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.