30-Sep-2023, 11:03
Is your router in a different room to your 250 Pro? If it is, do you already have ethernet cabling between the 2 rooms? If you don't have cabling between the 2 rooms, can you install ethernet cabling between the 2 rooms. That may not be possible if you're in rented accommodation and you may not want to do that in order to try an ethernet connection if you own your own home.
Given the location of your router and your 250 Pro, what's the easiest way you can set up a network connection right now? My advice is to start with that, get a good reliable network connection using that method, and then live with it for a while before starting to think about trying anything else. You can spend a lot of time and money playing around with network connections, whether they're wired or wifi.
In theory ethernet is probably better but there's a lot you can do to tweak wired or wifi connections. Since you're using Roon, Roon have a support article on their site about getting a good network connection and troubleshooting both wired and wifi connections.
In practice both can work very well and whether one is better than the other is probably going to depend more on just how you implement whichever connection you choose rather than on which one you choose. I use ethernet but I set up my system back in 2017 before the CI board was released and I had wifi problems in my home so I chose ethernet because I couldn't get a reliable wifi connection back then. Wifi networking has improved a lot since then and I had to get an installer in to run an ethernet connection from the room where my router is to the room where my 140 Pro is. Having set up a good ethernet connection I haven't tried wifi since then.
So my advice is to start by using whichever connection is simplest and easiest for you to implement at the moment, set it up so you've got a reliable connection, and see if you're happy with that first before wondering whether doing things differently will deliver an improvement. There's things you can do to improve both sorts of connections and get better sound quality but they all take time and money and you'll find a lot of different opinions on the cost-benefit relationship of anything you want to try when it comes to making improvements.
Given the location of your router and your 250 Pro, what's the easiest way you can set up a network connection right now? My advice is to start with that, get a good reliable network connection using that method, and then live with it for a while before starting to think about trying anything else. You can spend a lot of time and money playing around with network connections, whether they're wired or wifi.
In theory ethernet is probably better but there's a lot you can do to tweak wired or wifi connections. Since you're using Roon, Roon have a support article on their site about getting a good network connection and troubleshooting both wired and wifi connections.
In practice both can work very well and whether one is better than the other is probably going to depend more on just how you implement whichever connection you choose rather than on which one you choose. I use ethernet but I set up my system back in 2017 before the CI board was released and I had wifi problems in my home so I chose ethernet because I couldn't get a reliable wifi connection back then. Wifi networking has improved a lot since then and I had to get an installer in to run an ethernet connection from the room where my router is to the room where my 140 Pro is. Having set up a good ethernet connection I haven't tried wifi since then.
So my advice is to start by using whichever connection is simplest and easiest for you to implement at the moment, set it up so you've got a reliable connection, and see if you're happy with that first before wondering whether doing things differently will deliver an improvement. There's things you can do to improve both sorts of connections and get better sound quality but they all take time and money and you'll find a lot of different opinions on the cost-benefit relationship of anything you want to try when it comes to making improvements.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
