Connecting to Wifi with your NDS / NDX

Well there are only about 87,000 posts here about the difficulty of using home wifi to reliably stream music.

The best technology appears to be to use an Apple Airport Extreme as your wifi router (source), and an Airport Express at your NDX, connected to the NDX via an ethernet cable.  You can disable wifi on your isp's home router, and thus not have 2 wifi networks flying around your home.  That's the preferred practice.

What I do -- is to use cat5 cable for it all.  No wireless music streaming in my home.  But I nevertheless use an Apple Airport Extreme for my home wifi, and have disabled wifi on my isp's router as I mentioned above.  Apple's wifi is quite powerful and reliable in my experience.

Disable the WiFi in your streamer settings. Unscrew the antenna and chuck it. If there really really is no alternative, connect an Airport Express to the streamer with a Cat5e cable and let that handle it. The built in WiFi module is pants....

Do not stream via WiFi - especially to NDS. It's pointless...

Echoing the above. Hardwire is the only way to go. 

Adam Zielinski posted:

Do not stream via WiFi - especially to NDS. It's pointless...

That is a very succinct (read extreme) statement .  I stream everything  (including local Kazoo server, Logitech Media Server, ChromeCast, Spotify, Tidal) via 2  Apple Airport Extreme's with no impact on SQ, dropouts as far as I can see (and hear), and my gear is the Klimax DSM.  Remember that your home wifi speed is at least 10 times faster than the one from your ISP to your modem.

Peter Dinh posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

Do not stream via WiFi - especially to NDS. It's pointless...

That is a very succinct (read extreme) statement .  I stream everything  (including local Kazoo server, Logitech Media Server, ChromeCast, Spotify, Tidal) via 2  Apple Airport Extreme's with no impact on SQ, dropouts as far as I can see (and hear), and my gear is the Klimax DSM.  Remember that your home wifi speed is at least 10 times faster than the one from your ISP to your modem.

What I mean by streamig is from a local NAS to NDS / NDX. That is best lect to a wired network.

I've just re-read OP's post - he was indeed referrimg to internet streamig. Personally I cancelled my Spotify subscripton as I never really used it. Found it to be a waste of time and money.

Peter Dinh posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

Do not stream via WiFi - especially to NDS. It's pointless...

That is a very succinct (read extreme) statement .  I stream everything  (including local Kazoo server, Logitech Media Server, ChromeCast, Spotify, Tidal) via 2  Apple Airport Extreme's with no impact on SQ, dropouts as far as I can see (and hear), and my gear is the Klimax DSM.  Remember that your home wifi speed is at least 10 times faster than the one from your ISP to your modem.

Peter there is a world of difference between what is meant by wifi 'speed' and throughput and broadband speed.. you simply just can not compare them on a like for like basis. .. They are completely different technologies and work very differently and each handle very different scenarios.

i agree the statement about NDS and wifi is a bit silly, I ignored it, but the successful outcome on wifi will depend on many variables such as local environment, wifi access point, SSID related traffic and channel congestion.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Peter Dinh posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

Do not stream via WiFi - especially to NDS. It's pointless...

That is a very succinct (read extreme) statement .  I stream everything  (including local Kazoo server, Logitech Media Server, ChromeCast, Spotify, Tidal) via 2  Apple Airport Extreme's with no impact on SQ, dropouts as far as I can see (and hear), and my gear is the Klimax DSM.  Remember that your home wifi speed is at least 10 times faster than the one from your ISP to your modem.

Peter there is a world of difference between what is meant by wifi 'speed' and throughput and broadband speed.. you simply just can not compare them on a like for like basis. .. They are completely different technologies and work very differently and each handle very different scenarios.

i agree the statement about NDS and wifi is a bit silly, I ignored it, but the successful outcome on wifi will depend on many variables such as local environment, wifi access point, SSID related traffic and channel congestion.

Thanks Simon, and I agree that there are many variables that control a successful streaming, and if there are problems, one has to figure out and debug it.

I am no expert on audio streaming, and I think I just oversimplified my statement about the network speed in my previous comment, but being a network software developer for a company in the heart of Silicon Valley for around 20  years, I guess I know a bit about it, and how to manage it for my home entertainment.  

Over the years, I have learnt that simplicity is the key to many good designs. 

Gents (Simon and Peter):

I'm not a IT or Network developer - however I have never in my tests managed to stream high-resolution audio wirelesly to either my NDX or NDX in a stable manner (access point: Apple Airport Extreme).  One thing I do know though, is how to test.
But than I have a dedicated LAN network which was purpse-built to handle streaming duties (steaming in my dictionary means: NAS > renderer).

