Wifi VS Ethernet for streaming quality

[Timcognito]

I did flood wire my house with CAT5e when I moved in almost 20 years ago, so this decision is easier for me than most others.

Me too and whole closet full of unused coax cable running everywhere in the house and separate garage/shop.

 

[Mnyb]

Sometimes it’s not the network but the devices themselves, the wifi in some my old squeezeboxes are a bit meh ? And it suits my temper as an engineer to use a simple wire if the freaking things sits still

 

[kyuu]

Sometimes it’s not the network but the devices themselves, the wifi in some my old squeezeboxes are a bit meh ? And it suits my temper as an engineer to use a simple wire if the freaking things sits still

Yes, particularly in ye olden days the wi-fi implementation was often pretty poor in end devices. That seems to be less of an issue these days, but it still does come up. For example, the wi-fi in my TV that's only about 3 years old just stopped working. Not particularly broken up about it, it was only connected to the network for my wife's convenience.

 

[GD Fan]

Yes, particularly in ye olden days the wi-fi implementation was often pretty poor in end devices. That seems to be less of an issue these days, but it still does come up. For example, the wi-fi in my TV that's only about 3 years old just stopped working. Not particularly broken up about it, it was only connected to the network for my wife's convenience.

I recently replaced my TV because of wifi connection issues that were getting worse. I think it was from 2018, maybe '19. New Samsung at a fraction of the old one's price works like a charm!

 

[EJ3]

I was referring to Ethernet cables I definitely ruined other cables during my creative lifetime so far

I find it interesting when they are not the CAT category that is marked on them and you then have to make the run again with a correctly classified one!

 

[john61ct]

Trustworthy sourcing required. Monoprice and Home Depot for me

 

[EJ3]

Trustworthy sourcing required. Monoprice and Home Depot for me

I discovered that not all CAT's are what they say they are while I was overseas (2001-2018)

 

[kyuu]

Those CATs can be tricksy.

 

[Digital_Thor]

Just retested. Cable has a ping of 2 and around 4-5 in latency when testing my 500Mbps.
Wireless has around 450-480Mbps in most of my apartment, with a ping of 7 and latency of 17 in download and around 50 in upload.
So I definitely feel some nice "snappiness" with the cabled PC.
I admit that my old router still works quite well too

 

[middlemarch]

I can't believe this has already gone 89 posts

 

[GS430man]

In my house:
Stationary = wired Ethernet
Mobile = wireless Ethernet

But, we could pull wired infrastructure where we wanted it.

If I was a renter, or lived in a home without Ethernet wiring infrastructure, I would probably use wireless for stationary items simply for the pure convenience and lowest cost.

 

[Chrispy]

Yesterday, I put to the test, a long standing assertion in audiophile realms: ethernet is better than Wifi. I have seen countless threads on ethernet cables and switches. I have gone down this rabbit hole myself. Common audiophile wisdom is that a physical ethernet connection provides better sound quality than Wifi. Yeah right…

I disconnected my switch last night and went Hifi. I am getting 700 mbps download speeds through Wifi. More than enough for hi res music and 4K HDR streaming.

I perceive no quality differences when listening to music, as well as watching 4K HDR movies.

I no longer have the clutter of an ethernet switch and cables. Another Hifi myth down the toilet!

I tend to put this with most "audiophile" claims, i.e. nonsense.

I've had a variety of setups, and often simply rely on wifi as mostly a hardwire connection is a pain. I've not found any deficiency generally with the wifi setup, even when I lose internet for the network, the local wifi for things as simple as audio or even video aren't that big a deal IME.

 

[john61ct]

In my house:
Stationary = wired Ethernet
Mobile = wireless Ethernet

So confused, the latter is simply not a thing. "Ethernet" or IEEE 802.3 is by definition a wired standard

You likely meant Wi-Fi, IEEE 802.11

 

[xanalog]

Ethernet and Wi-Fi operate in the Physical and Data Link layers of the OSI model, routing happens in the Network layer. i.e. Wi-Fi and Ethernet protocols have nothing to do with routing.

For example, my home network includes Ethernet running at both 1gbps and 2.5gbps, OM3 fibre running at 10G and a Wi-Fi 6 mesh network with 3 access points. The only thing doing any routing is my pfSense firewall...

View attachment 513787

You are a genuine wire-head in a crowd of wireless-heads.
I look at that nice network diagram, and wonder why @Berwhale has not gone whole hog Dante for whole home music.

Some of us must be living in an alternate universe, where such things as latency, delays, relays, jitter, dropouts matter.
Afterall, this is ASR and snuffing-out opposing/dissenting views of a 'new-wireless world'... by calling such technical issues BS and calling those who prefer to stay wired old farts, is NOT in the benefit of anyone.
Of course, we can go on the argument that anything better than Red-Book is BS but then again we seem to lavish a few dB deeper noise floor, like it really mattered in a Red-Book world and the rest is BS and bits-are-bits.

Simple question, what would you think of 20mS latency? How about 200mS latency?
Do you get either in WiFi?
Does it really matter?

Depends on which alternate audio universe you choose to angle your (one's) answer from.
I am sticking with my Dante and prefer the security of my Wireless-less alternate world.

 

[EJ3]

Looks amazing! What internet speed do you get or are you on StarLink?

ZERO internet service or StarLink (StarLink doesn't seem to work under the forest canopy.)
(or cell phone service, which is the point).

 

[rcstevensonaz]

Simple question, what would you think of 20mS latency? How about 200mS latency?

