Should I get into streaming with WI-Fi only and no wired internet ?

No

Yes but get a used ND5 and an external USB drive big enough for your music. The sound from the USB is better than streaming and you would only use wifi for control of the ND5.

Perhaps yes in a general sense but it might be even wiser that I should carry on with my HDX-SSD since sound is good enough from the loaded drives and flash memory sticks that I am using so after all one could start streaming if one had neither.

I haven't yet tried hard enough to add a NAS to the aforesaid and last year I posted something about it and the consensus was that a NAS works best with wired connection.

Chris 1970 posted:

Just as simple as that. I cannot conceivably be bothered by any sort of monthly subscriptions be it internet or anything else so I am quite satisfactorily using PAYG internet when it suits me so I wonder whether I should explore any Naim streamers only using WI-Fi tethering form smartphones or it is not recommended.

How good is your mobile signal? In my experience, they can be variable for all manner of reasons. Also, I find that tethering only gives other devices a small portion of the bandwidth available to your phone, so you may get less than you think.

Chris 1970 posted:

 Just some yeses or nos will do. 

Dream on! 

Chris 1970 posted:

Just as simple as that. I cannot conceivably be bothered by any sort of monthly subscriptions be it internet or anything else so I am quite satisfactorily using PAYG internet when it suits me so I wonder whether I should explore any Naim streamers only using WI-Fi tethering form smartphones or it is not recommended. Just some yeses or nos will do. 

By all means use wifi, it's more than suitable, however do ensure you have a capable set of access points that's ideally operate as an ESSID and can hand off and load balance between them. I use multiple UniFi access points  and they are superb and incredibly effective.

i think if you use standard consumer broadband router wifi it may well be more hit and miss.

My issues with wi-fi streaming have centered around it connecting at first - once connected it works fine - no dropouts at all, and I could not hear a difference between the streaming and my C5X when i had it. And keep in mind my router is an ISP proprietary PoS.

ChrisSU posted:

Chris 1970 posted:

Just as simple as that. I cannot conceivably be bothered by any sort of monthly subscriptions be it internet or anything else so I am quite satisfactorily using PAYG internet when it suits me so I wonder whether I should explore any Naim streamers only using WI-Fi tethering form smartphones or it is not recommended.

How good is your mobile signal? In my experience, they can be variable for all manner of reasons. Also, I find that tethering only gives other devices a small portion of the bandwidth available to your phone, so you may get less than you think.

Chris 1970 posted:

 Just some yeses or nos will do. 

Dream on! 

Not worth having wired subscription especially when one may like to travel overseas plenty of time.

It looks as though I can be better off with loading drives and sticks for a long time on the HDX-SSD rather than pay absurd monthly charges and not make full use of the wired internet.

I would put a NAS near the HDX and network them rather than mess around with USB sticks. A £20 switch and a couple of Cat5e patch cables would do it. You can always add a wireless access point to this occasionally for adding metadata and downloading new music, but you don't need an internet connection to make it play.

When I started with streaming, it was essentially all via my internal home network.

I ripped my CDs to a NAS, used my UnitiQute to play them, and my iPad to control things. This requires only an "intranet" in your home, and you can set that up trivially by purchasing almost any router you like and either plugging in (certainly the storage device and optionally the Naim) or connecting to the wifi (optionally the Naim and certainly your iPhone).

You would then use a UPnP setup to stream your music from the storage disc to your Naim player, all inside your home with no monthly fees and no external connection to the internet.

If I understand you correctly, your concern is the subscription for an internet service provider (and possibly any online music service). You certainly don't need these, although they add convenience and flexibility when you are home.

With a pay as you go service, or a large data cap on your phone, you could still connect your home network to the outside world when you wanted - lots of ways to do this - depending on your hardware choices - but that's maybe a separate issue for a time when you've decided what you like and what you'd wish to add in later. 

Regards alan

No.

Just put the NAS and a small switch next to your streamer and enjoy ripped / high resolution content that way.

I actually disabled Tidal / Spotify on all my streamers and use it to play my own music only (plus some internet radio stations).

Best to have a cable from the switch back to router as well, for internet access. Then you need to ask yourself why not simply have the NAS next to the router and run a cable from the router to the streamer? this would eliminate the switch and a shitty SMPS next to your kit..

You'll want wired for quality and reliability. But as pointed out above, you only need a NAS/server and streamer wired to a switch on a network. I used a wireless bridge with my HDX for years. 99% of the time it did not need an internet connection and about 50% of the time it didn't have one. I didn't listen to iRadio. With the HDX the only reason for an internet connection was looking up when ripping. Using a NAS with a PC or Mac based ripper renders this unnecessary also. Although when ripping you'll need an internet connection to your PC/Mac for look up unless you are putting your own tags in manually.

