Streaming: WiFi or wired??

In this thread, I have read some references being made to "noise" in the PSUs and/or wifi signals. This is completely irrelevant.  The wifi signals (and hence the audio signals in the data packets) are carried in a digitized way and the PSU noise of the wifi and/or wired AP has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the quality of the analog signal you will achieve after it has passed thru your DAC.   Any AP noise issues will be automatically taken care of by re transmissions and CRC checks and error correction algorithms.

Cakyol

That is true however I have seen some network switch product white papers that claim network Wire noise can make its way Into the signal from streamer to dac where it might have an effect on jitter that might be heard in some cases. The switch is advertised for audio applications to address that.

That is definitely not an issue with wireless connections.

Also, with higher frequencies (at 5G) , your signal degrades quicker so distance becomes more of an issue. This is laws of physics and you just have to live with it.

This and the fact that higher frequencies penetrate walls poorly prevent interference from outside.  In addition on 2.4GHz band each channel is 3.5 channel wide, so in reality there are only 3 to 4 completely independent channels.  My microwave was on one of them causing dropouts, neighbor on another etc.  I've never had dropout, since I switched to 5GHz (less traffic, more channels etc).  With WiFi I don't have to worry about anything on computer side.  Receiver (Airport Express) has small jitter on digital output, but it is suppressed by the DAC (Benchmark DAC3).

@mlsstl, future proofing is a good point to bring up and one I really wasn't thinking about.

We live within a half mile of a major area hospital, which generally means a T3 level service...now, who knows, who cares...*L*

Our net service is spectacular....wired locally, so our wireless within is great.

Just 'stupid lucky', I guess. *S*

Back in Houston, we lived about the same distance from a major software company, also T3 when it was rare.  We'd get calls about cable service; the one's that Knew what we had wished us well.  Those that didn't got told to 'go ask your sup what a T3 line Is' and get back to us'. *click*

They never did.

Got spoiled disgusting.  Entire complex had a LAN created by the management (a real geek); some tenants were early 'day traders' (you could tell the good ones by their car), some 24/7 'gamers' that slept on the floor, only there for the low latency.

Had a Fantastic trove of music files...10K+, pick your genre'.

It got busted.  A third of the tenants moved....*sigh*

We did as well later, but for different reasons....