Better sound with ethernet cable?


I'm presently streaming music WIRELESS from my WiFi router to my Yamaha receiver.  I was told I would get better sound if I ran an ethernet cable. It's a fairly long run, maybe 50 feet total by the time I fish down through the basement and back up.  Before I drill holes and fish through the basement, I may just run it across my living room and see if it improves the sound.  Also, in my manual there are two different instruction for hooking up to wired or wireless. Can I just plug in the cable now or will I have to re-connect through the wired instructions?  Thanks for any input.  Doug
128x128dwhess
hardwired is good.....suggest using a quality shielded ethernet cable as well
What Ethernet gives you: Absolute reliability, less radiated noise near your music.


Will you hear a difference? I'm not sure. It depends a great deal on your Wi-Fi environment. Like here I'm near 20-30 other Wifi signals all competing for the same bandwidth. That can absolutely have an effect, and my Squeezebox Touch doesn't have 5GHz so it is really not very reliable at all on wifi.


I would say, if possible, use Ethernet to stream to your main devices (TV, audio) and Wifi to get to the not so important places.


There are good apps for your phone and maybe PC that help you see your Wifi neighbors, and pick out less used channels.


Best,

E
It shouldn’t matter. In either case, wireless or Ethernet, you’re sending just data (no real D/A timing involved). Both can produce electrical noise, radiated or coupled, that might affect the sound but it’s hard to tell which one will sound better and I bet you have/use wireless router anyway. I use wireless (Airport Express) and had dropouts on 2.4GHz. I switched to 5GHz and had no dropout since.
Whoa, oh my...I see no gurus when it comes to wireless vs hard wired. I could copy/paste all day why hard wired is better.