Depends on the circumstances, and I get the impression from your question that your circumstances vary.

Last time I rented a house in Stockholm (I work for that big network company) it came with a 4G to Wifi adapter. No wired connections. It worked well up to and over the level of a remote desktop connection for work, streaming spotify, some tablets being used for playing games and a kid streaming a movie. In 2 weeks time we had one dropout, which could well be caused by the battery being almost empty.

The circumstances were good: a not too densely populated area, great networks and wooden houses. I can imagine that when you are stuck in a concrete / steel apartment complex in Warshaw that the circumstances are suboptimal.

As a backup, I would use a large usb stick having my top 10 albums (which count for 50% of my listening anyhow).

I am looking forward to the new Uniti devices with regards to wireless reception and Google Cast integration.

ChrisSU posted:

I would put a NAS near the HDX and network them rather than mess around with USB sticks. A £20 switch and a couple of Cat5e patch cables would do it. You can always add a wireless access point to this occasionally for adding metadata and downloading new music, but you don't need an internet connection to make it play.

Yes the time will come for my adding a NAS and it also feels simple to me loading USB sticks and hard drives and SSDs which by no means I would call fiddly or messy. Indeed there is plenty of flexibility.

Ardbeg10y posted:

Depends on the circumstances, and I get the impression from your question that your circumstances vary.

Last time I rented a house in Stockholm (I work for that big network company) it came with a 4G to Wifi adapter. No wired connections. It worked well up to and over the level of a remote desktop connection for work, streaming spotify, some tablets being used for playing games and a kid streaming a movie. In 2 weeks time we had one dropout, which could well be caused by the battery being almost empty.

The circumstances were good: a not too densely populated area, great networks and wooden houses. I can imagine that when you are stuck in a concrete / steel apartment complex in Warshaw that the circumstances are suboptimal.

As a backup, I would use a large usb stick having my top 10 albums (which count for 50% of my listening anyhow).

I am looking forward to the new Uniti devices with regards to wireless reception and Google Cast integration.

One of the certain things that I've already done was to have lots of backups of sticks and drives to the point of deliberate duplication so I shouldn't think I could ever lose anything.

Adam Zielinski posted:

No.

Just put the NAS and a small switch next to your streamer and enjoy ripped / high resolution content that way.

I actually disabled Tidal / Spotify on all my streamers and use it to play my own music only (plus some internet radio stations).

This may well be the way and the next idea with a NAS and understandably one will always give priority to one's own music.

Not good anyway that Spotify doesn't allow any longer any recordings from the ECM label.

Chris 1970 posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

No.

Just put the NAS and a small switch next to your streamer and enjoy ripped / high resolution content that way.

I actually disabled Tidal / Spotify on all my streamers and use it to play my own music only (plus some internet radio stations).

This may well be the way and the next idea with a NAS and understandably one will always give priority to one's own music.

Not good anyway that Spotify doesn't allow any longer any recordings from the ECM label.

ECM is increasing its catalogue availability via HDTracks - happy times

spacey posted:

Best to have a cable from the switch back to router as well, for internet access. Then you need to ask yourself why not simply have the NAS next to the router and run a cable from the router to the streamer? this would eliminate the switch and a shitty SMPS next to your kit..

This quite likely seems the most advantageous next step to take and I will experiment some time in the future.

Cool - what NAS you building?

Chris 1970 posted:

Just as simple as that. I cannot conceivably be bothered by any sort of monthly subscriptions be it internet or anything else so I am quite satisfactorily using PAYG internet when it suits me so I wonder whether I should explore any Naim streamers only using WI-Fi tethering form smartphones or it is not recommended. Just some yeses or nos will do. 

I do not know precisely what you mean by "getting into streaming" but if you buy a DAC and connect it via USB or SPDIF to a device running a player or a UPnP server + renderer you can enjoy high resolution music without the need for any wired connections.

The device upfront the DAC can be a Raspberry Pi (possibly with Hifiberry DIGI+ Pro SPDIF interface), a mac mini (possibly with a USB isolator), an Auralic Aries, a Melco, etc. depending on your budget, computer literacy, interest, ...

As SIS points out, you can also adopt wireless streaming in conjunction with a Naim streamer if you make sure that your wireless works halfway reliably. I use SPDIF streaming (with a Naim DAC) for my main music system and wireless streaming for occasional listening, videos, TV, etc. I have never experienced any problem but I do not have any Naim streamer in my wireless LAN.

spacey posted:

Cool - what NAS you building?

Oh well I will have to see about that and I haven't started yet.