Roon streaming wireless or wired and why?

[sjors.ehv]

Hi all ,

As a Roon core I'm using a Macbook Pro. My Devialet 250 Pro is Roon endpoint and I'm playing wireless through RAAT. 
Wondering what would be the advantages of a wired connection?

Thanks ,
Sjors

[David A]

Wireless has the advantage of galvanic isolation, you don't have a cable carrying current between your source and you're amp. The problem with wifi is that while it isn't totally line of sight, radio waves can pass through walls and objects, they often get reduced in strength when they do pass through something so it can be difficult in some situations for the amp to pick up a strong enough wifi signal to maintain a stable connection. In addition there's a lot of wifi signals in the air using the frequencies you're using, pretty well everyone is using wifi for something, and that may cause problems.

I had problems with wifi in my setup. I was streaming from my Mac in another room so there were several walls in the way and this was before my Devialet got the CI board upgrade so it didn't have the external antenna. Wifi would work for a few minutes and then stop working, I couldn't get reliable signal strength. I had to put a satellite wifi unit next to the amp and connect that to the amp by ethernet and everything worked perfectly. Eventually I had a permanent wired connection installed from a wall point near my computer to a wall point near my amp. Ethernet just works with no problems about wifi reception or signal strength. It also gives you the chance to play all sorts of games comparing different ethernet cables, you can't do that with wifi :-) (I realise some people may actually regard that fact as a plus for wifi.)

Do they sound different? I don't know, I never used wifi for long enough to really get a handle on the sound of that connection. I'd suspect that if you have a good quality wifi connection any difference in sound quality to ethernet would be small. If I could get a reliable wifi connection I don't know whether I would have bothered getting a permanent ethernet connection installed but I had problems with wifi and being able to go have a wired connection all the way from my amp to my router delivered a totally reliable connection for me and, since I own my own home, I had no problems getting the wiring installed. It might be a different matter if I was in rented accommodation.

If your wifi connection is working without problems, I'd say sit back and enjoy it and don't bother with ethernet. If you're having wifi reception/signal strength problems, then a wired connection is the best way out of your problems.

One other point. Since you're using Roon and RAAT, there's currently a bug in the Devialet firmware which results in problems if you're using RAAT with a gigabit speed ethernet connection. You avoid that problem with wifi. If you swap to ethernet you may have to deal with it. Different people seem to have the problem to differing degrees but it's worse if you're streaming high res files. I would get the problem badly if I had Roon upscale everything to 24/192 but I I streamed ithe original resolution I never noticed the problem. The fixes for it at present if you're using ethernet and Roon are to either reduce the transmission speed to your Devialet to 100T instead of gigabit or swap to using Roon's version of Devialet AIR instead of RAAT. This bug has been present since our Devialet's became Roon Ready in February last year but there have been reports that Devialet are currently testing a firmware update that fixes the problem. There's been no word of when we're likely to see it. I use RAAT but I've got a 100T ethernet connection to my 140 Pro and haven't had any problems with that speed ethernet connection.

[sam1000]

I have been using Google wifi and sound quality has been great (Devialet as a Roon endpoint for qobuz). Never faced any issues or dropouts with multichannel hi-res recordings or video streaming services to other devices either. I'm puzzled sometimes about people using ethernet for streaming audio. Having said that, things were a little different with Devialet AIR, but CI board has fixed those issues.
PS - I have placed 1 of the 3 google wifi access point near my AV rac. Earlier, I have used wireless bridge to increase the strength of wifi signal. Running a hardwire connection from a modem to AV rac is not an option for me.

[Gerronwithit]

I run Roon on my MacBook Air which is quite some vintage now. There are no physically stored albums on any local devices. If I leave the MacBook on for days, which I do, Roon will start skipping tracks halfway through a song or get the dreaded Tidal failed to load red message. A quick reboot resolves this and it is clearly an issue with physical buffers not being cleared properly or corrupted over a period of time. I should probably invest in a stand-alone Roon server so i can have instant access my music without having to have the MacBook powered up but the upgrade to 1000 has been a bridge too far for my wife.

[BoyScout]

Regarding your question, I agree 100% with DavidA, i used a good wifi device for years with a MacBook Pro and never notice a difference with wired connection but once i replaced the mac for a dedicated and wired device, Innuos in my case, it was a completely different story.

[Coffee_fan]

I finally tried Roon, based on the experiences that @David A related in another thread. I have to say I am impressed, extremely good integration, so thanks @David A !!. Only thing I needed to do is put Roon Core on an old PC I have and leave that one mostly untouched. With that, I can run DSP, upsampling and all the nice little gadgets. When I was running both the UI and Core on the same Mac, also an old box, then I would get some crackling, but now, over wifi I can consistently go to 192khz/24bits, which ends up being almost 10mbps streaming. I am using Google Wifi directly connected to my D200 and the two PCs, roon core and roon client over wifi.

Another great surprise, which I know may not be interesting to folks here is that with Roon I can songcast (equivalent of AIR) to my old and Trusty Linn Majik DS-i which seems to be fully supported by Roon. I also get there 192khz/24bits.

Hmm, for some records, I like the tone of the Linn chakra amplifier, analogic, a little more colored, but fantastic strings sound. For other records I like the precision of the Devialet.

[David A]

@Coffee_fan, good to hear you're having success with Roon.