Powerline Ethernet - Does it affect A/C noise?

Unless you live in apartments you would rather want to snake cat5 cables to your room. It's much better performing and probably not more expensive than buying powerline Ethernet hardware.

Oops wrong animal. I meant to type fish, but my brain mixed them up after hanging up the phone to a plumber for slow shower drain problem.

Ha, "snake" is okay too. Yeah, I should have specified better - we are going to be in an apartment. Not sure if I can drill and I'd rather not run wires down the hallway.

A late post but yes, yes yes it does.

Do not buy.

I have a rather large house that is too hard for one WiFi network to tackle and I had Trendnet Powerline adapters.

The upside! They work.

The downside, they work by introducing noise into the system, noise that even my APC power conditioner could not remove.

The worst apparent sign was in my office where the speakers next to the computer would make static noise when there was no load going into the amplifier. I could tell that it had something to do with the speaker wires passing by the plug with the adapter. Move it you say. Well yes, but space is tight there and that was where the Internet router was.

Upstairs, where I have a much fancier system I was having tons of trouble that I was denying had to do with the adapters. I would get turntable ground hum with my Ayre Preamp at about 32 (0-66 is the range). I would have mystery pops every now and then on one channel. I suspect these blew out a set of tubes a while back. I would get static out of the speaker closer to the adapter. Again moving the adapter was not an option, in part because of the nature of the electric circuitry involved.

Eventually I realized this is my problem.So I broke down and strung Cat 6 everywhere.

Yes, it took care of my problems. I might have saved myself thousands if I hadn't had to move to from a Heed Quasar to an Ayre p-5xe for the better shielding. I might not have blown out a set of tubes in my RM-9 amplifier.

Above all, empty spaces in the sound are noticeably darker. I've been able to turn my RM-9 from low gain to medium gain without problems. Turntable hum doesn't kick in until the 60 on the Ayre. These are not small problems. These would be audible to the biggest skeptic from Hydrogen Audio. They are reproducible and it's plain as day.

So please avoid the Powerline adapters. They are not good for audio no matter what your level of system, $500 or $20,000. Mine are going on eBay today.

Fishing Cat 6 took days but it has decreased the latency on my Internet speed considerably while allowing me to enjoy new services like an ObiHai VoIP box that lets me call out over my Google Voice line and so on. Beware though, building your own structured wiring cabinet heads you into another world of madness, not entirely different from Audiogon…

I've been using the Trendnet TPL-401E2K powerline for 3 months now to control my Naim Unitiserve 2tb and stream internet radio. I have had no problems. That being said I did test my internet speed and if I go though the trendnet my speed drops from 15Mbps down to 3Mbps. For controlling the Naim and streaming internet radio music it works just fine. As far as noise I have no problem. My system is running off a Purepower 1050 re-generator. No problems watching TV either.

Funny this thread got revived. At the time I wrote this, I drilled a hole in the wall and put plates and jacks on either side so it looks professional. In late 2011, I added a powerline setup to bridge the network into my bedroom. Both units are on separate parts of the breaker from my stereo and I have had no problems. The speed is great, too. Well enough to stream 1080p videos to my TV in the bedroom from my server. They are the Netgear Powerline 500 units.

I use Netgear Powerline AV+ adaptors for my Meridian Digital Media System with flawless results. No noise at all as it has a built in filter. Also, the frequency with which these devices operate is so high that it's not going to interfere with the 50-60 Hz cycle of your AC.

Here's the Netgear adaptor review:

http://reviews.cnet.com/bridges/netgear-powerline-av-500/4505-3304_7-34799068.html

I'm getting AC line noise with my Netfear Powerline 2000 model as well coming thru my high system.   You It emanates through my loudspeakers as a light uneven static.