Ethernet or WiFi?

[plissken]

I think WiFi is the answer to most peoples streaming audio.

 

There are only two things to consider: Throughput as measured in bits per second and latency as measured with the Ping command and is in milliseconds round trip.

 

For $100 I have a dedicated WAP and WiFi adapter I have setup on it's own SSID and Channel for streaming music. I routinely hit 38MB/s and 2ms ping. I can transfer an entire CD in ~ 20 seconds. 

 

The important piece is how your client playback device is setup. I use JRiver and use 1GB of system memory to simply cache everything up. I can put the system into airplane mode and the music still plays.

 

Remember you aren't playing on the network adapter. You are playing back out of system RAM. Even dedicated streamers operate this way. NAIM with their Unity series touts about 2-3 minutes of cached playback. 

 

 

 

 

[plissken]

40 minutes ago, davide256 said:

Saw this article  posted the other day, in general I agree with it

 

https://darko.audio/2018/08/ethernet-or-wifi-which-is-better-for-high-end-audio-streaming/

 

 

It's Darko so I take anything he says or passes on with a grain of salt. Remember he can hear the difference between two 3 foot Ethernet cables (which is just laughable). I've certainly offered Darko my $5000 to his $1000 to prove this by bias controlled evaluation.

 

Either wired or wireless, when designed properly, will be indistinguishable. Now if I were to desolder the magnetics package from a wired Ethernet adapter and wire direct you will hear all sorts of stuff. If high cost audio vendors just use Intel packages and their reference designs they'll be fine if they are a decent EE.

 

What can't be argued is that Wireless breaks the physical loop.

 

I have a problem with Auralic's statement:

 

" The Ethernet cable is [also] a big problem. It runs long and can pick up low-frequency noise which cannot be filtered out. This noise will introduce jitter at low frequencies which no PLL circuit can get rid of and it will affect sound quality a lot. "

 

Both the Seimons paper "The Antenna Myth" and T.I.'s paper "Reducing radiated emissions of 10/100 LAN Applications" would be at odds with Auralic. As a matter of fact "The Antenna Myth" talks about Ethernet cabling being 'Noise Immune' down at the double digit Hz range. Their words, not mine.