Airport express vs ethernet hard wired

Hi

Hard wired through a switch is always going to be better than WiFi but I know it can be a hassle. Having said that it only cost me £90 to have it done professionally and that was a long and difficult run.

Having said that, is the Airport Express cable connected to the NDX or do you totally rely on wifi. I use this method of cable set up for my second system and it works well in that I am able to stream 24/192 files which I am unable to do with pure wifi. Might be worth a try to see if you can hear an improvement if you are not already doing it as it is a cheap experiment.

Yes, the airport express is connected wired to the ndx. The ndx Wi-Fi is disabled and antenna removed.

Yes if you can I would hardware, I think you will find it may sound better and will be more consistent not least for hidef.

You can get flat 5e that you place under the carpet that can help routing and makes deploying it more straightforward. I use it.

Simon

Thanks Guys for the feedback. Will start looking at wiring up the ndx.

For sure a harwired connection from your router/bridge is much better at least from a bandwidth perspective, but sometimes cabling you home is not possible (my situation).

I use the same set up you have: an Airport Express (latest model) harwired to my ND5XS. The Airport Express is connected wirelessly to an Airport Extreme (latest mode) 5ghz "a" wifi network. I get a "nominal" 300 Mb/s at the Airport Express, according to the Airport Utility. This set up works fine to me to stream wav up to 24/96 and flac/alac up to 24/192 but you need to fine tune your wifi settings to get this. The set up struggles with wav at 24/192 (sometimes no problem, sometimes I have drops). I have not heard significant SQ differences when testing this set up vs. Hardwiring, but my ears might not be golden enough.

I'm running a similar Airport Extreme/Express setup, but I found that moving my NAS close to my streamer, so that I can wire them and the Express via a switch, definitely improved sound quality compared to WiFi.   Web streaming still includes a wireless leg, which I might one day get around to hard wiring, but it will be a total PITA and everything works fine as it is, so I'm in no hurry.

Dambor - it does make one wonder what 300Mbps actually means if you then get dropouts with 192/24 PCM. The latter is about 10Mbps payload - and so you should have no drop outs what so ever...

Of course the Naim streamers don't support 802.11ac and so will use the slower older protocols

Simon

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Of course the Naim streamers don't support 802.11ac and so will use the slower older protocols

But that doesn't apply when the Airport Express is managing the wifi (as a bridge) and hard wired to the Naim streamer (via Ethernet)... So questions of throughput and drop outs wouldn't involve the Naim wireless n protocol in this situation, I think?

Regards alan

@Simon, 300 mbps is the reading in the Airport Utility, and I agree is "theoretical". As you point out, using the ND5XS own wifi connection resulted -in my case- in poorer bandwidth than the AE setup,  just being able to stream up to 24/96 alas/flac but not beyond that with consistency. Not being able to hardwire, using the AE as a wireless bridge resulted in a better solution.

@Alan, yes drop outs have to do with the Airport Extreme/Airport Express wifi link not with the ND5XS. My airport extreme is capable of ac wifi, but apple has yet to launch an airport express with that capability (max is "a" @ 5 ghz), therefore the drop outs with very high resolution wav files. 

if its possible for you get audio quest vodka ethernet cable. you can easily get the difference .