Ethernet or wireless; is there a difference in quality?

[LikeButtah]

Hey gang,

Long time listener, first time caller. I'm a budding audiophile thinking of getting a squeezebox. My question is fairly straightforward: if I was looking for the best possible sound quality, how should I connect the box to my network? I know wireless isnt great for audio streaming, but doesnt slimserver stream files THEN play them on the box itself?

Help please!

[pfarrell]

LikeButtah wrote:
> Long time listener, first time caller. I'm a budding audiophile
> thinking of getting a squeezebox. My question is fairly
> straightforward: if I was looking for the best possible sound quality,
> how should I connect the box to my network? I know wireless isnt great
> for audio streaming, but doesnt slimserver stream files THEN play them
> on the box itself?

The Server streams that data in a supported format, and then the
SqueezeBox plays it, realtime. As a budding audiophile, you have to
use a lossless format, and the one to use is FLAC as the SqueezeBox can
compress it on the fly.

With a SB3, your files stay compressed over the air. So you
might be happy with wireless.

But true audiophiles drag Ethernet cable from a high speed switch.

Connect the SqueezeBox to a good 100baseT switch using CAT5e or better
cable. Connect your computer to the same box with the same cable type.
Put the SlimServer box in the basement or someplace far from your
audiophile system, so you can not hear all the fans, disk noise, etc.



--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

[Sleestack]

LikeButtah wrote:[color=blue]
But true audiophiles drag Ethernet cable from a high speed switch.

--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

How does this impact sound quality? Is there any data/evidnce of the differences? I really would like to know.

[opaqueice]

How does this impact sound quality? Is there any data/evidnce of the differences? I really would like to know.

I assume he simply means putting the PC far from the SB so as to avoid noise from fans. That's not a very good reason - my PC is essentially totally silent; it's very easy to build or buy one like that these days. Furthermore you can have the PC far away and still use wireless...

The sound quality of a wired and wireless connections is identical, so long as the wireless network has enough bandwidth to transmit a FLAC or WAV file as opposed to some compressed format. That's never been a problem for my network, and if it is it will manifest itself as a stoppage in the music, not as decreased sound quality.

The information sent to the SB buffer is exactly the same in both cases - first it gets sent, is received by the SB, then it is processed and played back (again by the SB). There are essentially no bit errors due to TCP/IP error checking (both for wired and wireless). So there is no way there can be any difference, unless you believe that the different processing required for wired versus wireless incoming data packets affects the sound, in which case you'd better check the phase of the moon as well.

[pfarrell]

Sleestack wrote:[color=blue]
> Pat Farrell;132913 Wrote:
>
>>LikeButtah wrote:
>>But true audiophiles drag Ethernet cable from a high speed switch.
>>
>
> How does this impact sound quality? Is there any data/evidnce of the
> differences? I really would like to know.

It is not about quality.
The problem is dropouts. If the music is there, delivered by the
TCP/IP connection errorlessly, the sound is the same.

Lossless is lossless.

But WiFi transmissions can fail with small glitches that require
retransmissions, which break the flow of the stream, which breaks
the music.

WiFI can be disrupted by a long list of things, including your microwave
oven, a wireless landline phone, your neighbor's kid using massive
amount of traffic with bittorrent, etc.

Using a wire to a high speed switch makes the delivery vastly more
robust.


--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

[pfarrell]

opaqueice wrote:
> Sleestack;132914 Wrote:
>>How does this impact sound quality? Is there any data/evidnce of the
>>differences? I really would like to know.
>
>
> I assume he simply means putting the PC far from the SB so as to avoid
> noise from fans. That's not a very good reason - my PC is essentially
> totally silent; it's very easy to build or buy one like that these
> days.

It is easy, but I'd rather spend the money on more CDs.
Putting the PC far away is easy.


> Furthermore you can have the PC far away and still use
> wireless...

It is correct that distance is not an issue.
I can not get audiophile quality over wireless in my house.
YMMV


> The sound quality of a wired and wireless connections is identical, so
> long as the wireless network has enough bandwidth to transmit a FLAC or
> WAV. That's never been a problem for my network, and if it is it will
> manifest itself as a stoppage in the music, not as decreased sound
> quality.

Right. Dropouts are not a small, subtle degredataion.
But they do cause a decrease in the quality of listening.


> There are essentially no
> bit errors due to TCP/IP error checking (both for wired and wireless).
> So there is no way there can be any difference, unless you believe that
> the different processing for wired versus wireless incoming data
> packets affects the sound, in which case you'd better check the phase
> of the moon as well.

No need to be snotty. It is about throughput.
I use wireless for my Squeezeboxes that I use for causal
listening. For my audiophile system, there is a wire.



--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

[Sleestack]

Thanks. Haven't had any problems with dropouts thus far, so I'll stick to wireless unless it becomes an issue.

[opaqueice]

No need to be snotty. It is about throughput.
I use wireless for my Squeezeboxes that I use for causal
listening. For my audiophile system, there is a wire.

OK, sorry :-). For a moment I was worried you had fallen into the voodoo audiophile camp...

Personally I've almost never had problems with wireless dropouts, and I live in one of the most densly inhabited and wired places on earth, so I think it's reasonably robust in regards to interference. However if it did happen with any regularity it would certainly be extrememly annoying.

[JohnSwenson]

Here is a slightly different view on this. The wifi one IS a radio transmitter, a lot of audiophiles spend a lot of effort trying to keep RFI out of their systems. SOME systems/configurations can have the sound quality subtly degraded by RFI pickup on the interconnects, power cords etc. Given the above does it make sense to put a radio transmitter right next to your system?

I've tried this in a three different systems (mine and two friends), in my system I can hear a small difference in sound quality with the wifi, one friends made no difference at all, and in the other system it made a big difference, the wifi mode made a significant degradation in the sound.

So its hard to say whether the wifi will or will not effect the sound of your system.

I went with the wired for my system, primarily because of dropouts, my neighboorhood has a lot of wifi networks and wireles everything going on, streaming audio in this environment is very problematic, even with the large buffer in the newer SBs. The sound change from using wifi wasn't very large, so if there had been an overwhelming reason to choose wifi I would have gon that route, but given the dropouts and the relative ease of adding the CAT5, I just went with wired.

John S.

[moshulu]

I'm thinking about moving my wireless SB3 to a different part of my living room, mostly for convenience (so I can read the display from where I usually sit). As it happens, the new location would be near my wireless router, which has wire ports as well. So I might as well try running a CAT5 cable to the SB3. I'll have to run a 25-foot 75-ohm coax to my DAC, but I figure that the SB will be able to drive it (or am I wrong about that?).

My question is: how will I be able to let the SB know that I want it to connect via the cable, given that the radio signal will still be there? I plan to leave the Slimserver PC on wireless (it's in another room) - is that OK? I could put it on a cable as well, if necessary.

Many thanks for any advice.

moshulu