Streamers in 2023 - Discussion, Impressions, etc

Bluetooth is inherently lossy, no point following that path.

WiFi is going to pass the exact same data as Ethernet, so should not be any different. But, this being the hobby it is, if you don't think WiFi sounds good enough, then nothing I can say will change your mind.

If you want a wired connection, then you have no choice to roll out a wired connection.

 

Seems odd to try and spam a website in a language not commonly used here..

 

You might be able to do 16/44 reliably over Bluetooth, but it may not be consistent because it is adaptive based on signal strength. LDAC supports 24/96 in theory, but it is not really considered lossless for the above reason. Even though wifi will be susceptible to more interference, IMO it would be the better choice.

 

Does your new room have ordinary coax cable? If so and you really want a hard-wired connection - and presuming there's another cable outlet close to your router - you could use MoCA to get Ethernet to the streamer.

Otherwise, like others have said above, Wi-Fi would be superior to Bluetooth.

 

If you are going in that direction Ethernet over Powerline is an option too. I've used it to extend my wired network to my detached garage, it is more consistent than wifi. Can't speak to its suitability for audio though.

 

Quick word of warning here: I implemented a MoCA system to hardwire my music streamer at the time (Holo Red), but I messed up and wound up creating two different networks--one wired network via MoCA and a separate WiFi network. If this happens to you, make sure that everything is on that same network: either the wired/MoCA network or the WiFI network. I use Roon, and initially I had my Roon Core (running on a Mac mini) hooked up to the wired/MoCA network but my Roon Bridge (Holo Red streamer) on the WiFi network. This meant that Roon could not consistently find the Holo Red. (Roon found the Holo Red just often enough to drive me insane before I realized the problem.)

 

thank for all of the reply's. currently using bluetooth and am working on getting a hardwired line installed.
best,
Josh

 

I've extended one of my networks with MoCA adapters with great success as opposed to...

These things never work out for me.

First, they only work if all the outlets are on the same circuit? Same breaker?
Second, I had one that would drop the network connection every few seconds. Some kind of signal negotiation? Made streaming unreliable while regular network stuff appeared mostly OK.

Some streamers can work through an access point (Airplay?) while some cannot (LInn, for sure). That is, a Wifi-to-Ethernet bridge, or something like the Orbi and its satellites. I would avoid anything like that, too.

 

Nothing except the power supply is not a single unit $39 noisy shit, and the cooling does not compete with vacuum cleaners. If you use USB, which I have to from time to time, you do not need spend time crawling through your USB setup to find one bus that not sound like a convection oven with a turkey inside.

But seriously, I know nothing about audio hardware design but encountered enough situations when cleaning up the power supply was not th difference between worse or better sound, it was the difference between a piece of equipment being usable or not.

So I am not going to just assume that the power supply and the USB architecture like on this picture, Holo Red, does not make a difference. In think it actually does, even comparing to an excellent streamer like Pi2AES. I actually would like to have a chance to compare Pi2AES with grossly overbuilt power supply, and four pounds machined aluminum case, because and it may be the only reason why Holo Red has a little bit darker background, and slightly better instrument separation. I do not know that, but I would love it to be the case.
I am not emotionally attached to red.

 

They recommend using them on the same circuit and that is logically the best plan if you can do it. IME they do work across the bus bar but obviously every location is different, so I can't speak to your specific situation. You do lose a lot of speed with distance, I'm only getting about 150Mb/s, but that is still more than adequate for my purposes, and latency is better than wifi. I'd expect if the signal strength is borderline they will be unreliable, the same as any transport medium really. There is some negotiation for the encryption (so people can't plug into an outlet and be on your network), but that I think that only happens at startup so I dunno. It works fine for my alarm system and security camera in the garage, but I have not used it for audio so your YMM definitely V.

 

Is a big fat wifi router not doable? I was originally planning to mesh or do multiple access points in my house (or maybe bug @Beefy or @Kernel Kurtz who are better at this sort of thing than I am), but then I stuck a gaming router in my stairwell and I can still get reliable wifi about 60' away in the garage or to my yard. Haven't really felt a need to do more than that since.

