USB file sound quality v NAS wired or wireless

Hi Mike, thanks you for the warm welcome and your experience with this new area of Hi-Fi is most appreciated. I am looking to get a wired connection to my ND5 XS it's just that it's not simple, or maybe it is if you are competent enough to drill holes though floor and ceiling or can route 30m of cable tidily around the house! I must say I am delighted with the sound of the Naim and importantly the connivance, I've listened to more music in the last 2 weeks than the last 6 months and for the first time in my system without listener fatigue. I'm really pleased that you say that you can get top results with a wired LAN as this is really what I want, best quality with all the features. I'm certain that my journey has just begun and I'm enjoying it so much!

Hi again, routing cable is a bit daunting,  however you could consider some possible options to maybe make it easier.

If the long cable is from ND5 to NAS  it might be more difficult,  but if the NAS can be placed in the same area as the ND5 - with maybe just one wall hole between - & a switch between NAS & ND5;  then a wireless extender such as an AE from switch to router will work well.   I said wireless was 3rd best option,  but the router to switch link will only be downloading light traffic with Tidal & will not affect SQ,  the wireless comms traffic for the control point is inconsequential.

To be honest I will have to get a handyman in and drill a hole through the floor / ceiling then it's only 5m or so. One thing I have picked up though it to have a switch between router and streamer. I'm energised to ensure I get the best sound I can with the equipment I have, but I must say I'm so enjoying it now even though it's not optimised. (Big smile).

 This might help  ............  

Thank you that's very clear!

Hi Harvey

Once you start putting all your streaming gear together, there are few points you should observe. Examples include:

• Routing Ethernet cable away from mains cables
• Keeping power supplies for your network gear away from your NAIMs
• Correct settings of your wireless router and internal IP assignment

Mike is exceptionally experienced when it comes to streaming set ups. I may be able to chip in a few things as well.

So just ask - will be glad to help.

Have fun,

Adam

If you are going to run a lead through the ceiling, it means that all the computer gubbins - router, switch, NAS, backup can live upstairs, with just a single wire to the living room. When we first started streaming, the router and everything was in the living room with the stereo; wires all over the place, clonking drives and flashing lights. Last year we had the router and other bits moved to the dining room out of the way, and it's made the living room a much nicer place to listen to music.

Hungryhalibut posted:

.................  When we first started streaming, the router and everything was in the living room with the stereo; wires all over the place, clonking drives and flashing lights. Last year we had the router and other bits moved to the dining room out of the way, and it's made the living room a much nicer place to listen to music.

Why do you need a switch if you have high quality router with all the necessary connections? 

Although I sympathise with Mike's view - and if the home broadband router is very old then it might not have switch ports at all - but indeed use hub ports (the functionality that Mike mentions) - in my experience such devices are largely obsolete now.

Many  modern ISP and third party broadband routers including from Apple use Broadcom or equivalent switch chipsets now - and these are often the same as dedicated consumer and even some commercial switch devices. Therefore the switching capability of many modern broadband routers is absolutely fine and has a back plane throughput not much different from little consumer switches and is more than capable of the realtively low bandwidth demands of hidef streamed audio. In fact there are some advantages with some of the newer switching chipsets in broadband routers to use the router where close bridging with the wifi is required.

One thing you do find however is sometimes home broadband routers are more capable than simple un managed consumer switches, and so are often provided in a semi managed state where configuration is required. You can find the default configurations might not support the multicast group requirements of UPnP device discovery - and therefore require some config. A simple consumer switch blindly broadcasts multicast group info with no intelligence applied. It means no config is required for it to work - but consequently it works inefficiently. However for a small home network this usually is not an issue and why is often recommended for the consumer with no or little home network skills in small home setups.

Simon

One more time Simon & I'ii get back in my box. My BT HH4 gets warm to hot after about 2 to 3 hours when its connected directly between NAS & NDX & streaming from NAS.  That's good enough for me to never run without a switch.   

(HH4 is the current BT issue when not using Infinity)

Mike

Well the only HH4s I know run hot - irrespective of what is running on them other than the ADSL link being up. But I agree a device shouldn't run excessively hot - for what ever reason.

The switching function on the HH4 is undertaken using dedicated ethernet switching hardware - I understand the Lantiq PSB 50368 switching chipset - without trawling google don't know what consumer switches might also use this Ethernet switching chipset.

But the HH4 does manage multicast - and so participating devices need to be well behaved

Simon

Thanks for the comprehensive reply Mike. I was just curious and I'm not even streaming myself currently. Still happy user of PC -> USB to S/PDIF converter -> Naim DAC. It's easy for me since I live in a single room apartment and my PC is only few meters from my hifi setup. 

I recently updated my router to D-Link DIR-868L which has been working perfectly ever since. It would seriously amaze me if this router couldn't handle HD audio stream. Of course if people really find audible differences between switch and router then it's a whole another matter. I'm little skeptic about audible differences between ethernet cables also but people (at least on this forum) seem to find differences there also. Anything's possible I guess, I just recently found audible differences between two different USB cables. 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Well the only HH4s I know run hot - irrespective of what is running on them other than the ADSL link being up. But I agree a device shouldn't run excessively hot - for what ever reason.

The switching function on the HH4 is undertaken using dedicated ethernet switching hardware - I understand the Lantiq PSB 50368 switching chipset - without trawling google don't know what consumer switches might also use this Ethernet switching chipset.

My BT HH4 was connected for a gaming device until recently - rarely used & now inherited by the g.kids 

-  I measured its case temp at a steady 26 to 26.4'C when doing nothing in a 20'C ambient,  this went up to 28.5'C when gaming,  I'd call that warm.  When I had it temporally hooked up for streaming it got numbers of degrees warmer,  I did not measure it, enough for me to say it was too hot for plastic. 

The only other listed device using the Lantiq PSB 50368 chipset is Netgear with the D6200v2 wireless router

No need for drilling walls or floors guys, just use powerline adaptors if the distance between the streamer and the NAS needs long cables. I've used some TPLink 100Mbit cheap adaptors (on power sockets 20m apart) and I've tested a steady +3MBytes/sec connection, thats 25Mbit.

On the LAN over USB quality my dealer swears streaming from a NAS sounds better than playing the same file from the front USB port. As I'm still waiting for my SU to get delivered I'm yet to test this myself.

My unitiqute 2 prefers wired or even wireless over netgear powerline adapters, so they are not always the solution; guess that depends on your house mains wiring, but p' adapters gave us dropouts that did not occur with wireless.

I used powerline adaptors for a while without any issues.

However when I took them out the system took a leap forward in sound quality.

I'd never use them again or recommend them

You will not find many people on this forum agreeing with you on that one Dan.S.

Powerline adaptors can cause serious interference in your home, your neighbourhood & various radio systems.

It also makes all the optimising of electrical noise with Ethernet leads, ferrite clamps, switch powersupplies, mains wiring etc look like a drop in the ocean compared to them extremely high levels of broadband RF pollution necessarily caused by the Powerline adapters 

Powerlines are the devil's work. 

Regarding switches, if the system works fine without then no problem! I found occasionally my the iPad or app lost the streamer and other weirdness, but when I put in a switch it was all resolved - rock solid. 

Finally, if you get the NAS physically near to the streamer then you can wire them to a switch, and the switch to a WiFi extender. All the UPNP traffic will then be wired, although of course Tidal and iRadio will still be wireless.