Since my last entry over a week ago I was still experiencing audio dropouts when I play music via wifi. I have been in touch with Matrix's tech support, as well as doing my own tinkering / research on network streaming.
I have finally resolved the issue last night, so I thought I will share my experience with you all. Hopefully it might help others who experienced network related streaming issues - from what I read online this is a very common problem with hifi / AV network streaming, and it's very difficult to find any useful information online other than people suggesting weak wifi signal / network speed.
Network Speed
As I stated earlier my network speed is good - see attached speedtest result I carried out this morning:
I have also done a wifi strength check with an android app on my phone (wifi analyzer) by placing the phone on top of the Element X. The signal strength is nearly as good as when I measured directly in front of my router. I have placed my router on top of a bookshelf to help maximising the signal. The straight line distance between the router and the Element X is only a little over 2m with only an ikea shelf panel between the router and the player. So I concluded that wifi strength is not the issue.
Route Setting
My ISP is BT and my router is supplied by them (model: BT Smart Hub 2). It is quite a new model but the features are a little basic compared to other models. For example it does not allow me to assign a different name to the 2.4Ghz network vs. 5.0Ghz, so I cannot have control over which device is connected to which network. I noted the Element X has a dual band wifi antenna, but I cannot control (or restrict) which network it is connected to. I will suggest in their future firmware / products it will be good to have user control on the network / frequency selection, to manually select 2.4 vs 5.0 vs. automatic switching?
Another thing that may or may not helped is the wifi channel both networks are connected to. I downloaded the 'Wifi Analyzer' app on my laptop, and it can tell me the relative strength of each channel available. The BT Smart Hub 2 by default has a 'smart' setting, which scans the available frequency channels and will automatically switch to the strongest channel available. So instead of letting the router jump around (and potentially causes dropout in the signal the moment it switches channel) I worked out the more stable channels through observation (in my case it was channel 6 for the 2.4GHz network, and channel 44 for the 5GHz network) and set the router to that specific channel only.
Network Setting
All the network settings appeared ok. UPnP is switched on. The Element X is assigned to DHCP, and is recognised on the network with a fixed IP address. I turned off some 'smart' router features that might caused unnecessary delays to the data transfer - I cannot tell you if this actually helped, but it will not hurt! There is no port forwarding assigned to the Element X but I supposed this is done automatically by DHCP anyway? So after checking everything I described above I left the router alone.
Element X Setting
Going through the player's configurations I came across the DPLL bandwidth setting. Having learned what DPLL does I tried all 3 settings (low, normal, high), and none of them made a difference in the dropout I experienced (the high setting does not introduce less dropouts, nor the low setting introduce more). After that I left the setting at 'normal'.
Next I tried disconnecting the NAS from the MA remote app and re-connect. That did not improve the dropouts in playback.
Hard Reset
Having done all the above, and with no obvious clues in terms of problems with the router / player settings, I decided to do a hard reset on both the router and the player. I unplugged both devices and left them off for 5 minutes. First I powered up the router, and once it rebooted and established connection, I then plug in the Element X. It turned on and took less than a minute to reconnect to the wifi network. Then the MA player stated it is not connected to the NAS so I let it re-scan and rebuild the library. When that was all done I played music via wifi and the audio dropouts stopped. Excellent!
My guess as to what happened? When I first received the player less than 2 weeks ago it took a few attempts to connect the Element X with my wifi network (I followed the instruction to use the MA remote, etc). I recalled having to do it 3 times before the player established a connection. I now wondered if the initial aborted attempts may have caused a connection issue with the router? The hard reset may have wiped the cache clean and the router / player can then make a 'clean' connection? I also suspected it really helped to set the router fixed to the strongest network frequency channel in your home. There are lots of information out there that explains how to choose between 2.4 vs 5GHz networks so I won't get into it here.
I don't know why but prior to my 'fix' I also experienced dropouts when I played files from a USB memory stick as well. This should not happen since direct playback from the Element X's USB port should have no relevance with network related issues. I haven't tried USB memory playback yet today but if there are still issues I will report back.