Wifi vs USB

My music server streams wirelessly to my Transporter, which I use as a network player and DAC. I am very happy w the sound but I have never compared it to a hard-wired connection.

Check out my system listing. The wireless digital sounds fantastic and 90% of my detailed listening these days goes that way.

I am streaming wirelessly from my music server (iMac 24 - 1TB) set up in my office, to the system down the hall - using the Modwright Transporter.

Sound seems to be at least the equal if not better than the AMR CD-77. Srajan of 6moons felt the same, however his Transporter was using stock tubes, and now they are coming modded with Bybee purifiers too.

Phenomenal sound. Drop me a line if I can be of further help.

Good question.Seems like the streaming thing should work as long as wifi is working right and DAC quality is critical not how it get's there though this is assumption.Transporter of course is really good.Intriguing product is new Naim all in one Wifi CD Player DAC Tone named product as product of year.Maybe the CD really is dead but i feel going from LP to CD lost huge ammount of tactile involvement (and some aspects of sonics) when we went to CD and now losing CD's is less of a big deal but there is no "there" there.Like Books to Kindle I guess one get's used to it.If it's account with crappy 256 MP3's that one thing but now with some companies like Linn offering expensive super high resolution download maybe their (Linn's press release)prediction of physical library will come to pass and digital just will get better a source and playback improves at pace with better chips,tubes,Bybee's or other tweeks.And will it filter down to lower priced Hifi.Makes you wonder what will be the "gotta have" tech in 10 years.Know this went off course but got me thinking about how many folks are going hard drive audio and how many used Cd's you can find in stores as folks just rip them to FLAC or WAVE and what a shift that is and next streaming as means of marketing and use of media.
Chazz

Thanks for the tip, will check them out.
Art

Roku vs Squeezebox vs Transporter vs Apple Extreme?
Art

Roku or Squeezebox for a PC, Apple Extreme for the Apple world.

Squeezebox is rumored to have a better built in DAC for better sound out of the box and costs more. Roku costs less. I use external DACs with Roku for best sound. Many do with Squeezebox also.

Also Logitech seems more active in releasing new versions of Squuezebox these days whereas Roku Soundbridge design has been more static. Newer higher bandwidth wireless N support might be useful if Logitech provides that yet and your Wifi router supports it, but Wireless G works fine as well and costs less.

Logitech is oddly quiet on the topic of 802.11N
Sigh.
Art

Art,

I did upgrade to a top of the line Netgear wireless N router recently from a secod or third generation Linksys that I had been running for years. I found this has helped with throughput to my Rokus, which are only wireless G, despite technically the same maximum wireless bandwidth, in that the range appears to be greater and I believe the processors and software used are faster and more efficient.

We tend to forget sometimes that devices like routers are just specialized computers with specialized processing, software etc. This kind of processing generally gets better and faster over time, and not all modern routers are created equal. A faster more efficient router still helps even if the pipeline from router to wireless devices still has essentially the same capacity (wireless G protocol) as before.

I don't believe the Transporter's performance would benefit from 802.11N as G is plenty fast for streaming audio, even high-rez. But if you are running an all-N network, having a G device on it drags down the performance of the entire network. I have that problem with TiVo, but whatcha gonna do?

If its the only device using the network and everything is set up optimally, probably not. I'm thinking in scenarios where units are further apart and there are multiple concurrent network users (as is often the case in my house) it might.