Repeater/extenders are evil!
As highly recommended by dCS, I had the Xfinity tech move the router/modem to near the DAC and Streamer. All he had to do was run the coax line around the outside of the house and connect it to an existing cable coax that was already there in the wall. It took about an hour and only cost me $70 for the service call.
Guess if you have no existing wall port, it would be fairly simple to drill and create one. Maybe in that case there would be a bit more cost.
But go for it!
For decades, I was a die hard analog guy. Previously, I only used my DAC for TV. Music was way digital sounding. Edgy, hard, disturbing. No more.
It still does not sound more organic than analog, but I now find myself enjoying streaming and not listening much to my TT. I am finally enjoying the benefits of digital. Even though not perfect, the soul of the artists shine through.
If you are connecting by using an extender, get rid of it and hard wire directly to your modem/router.
Maybe it’s my ears, but I don’t think I can hear any difference between my Netgear Nighthawk hard wired or WiFi. My current streamer doesn’t have WiFi, so I’m using a Netgear Powerline PLP2000 with great success.
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Today, my Aurender W20SE arrives! Looking forward to a major improvement in SQ. But just using the built in streamer in my dCS Lina DAC it sounds really good after hard wiring. So much so that now for two days I have listened only to digital. Am accepting the deficiencies of digital and enjoying all the benefits. I have gone over to the dark side! Going down the digital rabbit hole, I have watched many YouTubes. Took a small step by ordering two tweaks from Amazon Prime. The Ifi LAN Silencer for $89 and their upscale wall wart for $69. If they don’t work I will send them back. Does anyone have experience with the Synergistic Research Network Switch and Router? These each are about $2K. I do not particularly care for that company. |
@mglik congrats on the new Aurender streamer!!! I have good news and not so good news for you. Good news - Aurender caches your streamed music to a large SSD cache Not so good news - Because the Aurender caches the songs and or playlists onto its built in SSD cache, as long as you have adequate download speed, bringing the router over and hard wiring from router to Aurender or using mesh network or a good extender will unlikely to make any audible difference, so you kind of spent $70 that you didn’t need to spend. But you have a piece of mind which is priceless. Enjoy!!! As a side note…I’ve never compared direct vs. mesh network but I can tell you I have absolutely no issues with the EERO strategically placed around the house. |
@curiousjim It is not your ears but it may be your neighborhood!! :) A good Wifi signal can do justice to any music, but wifi signals do go bad. I’m lucky enough to live in a detached home with excellent wall to wall signal coverage and no channel conflicts with my neighbors. When I lived in an apartment complex I was not so lucky and every channel on either band was swamped. Some of those problems were made worse because of the Xfinity routers which put out separate SID’s for their mobile service in addition to the one you paid for, so twice as many signals would be out per router. I'm also lucky enough to have a dedicated Ethernet from my data closet to my TV and entertainment center as well as my work PC, and I absolutely use it.
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