External wireless hard drives and sound quality

[coverto]

Hi,

 

I've seen a couple of people ask the question - can you stream wirelessly from an external drive and still have good sound quality? Well, my initial experiment has turned up negative.

 

I recently moved all my music files from the internal hard drive on my Macbook Pro to an external drive. This Glyph 1TB drive is streaming wirelessly to the MBP now, and the sound is terrible. Fatiguing high end and a mid and lower-range that has lost dimension. I originally thought Snow Leopard might be the problem, but tried playing from the internal drive with Snow Leopard and it sounded great again. I'm out of town for a couple of days and have yet to try the external Glyph drive with a Firewire connection, but I have the feeling that will probably sound great too, based on all the testimony I've read.

 

My question is - is there a way to make it sound good WITH the wireless connection, which would be far more convenient than firewire or USB?

 

[Audio_ELF]

You don't say what software you use to playback your music.

 

With software such as Pure Vinyl or Amarra which will play from memory, there may be less chance that using the drive wirelessly affects sound quality.

 

Have you tried using a wired ethernet connection as an alternative too?

 

Eloise

 

[coverto]

Eloise - thanks for the response. Currently, I'm just using iTunes for playback. Given that bare-bones iTunes sounds great when playing music from the internal hard drive, I'd wonder if there still wouldn't be differences in sound quality between music from an external wireless, wired or internal drive whether using Pure Vinyl, Amarra, or whatever, but don't doubt I could be wrong on that. On the other hand, I'd love to find a solution that doesn't involve shelling out more money for software! As for ethernet, I haven't yet been able to experiment, but as i said, my goal is to find a wireless alternative.

 

[barrows]

Wireless is not as fast or bombproof as wired connections, is your wireless network also being used for other tasks while streaming music? Are you playing high res files?

It would not take much effort to try the free trial (15 day) of Pure Music, and use the memory play mode-this might help as it loads each track into memory before playing it back. You do not have to pay any money to try Pure Vinyl, I am not sure it would help, but it is worth a try.

Personally, I do not think wireless networks are generally good enough for high end playback, and running some ethernet cable around is not that hard.

 

[Audio_ELF]

Barrows said... "Personally, I do not think wireless networks are generally good enough for high end playback, and running some Ethernet cable around is not that hard."

I guess running Ethernet cables isn't difficult, but there is a certain elegance to a wire-free connection; though having said that if you then have to run a cable to your DAC it does kind of defeat the object there.

 

A couple more thoughts...

Is your Glyph drive wired to the network, or is that also connecting via wireless. If the latter then you already have two wireless links.
If you have several wireless devices, you could consider adding a second Wireless Access Point (WAP) dedicated to link your Mac to the Glyph drive. Though this would cost similar to Pure Music which might be a better route.

 

You don't meantion (I don't think) what DAC you use and how you are connecting it to your Macbook which (probably) isn't important but may help.

 

Eloise

 

[coverto]

Thanks again for the feedback. To answer your questions, Eloise, the Glyph drive is connected via USB to an Airport Extreme which is getting DSL from the wall. The Airport Extreme is streaming to the MacBook Pro, which in turn is connected via USB to the DAC. I'm not using the wireless connection for anything else - the sound is problematic when I'm doing nothing with the computer but streaming music. And like I said, everything sounded great when the MacBook Pro was drawing music from its own internal drive, so I don't think the problem is with the DAC.

 

So despite my desire for that "certain elegance" of a wireless connection, as Eloise put it, I'm wondering whether you aren't right, Barrows, that wireless is always going to be problematic if I'm looking for good sound.

 

So I guess maybe my best option is to run a firewire (400 or 800?) from the Glyph to the MBP, so I have two cables going in and out of the MBP when playing music? Not ideal, but not a huge problem if I put the Glyph drive and the DAC next to each other so both cables are kind of running from the same place. Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

[mwheelerk]

I am curious about this subject also. I would be interested in any comments and feedback with regards to my set up and the differences between wired and wireless. I currently have an iMac with an external HD connected via Firewire where my iTunes library resides. All my files are Apple Lossless. My network is wireless using a Time Capsule as both my back up HD and wireless router. I have an Apple TV. I use the optical digital output to my DAC and then into my system. I have been pleased with what I am hearing but then again I have never tried and ethernet connection from my iMac to the Apple TV (I am assuming that is the connection I would make. It would be a little messy running an ethernet cable but not impossible. Any thoughts or opinions?

Thank You

Mike

 

[Edu Carvalho]

This is a very interesting topic. I personally am thinking in connecting my mac mini via time capsule wiresly. The benefits, on my case, is that I can put the TC and the "other HDDS connected to it via USB" in another place since the rack where my Mac mini and DACs are are completelly crowded. They would be 2 meters apart from each other and I intend to use Pure Music in memory play mode. Did any one of you try this solution and compared to a wired HDD?

 

Cheers,

Edu