help - sound dropouts - streaming 192 OR 96 to nd5

My understanding although would be more than happy to be proved wrong is that Naim don't officially support (if that's the right term) streaming hi- res files over wireless, it has to be wired

Xe104s are "Ethernet over mains" so I guess I am wired....

Ethernet over mains doesn't always guarantee good throughput unfortunately.

Netgear xe104 is supposed to support up to 85mbps I think.. The funny thing is this though: when I shut down the Ethernet connection and activate the wireless - bingo: 24-96 plays smoothly (fully buffered 100% of the time). 192 however continue to hiccup pretty much in the same style. Would be very interesting to know if anyone has found a way around this (apart from direct wiring that is)

Hi, this come up on another thread, Ethernet compromise bridges such as Ethernet over maiare an be  notirously unreliable for reliable sustained TCP traffic. For  lower audio bandwidth or casual web browsing the inefficiency of this sort of bridge is hidden, buthigher throughputs you ate asking for trouble. Sometimes you may be ok, but it becomes a lottery and subject to your physical mains wiring environment and devices switched on and/or plugged in the mains.

As Naim (Phil) recommends, best use a wired Ethernet for trouble free audio for years to come, and  i say preferably at least 100mbps duplex line speed.

I am using a wireless bridge with completely no lag or drop out at all. My family can even stream HD video to the computer, stream 24/196 music to the streamer, play real time online gaming, and finally surf the internet all at the same time with completely no lag at all.

I am using a simple Dlink DNS-320 with Fonz Funplug and Twonky installed in it. This NAS is connected to the router (Asus RT-N66) which is in turn connected to a wireless bridge (Linksys WES610N). Finally, the streamer is connected to this wireless bridge. I had also set up static IP for all the network devices in my house.

Hi Ash

I had a similar problem on my ND5, although mine sits on a gigabit wired network. When i played a 24/192 flac file the buffer would empty and youd hear a pause. It was only streaming from the NAS at around 800kbs, which with my limited knowledge doesnt sound taxing for any sort of network?

Anyway, i ended up pulling my NAS apart to do some speed tests on various versions of firmware. After putting the NAS back together and reseating all the network cables ive had no issues with the  buffer. So i can only think that something had a bad connection that only showed up on 24/192 files. Maybe worth a try at least.

Indeed, and ive just asked a question on the next thread as to what may explain it. What i cant understand is how comes i was still able to upload files from my NAS at 15Mbs yet the ND5 struggled to upload a flac at 800Kbs. All i can say is after pulling it all apart and putting it back together ive not had the issue. Mind you i only have one 24/192 album so it doesnt get played every day.

Hi Ash,

Please plug your ND5XS *AND* your MyBook *DIRECTLY* into your Airport Extreme and let me know if the problem persists.

My expectation is that it will be much better if not completely resolved (I'm dubious about the MyBooks ability to provide any sort of consistent throughput as we've not had great success with those) but I think your issue is with those Ethernet over Mains devices so I'd like to get the system running without them first.

Phil

This is correct - we don't support the streaming of 192kHz files over WiFi but the OPs system is "technically" wired ... albeit through Ethernet Over Mains devices which I feel are likely to be the root cause of his issue.

Phil

...then this supports my previous reply. Your Ethernet Over Mains devices are simply not providing the throughput that is required. It would be interesting to do a few file copies across them to see what you are getting but I suspect it's pretty poor from what you're describing.

(192kHz audio is not supported over WiFi and this is documented in the manual I believe.)

Cheers

Phil

Hi,

I understand that in your install you are able to use WiFi for streaming HD video however once you understand how both WiFi and Ethernet Over Mains work (and how they operate when in the proximity of other similar devices) then you understand that these technologies inherently and by design cannot be relied upon nor guaranteed to provide any level of service or throughput (and in fact the evolution of wireless networking standards is actually perpetuating the continual need to "upgrade" WiFi hardware).

Cheers

Phil

In your case, assigning static IP addresses will not assist in any way.

Cheers

Phil

Unfortunately not unexpected here - in your case Ethernet Over Mains is proving particularly troublesome but also a very good example of what I try to tell people on here.

A direct wired connection is the only way to guarantee a consistent connection (and Ethernet over Mains is not hard wired).

