High Powered Wireless Network for Audio

Yes, a powerline can create problems.

Add some repeaters around the house. I have a few made by link sys. They plug into our ac outlets and retransmit the signal throughout the house. Concrete does impede the signal.

Use a Ethernet cable connection instead of WiFi! The cable is cheap and no powerline interference!

You should go to the Linksys website for a complete tutorial. I had difficulty getting a wireless signal from one side of my house to the other, so what I did was get 2 routers, one for each side connected by a wire with the routing function disabled on the second router, turning it into a switch with wireless access point. I gave both routers the same SSID so my computer(s) could choose the one with the best signal depending on location. I tried a range expander but that made things worse, I think by creating reflections that were difficult to discern. Be mindful that any and all wireless devices share 1 port, whereas each wired device gets the port it's plugged into. So if you had 4 computers plugged in to ports 1-4 and a 4 computers wireless , each wired port gets 20% (1/5th) of the "signal" and each wireless computers gets 1/4 of the remaining 20% allotted to the wireless access. With my setup, I have 2 access points, so not as much competition for "air time".

I'd like to offer a few recommendations. My employer makes one of the high end routers for home use. I manage the Engineering dept. and have tested WiFi performance in various configurations.

My house is about 3,300 sq-ft and I use my router to stream audio to 3 Squeezebox devices wirelessly with good results. The entire house has good reception with only 1 router.

Let me clarify some myth first. Your Squeezebox Touch is a 11B/G device. No 11N router with the same output power and setup can improve the performance.

These WiFi routers are FCC certified with certain antenna design. Getting a higher gain antenna may improve the performance. But it may exceed the allowed emission limits.

Even though my router is located at one corner of the house, it is desirable to put the router in the center of the house. The WiFi performance degrades as the distance increases and/or more walls to penetrate.

Now come to the most important part of tuning the WiFi performance. You need to figure out which of the 11 channels would give you the best performance. Some of the higher end routers can automatically select the best channel. However, most of them do not select the best channel for a number of reasons.

There are two types of interferences: WiFi interference (e.g., other routers) and Non-WiFi interference (e.g., cordless phone, microwave, etc.) If you can do an air scan, you can see what other WiFi routers are around and the channels they use. Pick one from 1, 6, or 11 that has the least amount of routers/APs. It is harder to detect non-WiFi interference. So you may have to trial and error.

If you don't want to do the above, try channel 11. Let me know how it works for you.