Difference between WiFi and Ethernet

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.
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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.
 
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.
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Not entirely true. I don’t know the details.
 
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.
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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.
 
These things are easily tested.

Get a fine. Transfer over power line. Compare the original to what comes out the other end.

An old truck with audio. Get the original digital audio file, and the one transferred over power line, out both in Audessey, and invert one. Then combine them.

The ‘combined’ track will be absolute silence if there’s been no change.
 
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Steve Woodhouse said:
These things are easily tested.

Get a fine. Transfer over power line. Compare the original to what comes out the other end.

An old truck with audio. Get the original digital audio file, and the one transferred over power line, out both in Audessey, and invert one. Then combine them.

The ‘combined’ track will be absolute silence if there’s been no change.
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You don’t have to listen. Digital files can be directly compared.

  • fc (File Compare): A command-line program that compares multiple files and outputs the differences between them. It is similar to the Unix commands comm, cmp, and diff. The fc command has been included in Microsoft operating systems since MS-DOS 2.11 and is included in all versions of Microsoft Windows.
fc Command Options

  • fc /a: Compares ASCII files.
  • fc /b: Compares binary files.
  • fc /l: Compares files line by line.
  • fc /w: Compares files word by word.
 
Since there appears to be no limit to the number of times this concept is mangled, there should be no limit to the number of times it’s corrected.

The only way for noise and errors to occur in playing a digital file is for it to be introduced after the DAC. For this to happen, the device would have to be badly designed, because even inexpensive power supplies are designed to suppress power line noise. Things like ferrite rings, and such. It’s not difficult to test. Just turn the volume up with nothing playing, and listen.
 
Brantome said:
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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Darko has done a video on this. The conversion to aac is due to the greater demands of airplay 2 compared with the original airplane 1. If I remember correctly you only get uncompressed transfer when an airplay 1 device transmits to another airplay 1 device. See Apple Airplay's Audiophile Easter Egg.
 

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AndyB said:
Darko has done a video on this. The conversion to aac is due to the greater demands of airplay 2 compared with the original airplane 1. If I remember correctly you only get uncompressed transfer when an airplay 1 device transmits to another airplay 1 device. See Apple Airplay's Audiophile Easter Egg.
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Yeah, very aware of that even before Darko blogged about it (see the audiophilestyle article re how much of a mess Apple Music and AirPlay 2 is), but that has nothing to do with wired v wireless which was what I was refuting.
 
AndyB said:
For airplay speeds see the Youtube video 'Apple Airplay's Audiophile Easter Egg'.
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Yeah, seen all the videos, read all the blogs. Those are specifically about Apple Music and AirPlay. Where in what you quote does it mention wired v wireless to support your initial comment “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.”?
 
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