Wifi vs hardwired for streaming

Wifi can be great in an uncongested area.  Stand alone home with short distances it is a toss up.  Congested signal space and long distances or heavy use of metal studs degrades performance.  Any cheap cat 5 or better will be rock solid reliable.

Get a free wifi analyzer app to understand your situation.

I do use a mesh extender in 1 room but the backhaul is 1gig E

My experience is that wifi and ethernet can sound equally good in theory. Sometimes a particular streamer favors one or the other, so it depends on your devices. 

Ethernet will be the most straight forward way to guarantee great performance as long as your house allows it.

When I do a speed test with Wi-Fi devices, the speed is usually close to what I expect but it does vary considerably. Ethernet is more stable and has much less speed variation. How your streamer handles the speed fluctuations may affect its performance. 

I don’t stream to my main system using WiFi. Too many dropouts in the past with hi-res audio. Now I run a long ethernet cable thru my attic, from a switch in my 2nd floor home office to my 2nd floor listening room. But not something from Best Buy. I use tested/certified Belden Cat6 cable from Blue Jeans Cable.

The only part I run on Wifi (because I have no choice) is with a WiiM Mini, and that’s just to support Apple Airplay2 on my DAC. I rarely use that protocol, except on occasion to stream something from Youtube on my laptop to my hifi. Otherwise I use Roon for all my digital music, hardwired to ethernet.

No one needs Cat7 or Cat8 in any home application. Cat 5e is good enough for high-res streaming, but pretty much everything is now standardized for home use at Cat6 or Cat6a, and that is what I use.

My mid-50's ranch is swathed in aluminum siding and has two wire circuitry in most parts of the house. I have recently switched to fiber internet with newer mesh units and the video has improved, primarily in terms of buffering and general connectivity. Also, dropping AT&T copper internet has all but eliminated wifi dropouts and general bandwidth issues.

That being said, my streamer is is about ten feet away from my router and is plugged into a different circuit. I'm using an ethernet connection using a slightly upgraded cable. Unless I move my system to another end of the house, I will stick with wired a connection. I can't easily make a long ethernet run due to having a slab construction and an attic full of cellulose.