Squeezebox Touch: jitter thru wi-fi?

Mapman,

Thanks for the clear and concise answer. The good thing about dropouts is there's no second guessing, like with jitter: you either get or don't get dropouts.

I'm taking note of bandwith as an issue to keep in mind, especially since I'd like to experiment with hi-rez files, that are large.

FWIW, my router is Wireless-N and the PC is 802.11b/g/n, and I'm moving the router so it needs to go through only 2 internal brick walls perpendicularly to get to the Touch (down from 3 walls at 45-degree angle). Does that seem ok/bad/borderline?

Seems like the Touch is a rather safe and cheap way to get into hi-rez without any significant downsides, even for a $15k system like mine (pre/amp/speakers). Do you agree? Of course a better DAC will be needed down the road.

Thanks!

I use a Touch in my system wirelessly and never have dropouts, but I gnerally have a 90-95% signal strength at my listening position. By comparison, I also have a prior generation squeezebox (SB3) that has been heavily modified to improve the digital output and I find the unmodified Touch to be as good or better. I wouldn't worry about jitter with the Touch.

"Does that seem ok/bad/borderline?"

Well, my internal walls are drywall, not brick, so hard to say but I suspect brick would be more of an obstruction.

You should be able to see the "number of bars" or % connection strength on the computer used as music server.

Does Squeezebox provide a similar readout of signal strength? If so, that would be the way to tell.

I would say with wireless G if you fall below 80-90% signal strength in either connection to router (from server or from Squeezebox) that rebuffering delays are more likely using lossless files ripped from CD. I use lossless .wav format.

Higher rez files utilizing more data per second of music will up the ante further. I do not have any experience there I can relate.

Newer computers offer wireless N which has significantly higher bandwidth. Sam true of routers. I would expect newer networked music devices to follow suit also at some point at which time the issues with higher res files will be relieved somewhat.

Jitter is only an issue with the clock and S/PDIF output of the Touch, not the WiFi transfer. Only dropouts can occur with the WiFi interface. These are not jitter. Dropouts are rare and depend on the usage of your ethernet network.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Audioengr reminded me that a Wifi network is shared and used by all active devices connected to it. it is only dedicated to streaming audio from server to player if nobody else is using it for tasks that consume bandwidth (web browsing, file downloads, etc.). So concurrent usage for things other than streaming audio can cause delays/dropouts.

For example, I have two Roku players on two systems that conenct via wireless G to the same music server computer. Often if I play both at the same time with lossless CD .wav files, the dropouts/delays will occur regularly and become an annoyance. Less of a problem as I mentioned earlier for lossy or lower resolution files, like MP3.