WiFi/Wireless HiFi!

nads

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Why? what is the benefit? is in needed?

do you know how much the signal degrades going through a pane of glass.

a friend recently bought a house and is doing it up. He is not onto HiFi but decided that he needs the house networked so has run Cat6 wires everywhere just in case he wants media in any room.

I, jokingly, asked him why not wireless? He laughed and reminded me what his job involves, not that i had forgotten, RF. and what is WiFi and any wireless system just plain old RF.

hell i have some wireless speakers and i get bad drop out over a distance of about 8 meters.

so why?
 

Andy H

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It's like having the usefullness of an ipod with hifi sound, anywhere you want. With the correct gear you can get very good results.

Since I bought my Sonos (admitedly it did need an ext' dac) I use my cd player very little even though IMHO the cd still has the edge. All my music is stored in one place, no digging around looking for that cd, just set up a playlist and of you go.

When upgrade time comes, which wont be for a long time, I would even consider not even bothering with a cd player and buy a high end dac in its place. I think the Sonos is the best bit of kit I have bought and have had no prob's with signal/drop outs.

I do not download music and still prefer to buy cds and rip from them. I may do in the future if lossless downloads become available.

Just my thoughts.
 

The_Lhc

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nads: Why? what is the benefit? is in needed?

It's just convenience, although to be fair no part of my Sonos chain is wireless (other than the garden zone)

do you know how much the signal degrades going through a pane of glass.

About the same as light does, it's all part of the electromagnetic spectrum (assuming it's just a standard sheet of glass and not some special treated or coated glass). So not very much. But then I don't have too many windows INSIDE the house, so I don't see why it matters.

a friend recently bought a house and is doing it up. He is not onto HiFi but decided that he needs the house networked so has run Cat6 wires everywhere just in case he wants media in any room.

I, jokingly, asked him why not wireless? He laughed and reminded me what his job involves, not that i had forgotten, RF. and what is WiFi and any wireless system just plain old RF.

Does he work from home or something? Interference is a problem if other things are on the same channel but it's not analogue signals so you're not going to get FM radio style audio loss.

hell i have some wireless speakers and i get bad drop out over a distance of about 8 meters.

They aren't very well made then.
 

Dan Turner

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Wireless Hi-Fi systems such as Sonos, Logitech and the Apple Airport systems that I and several other people on here have, utilise wireless computer network signals. So the music starts off as a computer file (if this is an uncompressed or lossless file then this is as good a starting point as the original CD), transmitted via your wireless network, so in this state it is just network traffic - if sender and receiver are within range and free from inteference, then the data will be transmitted completely intact and not affected detrimentally by walls, windows or anything other than that - it should either work perfectly or not at all. With the receiver connected to a good digital-to-analogue-converter, this then connects to your amp.

Personally I found that playing back lossless files from my Macbook, streaming wirelessly to an Apple Airport Express, into a CA Dac-magic produces better results than I got with an Arcam CD37 - plus all of the benefits of having all my music in one place and being able to control it remotely from my iPhone.

The only thing to watch out for is inteference - the vast majority of the time my system works perfectly, but occasionally it does suffer from drop-outs, where the music cuts out for a second or two, then comes back. It's a real pain trying to figure out the source of inteference and eliminate it. However it is something that can be resolved.
 
A

Anonymous

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Drop-outs might be a problem with any wireless system. Case is, all wireless devices share a rather limited 'space', so if there's many devices using RF around, things might get messed up.

If you ensure that your network use a channel that's not used by your neighbours, and avoid filling your home with RF based gadgets (remote controls, wireless speakers, wireless videolinks etc), you'll be fine.

That is, your house might interfere too. Windows won't matter, but concrete walls and the iron bars in them might. As might micro wave ovens, TVs and electrical installations.

Such interference might be eliminated by moving the equipment -- sometimes as little as a few centimetres.

As it's digital signals being sent, there's no such things as gradual detorioration of sound quality. Either the signal is perfectly transferred, or it's cut.
 

Big Aura

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very interesting thread!

Re the Sonos - is it possible to mix and match components - e.g. could you use an Olive instead of a laptop as your music repository, and then hook up a Sonos in the kitchen, bedrooms, study, garden etc? FAOD, this is six numbers in the midweek draw away from being a 'serious query'!
 
