I haven't noticed any difference in sound quality between wired and wireless with my node 2i. However, recently, I started experiencing a couple of annoying instances of my app "losing" my player. Some of the forums suggested that wired was more stable as far as the interface between the device and app, so I switched to wired. But since I couldn't run ethernet cable directly to the device, I used ethernet over powerline adapters. These have plenty of bandwidth to handle any audio format. One word of caution when using these devices: if you have two phase wiring in your house, don't place them on two different circuits that are on different phases, as the signal then has to travel out of your house to the utility's step-down transformer, reducing bandwidth. Try to keep them on the same circuit if possible, or at least on two circuits of the same phase (either both black wires or both red wires in your electrical panel).