What stutters when you watch Netflix? Music or the video?

 

One option could be a dual band router. Use one band for video, the other hand for music.

[LewinskiH01]

What stutters when you watch Netflix? Music or the video?

 

One option could be a dual band router. Use one band for video, the other hand for music.

 

Good question! Music stutters. I don't think Netflix does - I guess I'd be receiving the complaints if it did, which I'm not. Does Netflix buffer data? I would imagine.

 

You are making me think both should stutter if the bottleneck was the internet service diwnloading speed.

 

A dual band router is an option I also consider. I want to make sure I know what the problem is before I start implementing solutions, though. The router I have is the one provided by the internet service provider. I think they'll give me a hard time if I replace it with a different one, but maybe I can add another N router to its ethernet connection and have a separate wireless network.

[tboooe]

I would try getting a wifi analyzer app for your phone and see if there is congestion on your wifi channel. It got a very nice increase in bandwidth and reliability by just changing channels. Also, what wifi is in your PC? Is it N? If not perhaps consider getting a wireless bridge or USB wifi adapter that is at least N. You can go to a website like speedtest.net to test your wifi speeds. Finally I use a wifi ac router in conjunction with my provider supplied modem/wireless router for better performance. You don't have to use the service provider wireless. All you need that box for is to act as gateway to get onto the internet.

[LewinskiH01]

I would try getting a wifi analyzer app for your phone and see if there is congestion on your wifi channel. It got a very nice increase in bandwidth and reliability by just changing channels. Also, what wifi is in your PC? Is it N? If not perhaps consider getting a wireless bridge or USB wifi adapter that is at least N. You can go to a website like speedtest.net to test your wifi speeds. Finally I use a wifi ac router in conjunction with my provider supplied modem/wireless router for better performance. You don't have to use the service provider wireless. All you need that box for is to act as gateway to get onto the internet.

 

Thank you. I ran speedtest.net app on my iPad and says the downloading speed is 5.2Mbps. Is that good?

 

How do you measure channel congestion? I downloaded a wifi analyzing app. Not sure what conclusions I can draw. From the 11 channels I see channels 1 thru 8 mostly at 60%, with 7 to 10 access points on each. These aren't fixed and over time they oscillate from 60 to 80%. Channels 9 to 11 seem to be steadier at 80% although at times they decrease some. And these channels also have about 7 or 8 access points.

BTW, right now I have two Netflix connections streaming and skype video. And music stutters even though I tell Roon to play an album I have on the hard drive (thus downloading speed doesn't play a role, I think).

 

What do you think?

 

Thanks for helping!!

[tboooe]

You need to run the speed test on the pc that is receiving the misic. For the analyzer look for other wifi networks using the same channels as yours or channels that overlap yours.

[LewinskiH01]

You need to run the speed test on the pc that is receiving the misic. For the analyzer look for other wifi networks using the same channels as yours or channels that overlap yours.

 

OK. I ran the speedtest.net from the computer hosting HQPlayer and I get 3.1Mbps download speed. Is that ok?

 

Regarding the wifi analyzer, attached is a picture of what I see. Psycho-net is my network. What should this tell me?

[LewinskiH01]

 

And the attachment

[tboooe]

OK. I ran the speedtest.net from the computer hosting HQPlayer and I get 3.1Mbps download speed. Is that ok?

 

Regarding the wifi analyzer, attached is a picture of what I see. Psycho-net is my network. What should this tell me?

 

3.1 mbps is pretty slow. Try this, start playing music and look at Taskmgr in Windows to see how the send and receive speeds are. When streaming DSD128 files my receive speed is over 40 mbps. When streaming 96/24 file, receive speed is consistently 10 mbps. Using speedtest, my download speeds is 14 mbps. This is using wireless AC.

 

You may want to look into your DAC usb buffer control panel. Try increasing the buffer size.

As for the wifi channels, it looks like there are several other networks using channel 6? Looks like channel 3 or 1 is less congested?

[LewinskiH01]

3.1 mbps is pretty slow. Try this, start playing music and look at Taskmgr in Windows to see how the send and receive speeds are. When streaming DSD128 files my receive speed is over 40 mbps. When streaming 96/24 file, receive speed is consistently 10 mbps. Using speedtest, my download speeds is 14 mbps. This is using wireless AC.

 

You may want to look into your DAC usb buffer control panel. Try increasing the buffer size.

As for the wifi channels, it looks like there are several other networks using channel 6? Looks like channel 3 or 1 is less congested?

 

Tried it: playing 192/24 file from the Roon server HDD, download speed on the HQPlayer machine as seen on Taskmgr is about 5 Mbps (4 to 6.5 Mbps). While measuring this there is one device streaming Netflix and another YouTube videos.

 

What does this say? Wifi speed to the HQPlayer machine is being limited by the use of other devices to stream Netflix? Maybe I should get another router and connect it to the ether net port in my existing router and configure a second wifi network dedicated to Roon?

 

Or go with wired?

 

Thanks a lot for spending time on this!