Logitech Transporter FYI


I am posting this info up as an FYI for those who own this device after a recent discovery I found while testing the various connection methods offered by the device.

I have owned the Transporter for about a year and have been very happy with its SQ capabilities while exclusively using it's WLAN connection option to feed my BelCanto DAC3. I have never used the internal DAC of the Transporter.

Anyway, I recently decided to try the CAT5 Lan connection on the Transporter instead of the wireless G interface and was floored by the difference in SQ between the two connections. Up until now I have never tried this hard wired method of connectivity mainly because I didn't imagine it would make much of a difference, especially since I did perform bandwidth testing on the Wireless link between my router and the Transporter and found no signs of bandwidth issues over the Wireless G connection. Despite not having any issues previously it was hard to deny the far better SQ I experienced while using the hard wired connection.

After going back and re-listening to several albums that I know very well I found that bass output now plays with much more authority and appears to reach lower octaves then it did before. In terms of soundstage, everything seems to have more meat to it (ie..more 3 dimensional) while also extending further outside the boundaries of the speaker then it used to.

In summary, if you haven't tried the hard wired connection of your Logitech device please do yourself a favor and give it a go. I understand this may be old news to some folks but it's new news to me and figured if there were any other folks out there like myself who live under a rock it would be worth mentioning these findings.

Feel free to add your experiences with the various connection methods here as well
eniac26

Showing 1 response by eniac26

Well it’s good to know that others have had similar results going hard wired with the SB devices.

As far as wireless signal strength goes, the worst I ever received between the router and Transporter on any given day was 97% since my router sits only a few feet above the transporter itself. My PC that hosts the SB Server software is using a hard wired connection to one of the ports on the same wireless router. The music files sit on a GB capable NAS device that is also hardwired to the same wireless router.

Now to take this conversation down into the weeds a bit I will add some detailed info below which I logged while doing my own testing of the bandwidth usage of the wireless connection between the Transporter and my Wireless Router in my home. These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt as I was not using enterprise class hardware which typically offer SNMP trapping/logging capabilities that are much more accurate.

So I did a series of traffic analysis tests on the wireless links between the router and the transporter one day when I was in one of those nerdy moods. During the tests I used the same source file each time which, in this case, was Track 1 from Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy CD that was ripped with compression set to "0" into a .FLAC file using DBPowerAmp. The total size of the song is roughly 44.5mb in this format.

During the test, the highest observed chunk of data that was transmitted within the 1min intervals that I was using to capture packets was 13mb (mega bytes). When I divide this number by 60 sec it shows that roughly 221kb (kilo bytes) of data was being transmitted, per sec, during this particular 1 minute logging interval.

Now based on the Wireless G adapter that is included with the Transporter it should be capable of ingesting a max of 54Mbps (Megabits per second). This number equates to roughly 6.75mb (mega bytes) of data per sec.

So based on these numbers I was never even close to taxing the bandwidth capabilities of the wireless link, even if I take into account the fact that I was connected at less then 100% signal strength (97% in my case).

In my mind these numbers were believable enough to rule out any bandwidth related issues that would result in the loss of SQ that I was hearing.

So if I rule out bandwidth as the cause of the loss of SQ then this leads me to think it is more the result of airborne interferences such as EMI/RFI/Microwave or similar as eluded to by “Forrestc” in the post above. While I can't fully buy into the idea that changing the Wireless Channel will help bring back the lost SQ it certainly can't hurt and I will give it a try.

I guess unless their is a standard implemented for which devices can operate on which channels and at which frequency that offers complete isolation this will be a tuff problem to get around.

Interesting stuff either way ..Thanks for the responses and feel free to add any more info