 

Wifi radios are limited by legal unlicensed band availability and transmit power limits (this is what your country code is for in a wifi configuration). While some wifi routers are better than others at things like beamforming and will give you better bandwidth and latency, range is mostly affected by legal requirements. Some radios may let you directly modify these parameters, but exceed legal limits at your own risk. Otherwise you can play around a bit with higher gain/directional antennas, be warned this is a potential rabbit hole and in the end you are still limited by the client's TX power and RX sensitivity. If you really need more coverage mesh is probably your best bet, that is basically what it is made for.

Edit because you mentioned multiple APs. Even though I did wifi for a living before I retired, I still prefer to hard wire anything that can be hard wired. Multiple wired APs is indeed preferable to mesh with wireless backhaul. If they are all on the same subnet and SSID and use your router for DHCP it will probably "just work", though more complex environments may require centrally managed APs that can handle fast roaming.

 

There are some interesting tidbits in this article along those lines:
https://www.whathifi.com/hi-fi/musi...ormance-is-defined-by-more-than-just-chipsets

 

Absolutely. Someone around here previously posted an article by a well known audio equipment maker opining that wifi was actually better than wired for streamers because the particular types of inherent noise were easier to mitigate. This may be true, I do not know, but obviously implementation matters a lot. Networking equipment is not designed for audio, it seems reasonable audio equipment designed for networking would probably be better.

 

Anyone have a preference of roon over something like lms? I've been using roon for a year and really like the simplicity of it, especially with the eq, dspfilters and such, but lms seems like a good (free!) alternative with lots of add-ons.

 

Q1- No
Q2- no........clue

 

To add to the background info, I have been using a 4 player, wifi connected system for more than 10 years. I am using PiCorePlayer (LMS) with excellent sound quality and one of the players is also acting as server. It has a USB SSD attached with all the local files and controls internet radio as streamed from the internet. In my opinion, wifi is an easy way to get a low noise connection, especially when the players are far from each other.

That said, wifi is imperfect. Wifi is subject to random dropouts that seem to confuse the software in the Pi. This can make for dropouts in the music and/or control signal dropouts which are annoying. In a forum conversation with on of the prime programers of PCP, he told me that at least the server should be on a "wired" connection.

I have seen others have to work to get a quiet connection using ethernet, so I am working on connecting my server to my router with a fiber connection and two fiber-to-media convertors. As long as I supply them with clean power, they should stay quiet. The rest of my players will stay wifi as 2 out of 3 are very difficult to make a wired or fiber connection.

Good luck with your project.

 

I have no experience with Roon but I can tell you that LMS is not easy and is sometimes frustrating. That said, I like it a lot because it is very flexible. For example, the ability to control multiple players in sync or independently is not found in many alternatives. That said, if you like Roon for it's ease of use, you would probably hate LMS.

 

Note however that Roon over WiFi is an iffy proposition, Roon's RAAT protocol is very sensitive to the bursty packet loss/retransmit typical of WiFi in congested wireless environments (that is, unless you live in the country far from other WiFi networks). The Roon server should definitely be wired to the router/switch, especially if you stream Qobuz or Tidal, because streaming traffic goes streaming service -(1)-> Roon server -(2)-> Roon endpoint and (1)+(2) compete for WiFi bandwidth, because Roon server consumes the stream in big gobs that saturate WiFi. So, (1) at least needs to be wired. As for (2), it depends. In my case, everything is wired except a couple of portable endpoints I use occasionally in the backyard. Sometimes they work well, some other times they stutter/skip tracks.

 

I’d agree that definitely not both the Roon server and the endpoint should be on WiFi. That said, it depends on the receiver hardware, too.

I never had problems with my Dynaudio Music 5 (not Roon Ready, but has uPnP/AV, which can be used with Roon with some extra software), but I did have problems with iPhones as Roon endpoints as well as with a Raspberry Pi 4, especially at >= 96 kHz. Both only at places with rather poor reception, though.

Regarding competing for WiFi bandwidth: AirPlay has the same problem (iPhone receives and sends via WiFi, speaker receives via WiFi). While Roon always worked with the Dynaudio, I often had problems trying to use AirPlay with it. This has become much better meanwhile, though, as I have moved one repeater and placed another additional one in a strategically good spot.