Streaming over WiFi
Posted by: noname on 14 March 2016
My only experience of streaming over WiFi with Naim kit has been with the Qb in the Kitchen. My Uniti and a couple of original Mu-so units have been directly connected via Ethernet. So I have been musing on the 48kHz maximum limit over WiFi noted in the Mu-so manual. I did not really see how this could be imposed if it was a hard limit.
Earlier today, I decided to renew my network monitoring skills and managed to capture UPnP network traffic while the Qb, connected over WiFi, requested and then played a 24bit/96kHz AIFF piece. I could tell no difference in sound quality than when playing the same piece over directly-connected Ethernet. Happily, for me, the network trace confirmed that exactly the same data was requested and sent in both cases and sounding equally good.
Checking this with Naim Support, I am delighted to be able to report that they confirm that *NONE* of the streamers downsample to 44/48kHz when playing higher resolution files and that we simply only rate WiFi streaming to 44/48kHz due to expected real world WiFi performance.
So indeed it is the case that Naim do not impose any hard limit where the player is connected over WiFi. I understand that the note in the Mu-so manual was already under review and corrections should be posted in future.
Let us all recognise that it is very hard to be precise about performance under the very wide range of conditions that apply to domestic WiFi setups. I am pleased that no hard limit is set by the player connected over WiFI and then negotiated with the server, which is how I had previously interpreted the note. Many thanks to Naim Support for their responsiveness.
David
But to save you time, yes. The 48kHz does seem to be a hard limit for a Multiroom master (Mu-so in my case) receiving from a UPnP server.
Would love someone else to do some reality testing though 