Adam

Adam

My NDS is hard wired but I stream hi res up to and including 24/192 to a Super Uniti flawlessly using Bart's solution above - Airport Extreme wifi to Airport Express cat 5 hard wired to Super Uniti. It does work.. 

Camlan posted:

Adam

My NDS is hard wired but I stream hi res up to and including 24/192 to a Super Uniti flawlessly using Bart's solution above - Airport Extreme wifi to Airport Express cat 5 hard wired to Super Uniti. It does work.. 

Different set up to mine then. Bart's solution uses a wifi bridge between two access points.
My tests were straightforward access point to NDX via it's antenna.

Camlan posted:

Adam

My NDS is hard wired but I stream hi res up to and including 24/192 to a Super Uniti flawlessly using Bart's solution above - Airport Extreme wifi to Airport Express cat 5 hard wired to Super Uniti. It does work.. 

I too managed to stream wirelessly like this from Unitiseve even with 24/192 files. Stability was pretty good once I had it set up right. It was still better in terms of SQ, stability and speed once I pulled my finger out and put in a wired network. 

Well to counter all the above, I stream to my qute 2 wirelessly.

Plusnet (BT) router cat5 cable to HP micro server via one switch using servio for upnp. Qute 2 to router wireless approx 20 ft through one solid brick wall.

Occasionally have to reconnect to the wireless at the start of the day/session but once reconnected except for vary rare drops is stable for the day/session playing Tidal, iradio or upnp. SQ seems ok to me.

So it can work. But maybe I'm lucky??

Yes it CAN work.  But it frequently does NOT work.

Bart posted:

Yes it CAN work.  But it frequently does NOT work.

The most common issues as to why wifi causes dropouts are due to congestion data flow control, re-transmissions, and the root causes typically are:

1) Use 2.4 ghz wifi - This is subject to RF interference, collisions with your neighbors' wifi networks because most routers either only support 2.4 ghz or they are the default setup, and it is very likely that your neighbors just use it as they do not know the differences between 5 ghz and 2.4 ghz

2) You share the same wifi channel with other devices in the same household. So if someone in the house is watching netflix or playing some games or streaming something simultaneously, you will experience dropouts

So if you are using wifi for hires music streaming, I would recommend that you set aside a dedicated wifi channel configured for 5 ghz, protocol ac 

Peter Dinh posted:

Bart posted:

Yes it CAN work.  But it frequently does NOT work.

The most common issues as to why wifi causes dropouts are due to congestion data flow control, re-transmissions, and the root causes typically are:

1) Use 2.4 ghz wifi - This is subject to RF interference, collisions with your neighbors' wifi networks because most routers either only support 2.4 ghz or they are the default setup, and it is very likely that your neighbors just use it as they do not know the differences between 5 ghz and 2.4 ghz

2) You share the same wifi channel with other devices in the same household. So if someone in the house is watching netflix or playing some games or streaming something simultaneously, you will experience dropouts

So if you are using wifi for hires music streaming, I would recommend that you set aside a dedicated wifi channel configured for 5 ghz, protocol ac 

I'm sure there is some truth in what you say, but when I streamed UPnP over WiFi using Airport Extreme/Express, I had all manner of issues until it was set up correctly. But there are no other networks in range of my house, no Netflix, and often virtually no other activity at all on my network. I can only conclude that setup is everything. 

My experience with streaming via wifi was limited to a week-long demo with a Uniti years ago. I found that every time I used my microwave (oven) I lost the connection. Maybe that's technically not a dropout?

I've used wifi once on my NDX just to hear if it was different.  It's not too different but highest res streams suffered buffer drop outs.   I guess it depends on all the room, distance & separation wall variables,  but in my case the wireless hub is close to the NDX & is tucked away in a rack.  Ethernet is simple,  more reliable & does sound better IME.  

joerand posted:

My experience with streaming via wifi was limited to a week-long demo with a Uniti years ago. I found that every time I used my microwave (oven) I lost the connection. Maybe that's technically not a dropout?

It's the weight-loss feature built into early Uniti models but since scrapped.

Peter Dinh posted:

So if you are using wifi for hires music streaming, I would recommend that you set aside a dedicated wifi channel configured for 5 ghz, protocol ac 

The connection to the streamer needs to be wired for this.  The Naim WiFi transceiver in their streamers is 2.4GHz only.  To use 5GHz you need to use a WiFi extender PAIR (e.g. AE to AE) and connect that via wired Ethernet to the streamer.  If you just use a 2.4GHz / 5 GHz WAP, the streamer will always connect to the 2.4GHz transceiver in the WAP.

