Solved my streaming grunge (inner detail) problem


I’ve had inner distortion in streaming for some time.  I’m on a mesh, then hard wired to a Lumin u2 mini.  It was like tube clipping distortion especially apparent on vocal harmonies/reverb.  I tried a long direct cable (hard wire) from upstairs.  No luck.  Different tube in the DAC.  No luck.  SPDIF, AES.  No luck.  Moved the Orbi satellite from 3 feet to six feet from my Lumin - success!  Even though it is hard wired to the Orbi satellite the proximity was key.  Obviously something sensitive to strong broadcast in my electronics, probably the Lumin.  I’m sharing because someone, somewhere is having or will have this problem too.  

wlutke

Glad you figured it out as that must’ve been very frustrating.  Very interesting info, and thanks a lot for sharing!

Great thing to know… a noisy thing near your system can cause problems. Something that was not common in the analog days. Sure there were hair driers… but the literal noise made it obvious. 

Although I haven’t experienced “grunge” with my Lumin U2 Mini I can support the proximity issue. I use the Amplifi Alien router and mesh and the phone app helps to locate the mesh position to where the signal is the strongest.

Mine (unfortunately) sits on the floor with devices hard wired from there but after going through the process I’ve rarely experienced drop outs or stuttering during playback while streaming.

The one issue I don’t like about mesh units is that they seem to occasionally lose sync with the router. Although I still have service unplugging/restarting is a quick resolve and never takes more than a minute. The display on the front of the unit notifies you when this needs to happen.

When I first set up my mesh network I set up the node in my stereo cabinet. BIG mistake! While my Node2i was seemingly unaffected, my phono front end was unusable. 

The solution was simple. I moved the mesh node across the room and ran a 25’ stretch of Cat8. Voila! Blissful silence. If you think about it, any wifi appliance IS going to be an RF generator, right? ;-)

Happy listening.