Anyone having issues with their G5's Bluetooth connection quality or stability? Is your LDAC connection maxing out between 330 and 660?
After accidentally breaking my G5 by giving its analog input too much voltage from my preamp (uh...), I decided to investigate the quality of its innards. About15 more than 15 minutes ago.
So the PCB looks as good as any, the passive parts look fine - even the tiniest surface mount capacitors and resistors appear attached properly. The larger bulk caps (Nichicon) are good parts, but I'd like to have seen a bit more solder on their leads (this is after looking at only one side, though - the other could be worse. But I don't think it will be)
There is one clear problem, though, and to make it immediately obvious, I pasted it at 400% size over the empty space originally under the battery. I noticed immediately after opening it up and removing the battery. That's right, I only removed the battery!
The highlighted connector will be familiar to anyone who, in the last 25 years, has worked on Wi-Fi enabled laptops and did more than upgrade or replace its hard drive or RAM. More recently (since ~8-9 years ago), even some ATX motherboard manufacturers have started adding mini PCIe slots to use the same Wi-Fi cards as laptops, so you might have seen it there, too. The connector is most commonly associated with Wi-Fi antennas, because >99% of the time, it's definitely for Wi-Fi. Bluetooth wasn't always included on these Wi-Fi cards, but about 10 years ago, it became common that it was (instead of having a separate, usuaully USB, Bluetooth controller).
So since we're seeing this connector, it means the antenna meant to be attached to it, isn't there... There should be a wire, usually a white, grey, or black, in this environment, about 4 inches long... Resistive copper inside...
It's not there.
Has anyone here ever forgotten to put the Bluetooth antenna on their desktop DAC? How was performance? Not great, right? No, mine either...
If you have your G5 and you haven't accidentally wrecked it because the documentation doesn't include the "maximum safe voltage" for its analog in (or you haven't dropped it in boiling oil yet or whatever), and you're noticing that Bluetooth LDAC isn't ever running at anything past 660, and when you force 990 there are many many manymanymany dropouts per second, well my friend, you might want to try opening your G5's rear (lift the leather, but do it right, don't peel the back into three layers like I did (it doesn't matter because mine's broken, yours isn't! ya lucky...) - make sure you're pulling the whole ~1.6mm thick piece of black plastic up, not just the thin pleather off the double-sided adhesive, then the double-sided adhesive off the plastic, then the plastic up/off the hole in the back... Like I did... Stu Pid Stu Pid me, Stu Pidasso! I probably could've avoided this by reading about someone else online who's made this mistake if I had looked, but I didn't. TBH my thing was already broken so I didn't move with the most care in the world, but yeah.. Well, in case my post here inspires you to open up your thing, and not check to see if some sort of special caution is needed for the dang thing to not come apart like nothing, it won't be my fault, not even a little! (yw too)
So since I don't have the most motivation to fix mine up (it's pretty busted...), if, when you open up your G5, you notice your antenna is missing (like mine! lol), and you plan on adding an antenna, you should: place your phone or PC exactly 6 feet to the immediate right of the G5, play some lossless stuff over LDAC, and approximate the average bitrate. Note it. After adding the antenna, do the same thing. Note it. Then put the notes in this thread! I know that with my G5 about 0.1728315mm from my S22, LDAC's bitrate was limited to the average of just under 500kbps. 97% of the time it was 478 or something, 2% it was 333kbs, and 1%: 666kbps. Oh, you can see in the picture, the version of G5 I have is 2.5 - that's what the board says, anyway. When you check your device for an included antenna, it would be nice to know the version of the G5 you have. I don't think there's any way to find out which version you have, so if it turns out that all the 2.5s don't have antennas, it might not be helpful practically, but at least we'll know lol.
Some other stuff:
I'm not sure where to find a 3.875" 100mm WiFi antenna (exact measurement if you're looking, because, if possible, you should only open the back once, as I each time you do, you risk irreparably damaging it, and it's much more delicate from the sides as compared to its face), so if one is not available that size or smaller, or you just wanna be cheap or lazy (or both), if you have an old Wi-Fi enabled laptop in your junk electronics drawer/cabinet/room/storage unit/dedicated structure, you can grab it, and use its antenna. Don't worry, most of them have two antennas and will still function well enough with just one if you ever have to use it again. Now, I'm not positive on this next bit, but I think it's possible that exceptionally old Wi-Fi cards (802.11a/b, maybe g, possibly even early n ("pre-n") used a connector that looked identical to the naked eye, but was acually larger, with its diameter ~+20%. It could be that the older antennas I was once trying to use were just bent or something, but it's also possible that they were fine, and just bigger. So, to avoid work (pointless re-assemblings), if you've got a few laptops, say one from 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2018, I'd say go for the 2013 before any of the other ones. Try to go for a first-gen AC laptop first, then wave 2 AC, then look older (remember: probably >98% of AC-enabled laptops will have two antennas, so your old laptop in storage you stole one of the antennas from, will still be able to connect with no problems - only its peak speed will be halved {{oh, and peak speed being halved will have no effect on observed performance of typical tasks (web browsing, streaming, remote desktop etc.), except at extremely low signal levels (which most often would cause slowdowns even with two antennas anyway, so...}} ). Also, a/b/g/maybe n will have two antennas, but very likely, one will be labelled Tx, the other Rx (for Transmit and Receive), so if the antennas are the right size, that's great, you can use them, but it's likely the laptop will not have normally functioning WiFi anymore - you'll probably have to place it in direct line-of-sight to the router. If you do take from a/b/g/maybe n, the best one to take is the Transmit (Tx) antenna. Why? Much less transmitting is done than receiving, and the WiFi router is usually better at dealing with receiving weak signals.
