Wifi vs ethernet revisited

Not sure why everyone hates WiFi, when done properly, it works great, nothing isolates like not being physically connected. However for best speed, and uptime nothing beats a direct connection.

My streamer is about 40ft from my basestation 2 rooms away. Have run a cable, and done WiFi test back to back. On my system, there is no difference between them. My setup is using WiFi. I do have a higher end cable modem, that I purchased and setup. Found a spot where it will provide WiFi to my entire house and garage without any extenders or repeaters. 

Fiber is king! Fiber is almost always "best" But real fiber is expensive, like $300 is the start for a good cable without SPIFs. Fiber has 0 noise, 0 electrons, far less jitter (network jitter not timing jitter) and is basically isolation between devices. 

Anytime you add a mesh network, it will have some issues. Especially if 2 base stations are constantly doing a "hand off". Mesh needs to be setup correctly, with some overlap, but not too much where devices are constantly hunting between 2 or more base stations. 

Adding more equipment is always a bad idea! You want as FEW hops as possible between your modem and devices. Cat6 runs under 200ft do not need anything special. Long runs are the norm in any data center. 

The wall outlet plug in extenders are junk, don't use them. 

There is 0 need for LPS on any switch gear, unless the wall wart is plugged into your stereo system power. No data center has upgraded LPS, they all use what comes in the box. 

Coming off a Nighthawk router, to a couple of those cheap boxes to convert the signal from electric to optical and back to electric. To a Netgear Powerline. To the other Powerline in my music room and lastly to the streamer. I started with a 100’ Cat 8 cable and went to the Powerline for the most part I can’t hear a difference.

I think.

Wifi  grossly contaminates your router with RFI, noise is the enemy of maximizing streaming potential. Obviously its isolated, this not the issue. The issue is every link in the streaming chain needs to be optimized. Noise in streaming components obscures the signal to some extent meaning loss of resolution/transparency, you can't get back what you lost in an upstream component. Disabling the wifi on my router was of more benefit than adding the lps. Also, since my router situated very close to  audio system, strong RFI was no doubt contaminating cables and other components.

Also, be mindful that while each individual tweak may not  be that noticeable, the cumulative effect is assuming one's entire system is sufficiently resolving/transparent.

I should also add every single one of my streaming components powered by lps which is in turn plugged into my power conditioner fed by 20 amp 10 guage dedicated circuit. Switching power supplies contaminate your entire household AC, neighbors SMPS also contaminate the power grid. Also possibility of ground loops eliminated by having all equipment on same circuit, and all dedicated lines on same phase.

On the wifi thing, neglected to mention rfi issue on receiving end. You have receiver and antenna creating noise and the wifi converter itself clearly inferior to a quality hard wire receiver/converter such as my JCAT NetCard XE. If streamer is receiving component can't image a worse place for high levels of RFI, and again you have the issue of contaminating other components in close proximity to the receiving component. 

One shouldn't minimize EMI/RFI interference effects on our audio systems. We have amazingly high levels of this riding throughout our environment, this why shielding of components is not taken lightly by many manufacturers. I have a quality tri axis EMF meter, get within a few feet of a wifi hotspot and you'll see massive amounts of RFI, the other area where I see higher levels on audio components is transformers, I see mu metal shielding around transformers in some of my components, they take it seriously. Hard drives in NAS or internal drives in streamers another one.