Difference between WiFi and Ethernet

I overgeneralized. But shielded Ethernet is effective if the couplers and sockets are shielded and grounded. Using shielded cable into plastic sockets is not particularly effective.
 
I won't use Power line adapters to 'wire' remote ethernet - they can (but not always it seems) be a great way of introducing 'noise' to your power lines especially if on the same ring main as your hifi. I use actual CAT wired connections.
 
Musician said:
There is always buffering at the receiving end of the dac nowadays ( at the input receiver of the dac ) when using spdif, both with toslink and electrical spdif. This is a problem from the past, 20 years ago.
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well, if you're referring to FIFO buffering + ASRC and PLL/PPLL masterclock recovery. yes these measures can reduce S/PDIF jitter. however none can eliminate it entirely, and i believe the results are heavily dependent on the specific implementation. i could be wrong though... 🤷‍♂️
 
There has to be something wrong here, possibly with my understanding. With a digital source, such as streaming, the incoming data is asynchronous, it just doesn’t matter what’s happening with the original clock. The incoming data will be error corrected, buffered, and fed to the DAC. There is only the local clock.

Update to add:

Due to buffering, there is no informational difference between streaming and downloading, except that an interruption longer than the buffer will cause dropouts.

If the device is susceptible to RF interference internally, that cannot be corrected by cabling. But it will be measurable.
 
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Spatch said:
I had the Wimm for over a week now
Yesterday I finally connected the Wiim via an Ethernet cable.
More clarity
Blind tested my partner as she also agrees more clarity. To be honest was not expecting any difference, but glad I did.
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Don’t forget to buy audio quest cinnamon to complete your golden listening. It just hilarious when someone claim such thing without proof of audio precision result.
 
willbewill said:
I won't use Power line adapters to 'wire' remote ethernet - they can (but not always it seems) be a great way of introducing 'noise' to your power lines especially if on the same ring main as your hifi. I use actual CAT wired connections.
Click to expand...
Sometimes we have to pick our poison. In my case using a power line adaptor was the only choice and it worked better than I thought. Much better than using wifi in my case.
Our AC grid are already contaminated .

Edit: using a light dimmer contaminates the AC grid in a terrible way , much worse than any power line adaptor.
 
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Musician said:
Sometimes we have to pick our poison. In my case using a power line adaptor was the only choice and it worked better than I thought. Much better than using wifi in my case.
Our AC grid are already contaminated .

Edit: using a light dimmer contaminates the AC grid in a terrible way , much worse than any power line adaptor.
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LED bulbs produce RF whether dimmed or not. A decent power supply will mitigate all this, and you can test it by turning the volume up and listening for hum or buzz.
 
So, if data can be corrupted over wi-fi, if I send a spreadsheet over wi-fi will the figures be wrong when I open it at the other end?

Or if I send a Word doc, which was perfect to start with, will it be full of spelling mistakes, or in a different font?
 
Steve Woodhouse said:
So, if data can be corrupted over wi-fi, if I send a spreadsheet over wi-fi will the figures be wrong when I open it at the other end?
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If any digital signal would be corrupted over Wi-Fi, what you will hear is quite audible artefacts, drops, glitches and so on. I mean, immediately noticeable. It simply cannot be related to anything subtle regarding soundstage, timbres or any "musical" enjoyment. ;)
 
For anyone wanting to go down the rabbit hole, the data stream itself is going to be fairly well protected. As @VintageFlanker says, there will be audible artefacts if some UDP packet with the audio media payload doesn't arrive or the UDP header checksum is corrupted in transit.

The RF noise on a powerline is mostly going to impact the analog audio at its point of generation -- the digital to analogue conversion. A good power filter will take out the RF noise out of the power signal coming into the amplifier.

The only time I've had issues with an Ethernet over powerline was with a Siemens power system in my brother-in-law's house. The Ethernet worked fine, but the bloody Siemens power unit was interpreting the powerline modem's physical layer signalling as power noise on the line (i.e. dirty power) and was shutting itself down. Which comes back to previous points in the thread about having a good RF filter on your amplifier to clean up any Ethernet powerline modem signals or other powerline noise artefacts on the input power signal -- simply, good RF filters are necessary for a clean power signal used in the amp.
 
One factor that is different between wired and wi-fi is that any audio signal from an airplay 2 device is compressed to lossy 256kbps aac. Via ethernet, no such compression takes place.
 
hoohoohoo said:
For anyone wanting to go down the rabbit hole, the data stream itself is going to be fairly well protected. As @VintageFlanker says, there will be audible artefacts if some UDP packet with the audio media payload doesn't arrive or the UDP header checksum is corrupted in transit.

The RF noise on a powerline is mostly going to impact the analog audio at its point of generation -- the digital to analogue conversion. A good power filter will take out the RF noise out of the power signal coming into the amplifier.

The only time I've had issues with an Ethernet over powerline was with a Siemens power system in my brother-in-law's house. The Ethernet worked fine, but the bloody Siemens power unit was interpreting the powerline modem's physical layer signalling as power noise on the line (i.e. dirty power) and was shutting itself down. Which comes back to previous points in the thread about having a good RF filter on your amplifier to clean up any Ethernet powerline modem signals or other powerline noise artefacts on the input power signal -- simply, good RF filters are necessary for a clean power signal used in the amp.
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It’s easy to be persuaded that a digital signal passing over power line will inevitably be corrupted.

But if your instincts were correct, then every time someone turned something on that’s really noisy, like a vacuum cleaner or microwave oven your music would become unlistenable.

People transfer terabytes of data over power line and the end product is bit-for-bit identical with the source.
 
AndyB said:
One factor that is different between wired and wi-fi is that any audio signal from an airplay 2 device is compressed to lossy 256kbps aac. Via ethernet, no such compression takes place.
Click to expand...
I’d find that very surprising tbh as I’d say Airplay has nothing to do with wireless or wired. It’s a protocol that can be used to stream audio in your local network and shouldn’t be impacted by the means.
 
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