Noise Pollution from Wireless Routers

[mgoldin]

A person well versed in system setup has said that wireless routers contribute to noise pollution, if they are near your audio equipment, and should be turned off for critical listening.

 

Any comments on this opinion?

 

[aljordan]

I think you should try it for yourself. I heard a couple people say the same thing, so I modded a router so that I could turn wireless on and off via a switch on the front panel of the router. The router sits in a room next to my listening room.

 

I don't hear a difference either way and I have a fairly resolving system.

 

Alan

 

[existentialhero]

Modern wireless networking equipment operates on radios modulated at gigahertz frequencies, so the RFI they generate directly should be ridiculously far beyond the audio band, and all your equipment should have very capable radio-frequency filters anyway. I'd say that a more likely source of interference would be noisy switching power supplies like the wall-warts that come with a lot of consumer routers. Whether this is a problem for your system is something you can most easily ascertain bygiving it a test as aljordan suggests.

 

[Paul R]

Some people hear a difference, for whatever reason. The best thing is to try it.

 

If I disabled all the wireless around my house, we would all feel like we were back in the stone age, so it isn't an option here. However, just in case, I run all the audio equipment with wired connections, even if they are connected to a small switch and that small switch is bridged to the network by an Airport Express. The AE is at least a meter or so distant from any audio gear.

 

Don't know if it really makes a difference, but it makes me feel better. Besides, all the computers and audio gear runs better when it is wired, and the AE just has bridge duty, running wide channels in the 5ghz band.

 

-Paul

 

 

[mgoldin]

Good advice from those who replied. Thank you.

 

[Audio_ELF]

Any noise pollution from wireless router may be more down to the cheap SMPSU they usually use rather than the wireless signal itself...

 

[EuroChamp]

I prefer the wireless connection.

In my specific setup, wireless network connection of the audio computer running Win 7 sounds better than the cable connection.

And there is no audio signal running over this network connection, I use it for remote control only.

The cable adds some noise which degrades the sound...

 

This not exactly what you asked for, I know :-)

 

Enjoy listening,

Bernhard

 

P.S.: For my desktop computer I prefer the faster cable link - of course!

 

[ggking7]

In my system, I can hear a small but significant difference between setting my Dlink router's power to 12.5% and 25%. The router is about 14 feet from my audio gear.

 

My music server sits right next to my audio gear and I can hear another small but significant difference between setting the txpower of its wireless card to 9 (which maintains a connection to the router) and 0 (which does not). 17 is the default for this card which is a Ubiquiti SR71-E plugged into a PCIe adapter. I have the same card installed in my laptop and set to txpower 0 and it works great. My laptop is typically about 5 feet from the router.

 

I've ordered extension wires so I can move the antennas to the other side of the music server where they will be further from the audio gear and closer to the router. I'm hoping I'll then be able to set txpower 0 and maintain a connection.

 

By the way, the Linux command for changing the txpower is (depending on the name of your wireless interface):

 

iwconfig wlan0 txpower 9