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Anonymous

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There's certainly a difference between an open system using the same network as your computer, with the computer as a media centre, and a proprietary system like Sonos.
 

d4v3pum4

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Why? Having the convenience of all my music collection in one place and accessible all over the home and no wires between rooms for one. I have enough wires behind my AV setups without running cables between rooms! My Squeezebox setup works a treat. Dropouts are very, very rare.
 

idc

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Dan Turner:

....... so in this state it is just network traffic - if sender and receiver are within range and free from inteference, then the data will be transmitted completely intact and not affected detrimentally by walls, windows or anything other than that - it should either work perfectly or not at all..........

Bit perfect data transfer that does not effect the sound seems to be accepted when it is wireless, but not with wired. See the debates over HDMI, different USB cables and optical vs coaxial. I wonder why that is? If anything it should be the other way around. I can see more potential flaws with wireless transmission that cable transmission.
 

The_Lhc

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idc:Dan Turner:....... so in this state it is just network traffic - if sender and receiver are within range and free from inteference, then the data will be transmitted completely intact and not affected detrimentally by walls, windows or anything other than that - it should either work perfectly or not at all..........

Bit perfect data transfer that does not effect the sound seems to be accepted when it is wireless, but not with wired. See the debates over HDMI, different USB cables and optical vs coaxial. I wonder why that is? If anything it should be the other way around. I can see more potential flaws with wireless transmission that cable transmission.

But (once again!) we're not talking about the transmission of MUSIC! In this instance it is network data traffic that is being transferred, it has checking routines that ensure the DATA packets are recieved correctly, if they aren't they get re-sent.

None of it is in real-time, as far as musical replay is concerned, whereas when you talk about HDMI or optical or coaxial or whatever you ARE talking about transmission of music in real-time (although of course it's perfectly possible to send network traffic over optical or even coaxial media), so the problems with dropped data and error-correction need to be taken into account. With network they don't, if the receiving end doesn't get a packet of data it doesn't try t guess what is is, it simply replies to the sender to say "sorry, didn't get that, send it again".

I'm trying to think of an analogy I could use to make the point. This isn't a very good one but, imagine I've ripped all my music to a NAS and then I take that NAS, put it in my car and drive to your house and we plug the NAS into your laptop. Would you expect the transportation of data via motor vehicle to have affected the data in anyway (assuming I didn't crash and the NAS wasn't damaged)? The answer is no, incidentally.

The network connection between your storage (PC, laptop, NAS etc) and your playback device (a network streamer, Sonos, SB etc) is the car it is designed solely to get the data from one location to another without losing or changing any of the data.

IT works, simple fact is, if it DIDN'T work, we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation, it would be impossible.

Cables only matter if you're transmitting MUSIC, in this case you aren't, you're transmitting raw data.
 

idc

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If I listen to Spotify I am listening to music in real time. When I press play the music arrives as quickly as it does when I pressed play on a CDP. Part of the connection is wireless, from router to laptop and part is wired from laptop to DAC, both are sending the same digital data.

Why is it that I read loads on which cable (type and make) is supposedly the best, but nothing on which wireless is best?
 

The_Lhc

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idc:If I listen to Spotify I am listening to music in real time.

Only in part, the part from your laptop's digital out to the DAC and beyond is real-time, all the parts before that aren't.

When I press play the music arrives as quickly as it does when I pressed play on a CDP. Part of the connection is wireless, from router to laptop and part is wired from laptop to DAC, both are sending the same digital data.

No, they aren't. Spotify is a website, the mp3 stream it sends to you is broken down into TCP/IP packets, the transmission rate will depend on how good Spotify's uplink is, how busy they are, your broadband connection and how many other people are sucking it up but lets assume you're currently getting 1Mbps download speeds (I've never heard you complain that your BB gets really slow so we can assume that contention on your exchange isn't a problem). The speed required for Spotify is 320Kbps (as you're a premium user), so that gives you an overhead of about 3 times what is required to keep the audio stream going. That means any individual network packet could be resent from Spotify to your laptop 3 times before it would run into trouble.

Your laptop receives that NETWORK data through its web browser, converts it to the mp3 file and then pumps it out the digital out to your DAC as a PCM bitstream. Then AND ONLY THEN could it a) be considered in any way to be music (as far as any of the devices in the chain are concerned) and b) is there any reason to think that a cable is going to make any difference.

Why is it that I read loads on which cable (type and make) is supposedly the best, but nothing on which wireless is best?

Tell me, have you ever heard or read anybody testing network cables, ie Cat5 or 6 UTP or STP cables? I certainly haven't. That's what the wireless is replacing, in this case.

