NDX sounds better wireless?

Posted by: Aron on 17 August 2011

After a month of running in the NDX I have come to realize that I like the NDX wireless than when it's connected via the CAT7 cable. The main difference I find is it sounds closer to my vinyl system and somewhat more pleasurable to listen to for long hours. Less digital edge and more musical.

Am I the only one? Seem that most suggest wired which makes complete sense to me too except my ears refuse to accept.
Posted on: 17 August 2011 by DavidDever

Have you tried something other than Cat7 cable?

Posted on: 17 August 2011 by Aron
No I haven't. Do you mean like CAT6 or 5?
Posted on: 17 August 2011 by DavidDever

Yes–unshielded

Posted on: 17 August 2011 by Frank E

If fixed wiring rather than patch leads did you have the Cat 7 professionally installed, i.e. with printouts of test certificates for each segment? 

 

Cat 5e is in most cases sufficient 

Posted on: 17 August 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Guys, there is so much marketing mumbo jumbo about Ethernet patch leads. The Ethernet physical spec calls for un shielded twisted pair cable (UTP)  and in the home unless you live in a large castle that is all that is required, ie Cat 5.
If the sound is poor, then the most likely culprit is common mode RFI down the cable. That will be present even if you use Cat 100 cable!
So resolution is to use better switches/ routers which may well be generating the RFI or remedial fixes of RFI chokes around Ethernet cable.
Simon
Posted on: 17 August 2011 by Aron
Not that I need a solution to make wired in my system sound good since I'm happy running wireless and the system is sounding great, just curious if I'm the only one here who is doing this. If it was 5 years ago, I would have try harder to convince myself to do wired since everyone says so.
Posted on: 17 August 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk
Aron, if you are happy with your setup that is absolutely fine of course. Out of interest what if any wireless security protocol are you running ( WEP, WPA, WPA2 etc). I ask because different protocols put different digital processing loads on the client receivers.
Simon
Posted on: 18 August 2011 by Peter W
Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:
Guys, there is so much marketing mumbo jumbo about Ethernet patch leads. The Ethernet physical spec calls for un shielded twisted pair cable (UTP)  and in the home unless you live in a large castle that is all that is required, ie Cat 5.
If the sound is poor, then the most likely culprit is common mode RFI down the cable. That will be present even if you use Cat 100 cable!
So resolution is to use better switches/ routers which may well be generating the RFI or remedial fixes of RFI chokes around Ethernet cable.
Simon

Simon

You mentioned switches ... something that have intrigued me for sometime. My understand is that they control traffic between components within a network. But my bog-standard router already allows 4 components be connected to it. Will it improve SQ if I add a switch in the LAN network for my NDX? If so, how should it be connected?

Thanks.

Peter

Posted on: 18 August 2011 by Richard Dane

Aron,

 

interesting observation and one I'm intrigued by because at the moment the only way I can stream to my NDX is via wireless.  I will need to sort something wired though eventually because while it works just great with anything up to 24bit 48kHz, anything higher res than this not only starts to get "gappy", but the n-stream app tends to hang too while waiting for responses.

Posted on: 18 August 2011 by murkku

I can't stress & repeat this enough...

As so many seem to be struggling with NDX's wireless standard/performance.

 

You really should check out the Airport Express. It's a cheap way to provide blazing fast wireless to NDX.

Just connect the AE to your existing wlan and then use a short ethernet cable to share/bridge the faster wifi to NDX. NDX then thinks it's wired (thus powering off the internal wifi), operates faster and sounds better to many ears... And as a free bonus, you get the Airplay connectivity from AE's optical.

Posted on: 18 August 2011 by JWM

Ah yet another reason to remain in blissful ignorance about streaming, though I love the sound of the NDX and admire you chaps who understand what on earth is going on!

Posted on: 18 August 2011 by Richard Dane

Murkku,

 

yes, considered that but am concerned that just having the APE plugged in close to the system will lower overall performance - on everything, analog or digital.  If it's benign, then great!

Posted on: 18 August 2011 by murkku

Richard,

 

I've tested this with conventional ethernet cabling and the latest Airport Express. RFI worried me a bit, too. Luckily(?), I didn't notice any (sonic) differences between the two. Even my SuperLine wasn't bothered by the nearby AE.

 

Btw. Airport Extreme is a larger beast with it's external power supply etc. and I wouldn't want that too close to my system. Anyone tried those near Naim system?

Posted on: 18 August 2011 by Aron
I'm using the airport extreme. I have it at the last fraim lite shelf and everything seem ok.
Posted on: 18 August 2011 by Hook

I am using an ATV to receive Spotify from my iPad via Airplay.

 

Fortunately, I happened to own a 5M long Optichord and, therefore, am able to keep the ATV well away from my brains rack, and plugged into a separate electrical circuit.  

 

Before getting the ATV, I tried using an old gen one AE.  It was connected via a 1M Optichord, and sat on the bottom shelf of brains rack.   I thought everything sounded ok....until I removed it.  The change was subtle, but I definitely thought my NDX/DAC sounded better afterwards.

 

I now hear no difference between the ATV plugged in versus not.

 

From this experience, I now believe it is worth the effort to try and get as much physical and electrical isolation as possible from these Apple network devices.   Even if everything sounds fine, you will never know if your system can sound better....unless you try.

 

All IMHO, YMMV, etc.  

 

Good luck!

 

Hook

Posted on: 18 August 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk

You mentioned switches ... something that have intrigued me for sometime. My understand is that they control traffic between components within a network. But my bog-standard router already allows 4 components be connected to it. Will it improve SQ if I add a switch in the LAN network for my NDX? If so, how should it be connected?

 

Peter, the answer to your question it depends... If your router is a very cheap one, there is a chance it has a poor powersupply and could add horrible RFI onto the ethernet lines. But if the router provides ADSL as well  - then reasonable attention has to be given to the powersupply and filtering, otherwise the ADSL broadband performance is impacted, so will probably be fine. In the early days of consumer ADSL routers some of them used hubs instead of switches which would not be a good idea for media streaming use. (It would lower your wired Ethernet to the performance of Wifi or Powerline adapters).  However I think every ADSL router out there now uses a switch and so is ok.

I use seperate switches so I keep my ethernet patch leads reasonablly short to my audio equipment and run single (or double) leads back to router which I have two of and keep else where in the house. It keeps the cabling down, but that is more down to aesthetics than SQ...

 

Simon