How do I switch from Wi-Fi to Ethernet cables?

imaninatural

The problem is that my modem is in the basement and the Bluesound is on a different floor. There is not a clear path for running cable. 

I've had issues like that and been amazed at what a pro installer could do to fish wire. A good electrician or network/alarm system installer can often work wonders. It's worth having one evaluate your situation.

I hear ya, and on the surface it doesn’t make much sense but it works.  Many people here with $$$ streaming setups swear by them.  My guess is that hardwiring the stream prevents the streamer from having to use circuitry to process the Wi-Fi signal over the air, but that’s just a guess on my part.  The good news it’s not all that expensive (in audio terms anyway) to give it a shot and if it doesn’t provide significant improvements just return it.  And yes, I believe inserting a quality switch, optical connection, etc. between the node and streamer could yield further meaningful improvements, but I’m sure someone here who’s actually done this could chime in further with more direct specific info.  The one thing I’ve learned is that with streaming everything matters — and matters A LOT — so there are lots of ways to engineer in further improvements, which is at once exciting and daunting.  Just my $0.02 FWIW, and best of luck.

I had an extender and didnt have much success with it. Went to a mesh setup and solved most of my dropout problems but hard to tell if it made an SQ difference cause I made several other changes that improved my SQ. But I believe it has a roll. My modem is on one end of the house and my rig the other, half dozen sheets of drywall to go through.

I have 3 nodes. The base node connected to router is in direct line of site of node #2 and the 3rd node is hard wired to streamer and is in direct site of #2. Node connected to rig is not in the cabinet with other gear. Its out in the open on the floor.

My neighbor had an extender but was still suffering droputs on his upstairs laptop. Went to a mesh and placed one node on 1st floor directly under the upstairs room where the laptop was used and in direct line of site of the base unit. Problem solved.

You can get a modem that uses a SIM Card, park it right next to your gear.

There’s no good adaptor solution that is better than your current set up.  Besides hiring an electrician to run a new cable for you I encourage you to find a Wifi analyzer for your phone or laptop to check the signal strength and also make sure you are an uncongested channel. Also, use 5GHz instead of 2 GHz if you have a strong enough signal. Fewer people use it and it has better bandwidth.

Keep in mind that audio requires very little bandwidth. A good wifi signal has many times more bandwidth than you’ll need unless you have many other users in the home.