Cheers

Phil

Hmmm, I have a simple network at home. One wireless router (Belkin 2-aerial Wireless-N thingy) serves the lot. I have a Netgear readyNas Duo V2 (Arm) wired into the router. Just for kicks, I copied a bunch of music (WAV) files and a few VIDEO_TS movies (region 1) to the NAS and tried to use them from the Playstation3 via wireless (so Wireless g). What I found amazing is that I could play music and video with no glitches whatsoever (well, apart from not being able to make menus and chapters work on the DVD rips). According to the PS3's display, I was getting fine audio throughput (PCM) and on the movie I was getting between 5 and 7Mbps for video with 500kbps for its audio, so kicking up to around 8Mbps in total. Now this should be more than enough for even 24/192 transmission, so I don't really understand the fuss of playing it over the wireless connection.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Yup - again this works for you and I'm glad that it does however I could also do this at my flat and I can guarantee you that it *WOULDN'T* work as the wireless contention in my area is too great.

This is the point that I'm trying to make - throughput over WiFi and Ethernet Over Mains *CANNOT* be guaranteed.

Cheers

Phil

Hmmm ... 

...so I'd say it's not the same problem, just a similar set of symptoms? Ash's issue is - from the outside looking in - pretty clear cut.

800kbytes/sec is not a huge amount of data for a network ... however who's to say that it is your network that is the bottleneck?

Lets "park" this statement and come back to it later...

With networking it's EXTREMELY unlikely to be a "bad connection" ... especially one that only shows up when running 24/192 files.

Now, you've said in your other posts that when you copied the FLAC files to your NAS you got 15mbytes/sec from your laptop to your NAS ... that's fairly slow for a hard wired Gigabit LAN and a ReadyNAS V2 - I get about 60-70mbytes/sec - but I suspect your laptop was probably running wireless maybe?

Now, your computer will be accessing your NAS via a network file system protocol - generally CIFS (also known as SMB or SAMBA) but possibly AFP (if you're on a Mac) or NFS (if you're a Linux die-hard and won't use CIFS) - the ND5 uses a completely different protocol called UPnP and DOESN'T download the entire file at a time ... it streams it in bite sized chunks from the UPnP server in the NAS and will, by design, take (almost) as long to read the file as it takes to play it - hence your 800kbytes/sec. This does not mean that 800kbytes/sec is the maximum that you can get from the NASs UPnP server to the ND5s UPnP client, just that that is the bandwidth taken by the stream you were playing. 

You have probably - perhaps unwittingly - given the answer to your own issue in that all that you have changed is the firmware version on your NAS ... this might not sound like much to you but without being able to do some diagnosis on your network as it was to confirm what the issue was then this is likely to be the answer, that the updated NAS firmware had some bug fixes in it that have resolved the issue - this is much more likely given the issue that you had and the steps that you have taken than some random and non-specific "bad connection". (Networks are pretty straightforward and simple beasts and don't hold much in the way of black magic or dragons. )

Cheers

Phil

I'm stuck with a wireless connection to my Unitiqute but only over a short distance with 1 gyprock wall with a very good signal strength. Interestingly, if I access files directly from the harddriver attached via USB straight into the back of the router 192/24 WAV files play without a hiccup but if I access the same files via eLyric music manager on my computer, the data stream isn't quite sufficient to maintain the buffer. The computer is connected to the router via Ewireless with no wireless connection. If anyone can think of a reason why this might be so I'd be interested. 

Hi,

We do not warrant the playback of 192kHz files via WiFi - as they play by USB then I suspect that this is your issue. You can confirm this by temporarily connecting your UnitiQute (and your computer / NAS) via a direct wired Ethernet connection to your router and testing playback in that configuration.

Cheers

Phil 

Thanks Phil. The curious thing is that the drive is connected to the router via USB which is then wirelessly streaming to the Unitiqute and the wireless is definitely the weak link in the chain. What I struggle to understand is why taking the data from the computer hooked up via Ethernet to the router tips it over the edge. Using an Ethernet connection to the qute from the router does indeed completely resolve the buffering issue but impractical for me as a permanent arrangement. I'm not querying the Unitqute in this but was simply curious if anyone had any thoughts on why the wireless connection copes when the data goes directly to the router via USB but not when it comes from the computer via Ethernet. I'm guessing that perhaps this is just down to the router having limited processing power to cope with the network traffic even though only the connection to the Unitiqute iswireless. 

Please see my numerous other posts as to why WiFi and Ethernet-Over-Mains should not be used in any kind of reliable network and cannot be guaranteed to provide any kind of consistent or minimal level of throughput.

Of course Ethernet -Over-Mains could be your get-out-of-jail-free solution...?

Cheers

Phil