Repeater/extenders are evil!

@erik_squires sure.  but the amount of money we spend on equipment here, using wifi seems to me to be a poor choice.  It's like buying a Ferrari when all you have for fuel is diesel and you have to detune it to 140 hp.  

I spent a lot of time and money upgrading my wireless, not for audio, but for normal use.  and when I started streaming I didn't have a good way to run a wire to my audio location.  So I was wireless for a while.  I didn't figure out a way to get a wire to my system for longer than I had intended so finally I ran a wire across the floor and plugged it in to test it--to see if it was worth all the trouble.

It was probably the biggest upgrade of any tweek I've done. And there will be those that say "But...error correction"  But "FTP"....but "etc".  no, that isn't how streaming works.  So now there is a wire, that is visible but not too bad, to my audio system.  If you're  better decorator than I am, consider putting it under the mob board or installing a chair rail.  It is worth it.

Jerry

Maybe it’s my ears, but I don’t think I can hear any difference between my Netgear Nighthawk hard wired or WiFi. My current streamer doesn’t have WiFi, so I’m using a Netgear Powerline PLP2000 with great success.

NETGEAR Powerline adapter Kit, 2000 Mbps Wall-plug, 2 Gigabit Ethernet Ports with Passthrough + Extra Outlet (PLP2000-100PAS), White https://a.co/d/dAfN1uk

Today, my Aurender W20SE arrives!

Looking forward to a major improvement in SQ.

But just using the built in streamer in my dCS Lina DAC it sounds really good after hard wiring. So much so that now for two days I have listened only to digital.

Am accepting the deficiencies of digital and enjoying all the benefits.

I have gone over to the dark side!

Going down the digital rabbit hole, I have watched many YouTubes. Took a small step by ordering two tweaks from Amazon Prime. The Ifi LAN Silencer for $89 and their upscale wall wart for $69. If they don’t work I will send them back.

Does anyone have experience with the Synergistic Research Network Switch and Router? These each are about $2K. I do not particularly care for that company.
Or any experience with other tweaks?

Curiousjim...good answer.

@mglik congrats on the new Aurender streamer!!!

I have good news and not so good news for you.

Good news - Aurender caches your streamed music to a large SSD cache

Not so good news - Because the Aurender caches the songs and or playlists onto its built in SSD cache, as long as you have adequate download speed, bringing the router over and hard wiring from router to Aurender or using mesh network or a good extender will unlikely to make any audible difference, so you kind of spent $70 that you didn’t need to spend. But you have a piece of mind which is priceless.

Enjoy!!!

As a side note…I’ve never compared direct vs. mesh network but I can tell you I have absolutely no issues with the EERO strategically placed around the house.
I consistently get 200-300 mbps download speed from the EERO node that feeds my Aurender N200 streamer. Sounds fantastic as well!