It doesn't matter. I am not doing live music recording* and I do not need to have multiple input sources (e.g., vocals, drums, sax, etc.) precisely synchronized to the real time clock. Of course, this assumes a sufficiently reliable wired or wireless stream that does not have extreme errors.

All of my music is streamed, which means that it is buffered at the devices and then played back in proper time quantization (typically based on 20ms per packet size). The data flows into the buffer faster than it plays out. And if there is a quarter of a second gap between hitting play on my device and sound coming out of the speakers, I sure won't notice it.

* Edit: @RexrothPigeon noted that first-person gaming also is highly sensitive to latency in the real-time domain.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

I'm unsure why latency would matter for people who aren't playing video games or watching movies on their systems. (or performing/recording live music, of course)

 

[xanalog]

My vintage Rotel RSP-1576 (pre/Proc) had such horrendous delays (in the order of ~250mS) that caused much problems in the house that was being fed by it.
But again, I think you are trying to decimate just one part of my earlier post and intentionally leaving out the rest of post (e.g. noise level, Red-Book...).
If you look at that wireless signal in a histogram that (even w/extended buffering) the compounded delays, latency and drop-outs are not constant (no specs ever discussed or stated and can extend out to over 300mS in congested WiFi locales.
If our hearing can detect the difference between an echo and reverberation, then maybe you feel comfort in your own settings, as I do in mine.

I am such an old fart and full of BS that I actually have a parted network (the wired kind) one ETH handles the LAN assets and the ETH other is the WAN, separate and firewalled.

YMMV but does not mean a wired network is a relic and less rock-solid than a WiFi with all it's pitfalls, as have been already mentioned.

 

[rcstevensonaz]

I'm unsure why latency would matter for people who aren't playing video games or watching movies on their systems. (or performing/recording live music, of course)

Good point — gaming is also a real-time interactive activity, much like live music recording.

However, I'm not sure that playing a video falls in the same category since any decent device will pre-buffer a small amount of the stream (video & audio), and that small delay for filling the initial buffer isn't noticible. We listen (and watch) in real-time 20ms packet time frames, but networks transmit data much faster than that — so a network must be really bad for a buffer to be starved (and thus stutter on playback).

 

[rcstevensonaz]

My vintage Rotel RSP-1576 (pre/Proc) had such horrendous delays (in the order of ~250mS) that caused much problems in the house that was being fed by it.

Bad equipment is bad equipment. That has nothing to do with data transmission speeds and variations (jitter) of wired vs. wireless on a sufficiently adequate network.

But again, I think you are trying to decimate just one part of my earlier post and intentionally leaving out the rest of post (e.g. noise level, Red-Book...).

Honestly, I actually have no clue what your point really is. Your writing is bizarre, obtuse, and jumps all over the place. I still do not see any clear argument of fact in what you are writing, so I'm simply reacting to the unsupported "facts" you are tossing around.

If you look at that wireless signal in a histogram that (even w/extended buffering) the compounded delays, latency and drop-outs are not constant (no specs ever discussed or stated and can extend out to over 300mS in congested WiFi locales.

But is that relevant? Except for synchronized live music recording from multiple source or first-person real time gaming, why does such latency variation matter? Devices have been dealing with latency and jitter (latency variation) for decades now. A simple buffer (with slight delay in playback to allow the buffer to fill up) addresses those issues. Unless, of course, you are using poorly implemented devices (as you said you were using above) or an inadequate network.

Now, drop outs (lost data) is a real issue if you are using a protocol that does not include re-transmit (i.e., UDP). But if your network is routinely dropping packets, then that is a factor that must be addressed in your network. A competently implemented Wi-Fi or wired network will not face that issue; and a high audio quality stream will address lost packets as part of its protocol process.

If our hearing can detect the difference between an echo and reverberation, then maybe you feel comfort in your own settings, as I do in mine.

This seems to me to be a very stupid statement. Either your network is delivering the packets (within acceptable latency relative to buffering on the device) or it is not — either there is packet loss (i.e. missing bits of digitized sound) or there is not. Echo, reverberation female vocal treble, snare drum transients, etc. will all be there if the data stream is correct; and all of them will be adversely affected if it is not.

I am such an old fart and full of BS...

Sorry, but BS really isn't what ASR is about. Facts are welcome, BS opinions are not.

... that I actually have a parted network (the wired kind) one ETH handles the LAN assets and the ETH other is the WAN, separate and firewalled.

So do I. In fact, as part of searching for a rental house, a major factor for me is whether or not I could easily implement wired ethernet between various places in the house, and run it all back to the WAN-side router. And I also run multiple VLANs for: my work-related data, our home data, IoT devices, VoIP devices, and also an external guest DMZ.

But you know what: I do that out of preference, knowing full well that I can equally create a WiFi mesh that will fully cover 100% of my needs. I strongly prefer wired; but that doesn't mean wireless is not sufficient for what I need. Which is why — as a dyed-in-the-wool wired-head — I'm calling BS on your rant. Oh wait, I also have a WiFi mesh (Ubiquity AC Pros) that is fully integrated into my VLANS for devices that are wireless-native (e.g., iPhone, tablets, etc.). I wire where I can; and I don't where I can't. But I know full well that wired and wireless are both more than sufficient.

YMMV but does not mean a wired network is a relic and less rock-solid than a WiFi with all it's pitfalls, as have been already mentioned.

You still have not explained why your so-called pitfalls are a real problem for your situation or anyone else's (outside of using poorly designed hardware).