That last paragraph turned out much longer than I thought it would!
After accidentally breaking my G5 by giving its analog input too much voltage from my preamp (uh...), I decided to investigate the quality of its innards. About
So the PCB looks as good as any, the passive parts look fine - even the tiniest surface mount capacitors and resistors appear attached properly. The larger bulk caps (Nichicon) are good parts, but I'd like to have seen a bit more solder on their leads (this is after looking at only one side, though - the other could be worse. But I don't think it will be)
There is one clear problem, though, and to make it immediately obvious, I pasted it at 400% size over the empty space originally under the battery. I noticed immediately after opening it up and removing the battery. That's right, I only removed the battery!
The highlighted connector will be familiar to anyone who, in the last 25 years, has worked on Wi-Fi enabled laptops and did more than upgrade or replace its hard drive or RAM. More recently (since ~8-9 years ago), even some ATX motherboard manufacturers have started adding mini PCIe slots to use the same Wi-Fi cards as laptops, so you might have seen it there, too. The connector is most commonly associated with Wi-Fi antennas, because >99% of the time, it's definitely for Wi-Fi. Bluetooth wasn't always included on these Wi-Fi cards, but about 10 years ago, it became common that it was (instead of having a separate, usuaully USB, Bluetooth controller).
So since we're seeing this connector, it means the antenna meant to be attached to it, isn't there... There should be a wire, usually a white, grey, or black, in this environment, about 4 inches long... Resistive copper inside...
It's not there.
Has anyone here ever forgotten to put the Bluetooth antenna on their desktop DAC? How was performance? Not great, right? No, mine either...
If you have your G5 and you haven't accidentally wrecked it because the documentation doesn't include the "maximum safe voltage" for its analog in (or you haven't dropped it in boiling oil yet or whatever), and you're noticing that Bluetooth LDAC isn't ever running at anything past 660, and when you force 990 there are many many manymanymany dropouts per second, well my friend, you might want to try opening your G5's rear (lift the leather, but do it right, don't peel the back into three layers like I did (it doesn't matter because mine's broken, yours isn't! ya lucky...) - make sure you're pulling the whole ~1.6mm thick piece of black plastic up, not just the thin pleather off the double-sided adhesive, then the double-sided adhesive off the plastic, then the plastic up/off the hole in the back... Like I did... Stu Pid Stu Pid me, Stu Pidasso! I probably could've avoided this by reading about someone else online who's made this mistake if I had looked, but I didn't. TBH my thing was already broken so I didn't move with the most care in the world, but yeah.. Well, in case my post here inspires you to open up your thing, and not check to see if some sort of special caution is needed for the dang thing to not come apart like nothing, it won't be my fault, not even a little! (yw too)
So since I don't have the most motivation to fix mine up (it's pretty busted...), if, when you open up your G5, you notice your antenna is missing (like mine! lol), and you plan on adding an antenna, you should: place your phone or PC exactly 6 feet to the immediate right of the G5, play some lossless stuff over LDAC, and approximate the average bitrate. Note it. After adding the antenna, do the same thing. Note it. Then put the notes in this thread! I know that with my G5 about 0.1728315mm from my S22, LDAC's bitrate was limited to the average of just under 500kbps. 97% of the time it was 478 or something, 2% it was 333kbs, and 1%: 666kbps. Oh, you can see in the picture, the version of G5 I have is 2.5 - that's what the board says, anyway. When you check your device for an included antenna, it would be nice to know the version of the G5 you have. I don't think there's any way to find out which version you have, so if it turns out that all the 2.5s don't have antennas, it might not be helpful practically, but at least we'll know lol.
Some other stuff:
I'm not sure where to find a 3.875" 100mm WiFi antenna (exact measurement if you're looking, because, if possible, you should only open the back once, as I each time you do, you risk irreparably damaging it, and it's much more delicate from the sides as compared to its face), so if one is not available that size or smaller, or you just wanna be cheap or lazy (or both), if you have an old Wi-Fi enabled laptop in your junk electronics drawer/cabinet/room/storage unit/dedicated structure, you can grab it, and use its antenna. Don't worry, most of them have two antennas and will still function well enough with just one if you ever have to use it again. Now, I'm not positive on this next bit, but I think it's possible that exceptionally old Wi-Fi cards (802.11a/b, maybe g, possibly even early n ("pre-n") used a connector that looked identical to the naked eye, but was acually larger, with its diameter ~+20%. It could be that the older antennas I was once trying to use were just bent or something, but it's also possible that they were fine, and just bigger. So, to avoid work (pointless re-assemblings), if you've got a few laptops, say one from 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2018, I'd say go for the 2013 before any of the other ones. Try to go for a first-gen AC laptop first, then wave 2 AC, then look older (remember: probably >98% of AC-enabled laptops will have two antennas, so your old laptop in storage you stole one of the antennas from, will still be able to connect with no problems - only its peak speed will be halved {{oh, and peak speed being halved will have no effect on observed performance of typical tasks (web browsing, streaming, remote desktop etc.), except at extremely low signal levels (which most often would cause slowdowns even with two antennas anyway, so...}} ). Also, a/b/g/maybe n will have two antennas, but very likely, one will be labelled Tx, the other Rx (for Transmit and Receive), so if the antennas are the right size, that's great, you can use them, but it's likely the laptop will not have normally functioning WiFi anymore - you'll probably have to place it in direct line-of-sight to the router. If you do take from a/b/g/maybe n, the best one to take is the Transmit (Tx) antenna. Why? Much less transmitting is done than receiving, and the WiFi router is usually better at dealing with receiving weak signals.
That last paragraph turned out much longer than I thought it would!
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