I use wifi to 272. And Mu-so. And Chromecasts. Fortunately have zero problems with drop out at all. Especially so as PC and modem/router are on other side of house from kit.

I found three significant and key issues that helped with this:

1. I pay for v speedy broadband. The speed itself is not key but it seems with this comes such a large bandwidth, other devices in use have no effect on music transmission. And when everyone's at home, the chances are there are at typically 3 to 5 other devices in operation.

2. Naim app itself used to be awful while using combo Virgin modem/router. Once I added separate router and switched Virgin unit to modem only, this problem went away. It also made significant improvement to household coverage.

3. I used a bit of freebie software to identify neighbours wifi frequencies and then adjusted mine to fill the gap.

At the weekend I downloaded some sample tracks from HD Tracks and loaded them on my Synology NAS. I attempted to play them via WiFi through my Muso via DS Music on my iPad and was rewarded by a very stuttering performance. Some buffer somewhere was overwhelmed. I tried the same thing through my Onkyo AV amp which is connected via Ethernet to a switch, as is the NAS. Similar result. However, several of the tracks did play through the Onkyo with no problem at all. The download tracks are all FLAC, which I do not think is pure HD quality. First time I have encountered this issue. I have more than a few WAV files that I transferred to the NAS that have had no issues.  WiFi speed is approximately 55 Mbps. Any thoughts?

Huge posted:

Peter Dinh posted:

So if you are using wifi for hires music streaming, I would recommend that you set aside a dedicated wifi channel configured for 5 ghz, protocol ac 

The connection to the streamer needs to be wired for this.  The Naim WiFi transceiver in their streamers is 2.4GHz only.  To use 5GHz you need to use a WiFi extender PAIR (e.g. AE to AE) and connect that via wired Ethernet to the streamer.  If you just use a 2.4GHz / 5 GHz WAP, the streamer will always connect to the 2.4GHz transceiver in the WAP.

Yes, what I mean is to hook up the streamer to the ethernet port out of an airport express (or extreme), and have a dedicated pair of airport extreme/express for music stream, and another wifi router or another wifi channel for general use. But of course, wired is simpler and better if you can do it.

andarkian posted:

At the weekend I downloaded some sample tracks from HD Tracks and loaded them on my Synology NAS. I attempted to play them via WiFi through my Muso via DS Music on my iPad and was rewarded by a very stuttering performance. Some buffer somewhere was overwhelmed. I tried the same thing through my Onkyo AV amp which is connected via Ethernet to a switch, as is the NAS. Similar result. However, several of the tracks did play through the Onkyo with no problem at all. The download tracks are all FLAC, which I do not think is pure HD quality. First time I have encountered this issue. I have more than a few WAV files that I transferred to the NAS that have had no issues.  WiFi speed is approximately 55 Mbps. Any thoughts?

HD files can be in flac format; I have a lot of 24 / 192 files that are flac.  Flac fully supports hi res files.  So I really really don't think it's a wav vs. flac issue for you.

I think you need to compare the Muso with ethernet vs. the Muso with wifi if you want a fair comparison.  

And what is your wifi 'source?'  Is the nas connected via ethernet cable to the network?

Bart posted:

andarkian posted:

At the weekend I downloaded some sample tracks from HD Tracks and loaded them on my Synology NAS. I attempted to play them via WiFi through my Muso via DS Music on my iPad and was rewarded by a very stuttering performance. Some buffer somewhere was overwhelmed. I tried the same thing through my Onkyo AV amp which is connected via Ethernet to a switch, as is the NAS. Similar result. However, several of the tracks did play through the Onkyo with no problem at all. The download tracks are all FLAC, which I do not think is pure HD quality. First time I have encountered this issue. I have more than a few WAV files that I transferred to the NAS that have had no issues.  WiFi speed is approximately 55 Mbps. Any thoughts?

HD files can be in flac format; I have a lot of 24 / 192 files that are flac.  Flac fully supports hi res files.  So I really really don't think it's a wav vs. flac issue for you.

I think you need to compare the Muso with ethernet vs. the Muso with wifi if you want a fair comparison.  

And what is your wifi 'source?'  Is the nas connected via ethernet cable to the network?

 

Thanks Bart. I think the files are 24/96. However, as I mentioned above, the Onkyo AV amp is hard wired via Ethernet to the switch as is the NAS. The Muso is WiFi connected. It appears that the same tracks fail on both the Muso and the Onkyo. Some tracks work on both. I only have about 6 tracks that successfully downloaded (some failed on download). As I am playing the tracks using Synology's proprietary DS Music application, I wondered if it might have an impact.  Don't have Minimserver or any other such tool. The files all played on the MacBook itself after download.