I'll say it again, for the last time. It is NOT the same data, network traffic either works or it doesn't, there is no concept of "quality", that's why wireless doesn't make any difference.
 
A

Anonymous

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Not even analog signals through interconnects or speaker cables are 'music'; it's electrical impulses... There's no 'music' until your speakers moves the air.

There's some aspects to be considered when choosing a digital connection though. Metal cables -- coax or USB -- between a computer and a hi-fi system might introduce noise (that has nothing to do with the digital signals as such), while optical cables or wireless is an effective insulator against such electrical problems. Wireless will, potentially, be less stable than a wired connection, because a wireless connection might be interfered with by other RF sources -- but such problems are solved by eliminating the interference.

Point is, problems should be addressed correctly. While there's at least a small theoretical chance that cables might affect analog sound, there's no such chance with digital sound.
 

The_Lhc

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Fahnsen:Not even analog signals through interconnects or speaker cables are 'music'; it's electrical impulses... There's no 'music' until your speakers moves the air.

Well, yes but it is a direct analogue representation of the music.

There's some aspects to be considered when choosing a digital connection though. Metal cables -- coax or USB -- between a computer and a hi-fi system might introduce noise (that has nothing to do with the digital signals as such),

Does nobody read anything I say here? I'm talking about NETWORK. Even if there is noise on a network cable you AREN'T going to hear it unless the interference is so bad the data packets can't get through at all.

You don't get noise in an mp3 you've just downloaded from iTunes do you?
 
A

Anonymous

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the_lhc:Does nobody read anything I say here? I'm talking about NETWORK. Even if there is noise on a network cable you AREN'T going to hear it unless the interference is so bad the data packets can't get through at all.
You don't get noise in an mp3 you've just downloaded from iTunes do you?

That's not the point.

With a metallic cable you might get noise (hum) out of your speakers, because of the electrical connection between your PC and your hi-fi system.

Of course this has nothing to do with the digital files or signals. Still it's something that ought to be considered when choosing your equipment. Whether you chose this or that USB or coaxial cable won't affect the music -- but whether you choose this kind of cable, or an optical cable or a wireless streaming device, will affect what's coming out of your speakers along with the music.

We don't all have the selective hearing of the typical vinyl addict, who are able to filter out noise generated by the equipment...
 

kinda

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Just had a quick read through this. Interesting stuff.

The whole point of digital over analogue signals is it's very difficult to have significant signal degradation as it's very difficult for a 1 to become a 0, or vice-versa. However, the issue of whether the medium can have an effect on quality is in how the signal is reconstituted I think.

When a digital signal travels using a network protocol, there is error checking and so forth, and the reciever of the data effectively recreates the information as a pristine copy from the information received.

For LPCM going to a DAC over a coax for example, the waveform just hits the DAC circuits and gets converted, (though I know some DACs reclock). Though it should still be possible to extract the original 0s and 1s, there's no error checking to confirm this, and squashing or stretching of the pulses, and alterations in the waveform shapes might have an appreciable effect on the conversion.

Obviously, in the first example the transmission medium is pretty irrelevant, but in the second one it isn't so much.
 

The_Lhc

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Fahnsen:the_lhc:Does nobody read anything I say here? I'm talking about NETWORK. Even if there is noise on a network cable you AREN'T going to hear it unless the interference is so bad the data packets can't get through at all.
You don't get noise in an mp3 you've just downloaded from iTunes do you?

That's not the point.

Yes it is. IDC asked why nobody had ever tested different wireless connections for audio quality, referring to the wireless network connection, but it's an irrelevant question as you will not get noise introduced to the music playback because of a wireless connection. You might lose the connection altogether but it won't introduce any noise.

With a metallic cable you might get noise (hum) out of your speakers, because of the electrical connection between your PC and your hi-fi system.

But that's not a NETWORK CABLE. Which is what IDC was asking about.
 

The_Lhc

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kinda:When a digital signal travels using a network protocol, there is error checking and so forth, and the reciever of the data effectively recreates the information as a pristine copy from the information received.

For LPCM going to a DAC over a coax for example, the waveform just hits the DAC circuits and gets converted, (though I know some DACs reclock). Though it should still be possible to extract the original 0s and 1s, there's no error checking to confirm this, and squashing or stretching of the pulses, and alterations in the waveform shapes might have an appreciable effect on the conversion.

Obviously, in the first example the transmission medium is pretty irrelevant, but in the second one it isn't so much.

EXACTLY! Thank you!
 

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