Wifi vs ethernet revisited

@debrajray I am getting a headache!  I surely don't know.  but it seems to me that ANY additional traffic on the clean side is detrimental. Of course it is easy, say on my phone or laptop, to jump to cleanwifi to control my audio if my ipad is awol.

A Verizon compatible modem that can split out two LANs is interesting, but isn't that essentially what I have done?  Plus I do use wired outputs on the main non audio LAN to feed my TVs as well as the Eero units.

I certainly did not design my front end from the ground up, but implemented many improvements one at a time over years.  I read a good switch makes a big difference, tried it and found it to be true.  No skepticism from that point forward.  But I did find less expensive changes were harder to appreciate, including the Bonn 8 switch and the Ether Regen. Good power supplies for the modem and switches make a huge difference.

@fastfreight to go easy on the headache let’s temporarily forget about the mechanics of the audio path (the extra switches etc). I have some observations on this but forget that for now. The only thing I am saying is to completely separate the audio LAN from any wifi on that LAN, and just use the eero on a separate LAN. If I understand well you still have to switch from eero to the other WiFi when you need to control. Avoiding that would also be a bonus. Plus it’s “cleaner” no?

PS The tv can go with an unmanaged switch on the non-audio LAN or even on a third port from the main router. Anyway you have that already I think. 

Good Morning @debrajray ,   I certainly concur that any wifi on the audio LAN can  create noise.  But the Clean Wifi (wifi on the clean network) is designed to have minimal impact by its designer Chris at DeJitterit.  Also, there are no other appliances on it to chat with except my one ipad, so minimal traffic.  I would refer you to DeJitterit to further cull this thought, Chris is great, brilliant and approachable if you are interested.   He helped me get it all set up.  I keep my ipad on this clean network, so there is not much switching back and forth.  Everything else in my home weather wired or not, is on the main LAN.

I think this is simpler that trying to get my Eero wifi to jump over to the clean network every time I want to play / search with Roon.

I also have some Sonos gear, bedroom, bathroom and soundbar, again all on the main network.

I think a lot of people forget how much traffic in a typical home is on their Lan, and it grows continuously.  TV's, Wireless speakers, thermostats, cameras, security, PHONES, and now even kitchen appliances, lighting and even more.

@fastfreight I don't get the need to have ipad on clean side of network. I  use Android tablet getting wifi from the dirty or daisy chained whole house router for my Roon remote, has no problem seeing my server/streamer on clean side.

I also find your differing experience in regard to switches to be par for the course, many differing views and experiences with audiophile switches. I can only say my experience with  a Renolabs switch was inferior to no switch, and I kept things on level playing field using same top quality power cord and Audioquest Vodka ethernet cable. With switch in chain excessive focused images, far too precise image outlines, I strive for more live music presentation in which images blend somewhat on a large sound stage. I've found I can manipulate sound staging/imaging quite easily with my streaming chain, this also with I2S or usb setups which are both optimized. I've theorized this mostly due to differences in implementation of clocks in these devices. Harmonizing all the clocks in streaming devices/chain can be a tricky  thing.

Hello @sns,  Always enjoy hearing from you!  Yes clock harmonization and redundancy is an issue.  It could easily be an argument for combined streamer / DAC where it would obviously be optimized.  Instead, great streamers tend to have upgraded clocking, which we then bypass with USB to get to our even better clock on our DAC or outboard clock.  With my Nadac C and D, USB is the way to go to use the MF clock.  With my Grimm MU1 I like AES into my Tambaqui.

With the clean network / wifi discussion, I think maybe it is the way my DeJitterit switch / modem walls off its clean network, but I can not see anything on this side from my main network, either on wifi or connected macbook.  I believe this is the way this is designed.  In your system, how do you create 'clean side'?