Audiophile Router?
- Thread starter Lossless
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Well you would want a WiFi system that can handle at least 24bit and not be cluttered with the rest of the household. As far as hard wire depending on outputs you could have a problem with connectivity.
Sound Dragon
Yawns and sets his couch on fire!
A mesh network would be your best bet.something like an orbi or the google version.
Would there be any real benefit to adding an Orbi wireless router? I’m not interested in wireless. I basically running a wired connection from my ISP modem to possibly a “Orbi” (wired router or switch) which in turn would branch to a dedicated hi-fI PC and Oppo BDP-83 DLNA network server.
I think I want a hub/switch that would not introduce additional jitter and is efficient in dividing the data stream among two primary devices (PC & network player) and occasionally a PS4.
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Great...thanks....now some company is going to cook up an "audiophile" home router. Just what we need.
That was my exact thoughts too. Snake oil? A bit is a bit, I think?Great...thanks....now some company is going to cook up an "audiophile" home router. Just what we need.
That was my exact thoughts too. Snake oil? A bit is a bit, I think?
Exactly. Sorta like a $10 vs $10,000 toslink cable. It's passing light across plastic (glass is less common), so I'll save my money. Digital signals either get their or they do not....no in the middle.
Wifi single dropping....run cable....that simple.
I'm trying to resist any snark here, but please put "audiophile" completely out of your mind for this.
A router transfers data, via ethernet cable or wifi, and that's it. If the router has enough bandwidth to handle streaming video, it can easily handle high res audio.
That said, if the device you want to network is stationary, ethernet is really the way to go. Leaving wifi to portable devices will lead to less headaches in terms of admin, but sometimes that's not possible.
A router transfers data, via ethernet cable or wifi, and that's it. If the router has enough bandwidth to handle streaming video, it can easily handle high res audio.
That said, if the device you want to network is stationary, ethernet is really the way to go. Leaving wifi to portable devices will lead to less headaches in terms of admin, but sometimes that's not possible.
Sound Dragon
Yawns and sets his couch on fire!
The Orbi units have Ethernet ports on the satellites as well I believe. So you could do the last mile hard wired from the orbi unit to the device.
Yes, they do, or at least most of the models do. They have a number of them that vary by wireless speed and other features.
Orbis, and a number of other mesh systems, also can do ethernet for the backhaul. With these mesh systems, strictly speaking, the "mesh" part is defined by how the various units talk to each other, present as one access point and let you manage them all together. The backhaul is how they communicate with each other vs. communicating with clients.
The better systems actually have a separate radio for this so backhaul isn't sharing bandwidth with clients. Or, the better ones can also do that backhaul communication via ethernet if you can physically run the cable. Basically, it's always better to be hardwired for network purposes, but obviously that's not always feasible or can be a big PITA. Another consideration is that consumer level WAPs can get overloaded with too many wifi clients. Hard wiring can help here.
Getting back to the Orbi, I had an RBK50 set for a bit. While it worked, it worked very well. It replaced two Apple Airport Extremes which were having coverage problems. Unfortunately, it didn't work for very long. The satellite started getting flakey after a week or two and it did it in such a way that make it a big PITA to diagnose. All the lights were saying it was connected but it wasn't accepting traffic. I'd reset it and it would work for a day or two and then back to the same thing. Resetting was also painful because I had to set it up again for ethernet backhaul which wasn't well implemented (at the time). Looking through various forums, there were many other reports of similar instability.
Netgear offered to replace the satellite but I had to send back the old one on my dime (f**k that). I returned it to Amazon and bought another Airport Extreme on shopgoodwill for $25. I've since added more wifi clients and the Airports (generally a good, solid piece of hardware) are acting like they're overloaded.
In the future, I might try the Orbi again but my most likely replacement candidate would be Ubiquiti's Amplifi HD system.
Anyway, to reiterate the previous point, with network devices, it's really about bandwidth and latency. Any consumer level network device should be fine for streaming audio even if it's FLAC or whatever. Worry about getting something that won't be a PITA.
olson_jr
Lunatic Member
Great...thanks....now some company is going to cook up an "audiophile" home router. Just what we need.
Funny that you might use the term 'cook up.'
OCXO CIRCUIT ~ ULTRAHIGH PRECISION OCXO
The unit core features an (Oven Controlled Crystal Oscillator) OCXO. This OCXO was designed for high audio quality in mind to provide extreme precision frequency (+-10ppb) and reduces phase noise.
https://thelinearsolution.com/ocxo_router.html
eizner23
Super Member
Don't forget the low jitter ethernet cableshttps://www.audioquest.com/cables/digital-cables/rj-e-ethernet
FFS
Dazaa
Super Member
I can imagine the grin on the face of the person who wrote all that BS, knowing full well some mug will fall for it.
I'm off to start a company specializing in high end routers.
invaderzim
Super Member
My new company is going to make a room air treatment system that allows the signals to flow better. When wifi signals get affected by untreated air molecules it causes more problems than using the wrong copper in wires.
My new company is going to make a room air treatment system that allows the signals to flow better. When wifi signals get affected by untreated air molecules it causes more problems than using the wrong copper in wires.
Yes, cryo air treatments that ensure your cryo treated tubes remain constantly.....cryo.
eizner23
Super Member
This guy on audio bacon said all this abt a patch cable, quite amazing
- Tightens up and rounds out the sound. Without the iSO-CAT6, instruments and voices sound a bit flatter and less delineated.
- More vivid, dynamic, and airy. The music just breathes and opens up more freely into space.
- Enlarges the soundstage a significant amount. Without the iSO-CAT6, the music (surprisingly) sounded more congested and less extended, even with the dCBL-CAT7 cable.
- Tone and timbre improve and maintain their integrity.
- Better resolution of micro-details and dynamics, articulation, and overall realism. The stroke of a bow, the pluck of a guitar, and the attack of a kick drum are made more apparent.
- Imaging, separation, and layering improve substantially.
Bits are bits but likewise noise is noise. ISO-CAT6 uses an isolation transformer to reduce noise. I replaced the CAT5e with CAT6 in my home network and use linear power supplies with cable modem and router for the same reason. Sonore has an updated version of my ultraRendu endpoint with one supporting optical ethernet for galvanic isolation.https://www.sonore.us/opticalRendu.html
I cannot speak to this specific product, but have found the reduction of RFI noise across many types of cables can improve transparency via a lower noise floor.
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