02-Apr-2020, 13:42
When I got my 130 back in 2017, well before the CI board upgrade which included fitting an external wifi antenna, I had difficulty getting a reliable wifi connection, even when placing an Apple Airport device closer than a metre from the amp. The only thing that provided a reliable connection was connecting via ethernet to the Airport device. The 130's internal antenna seemed incapable of providing a reliable connection. I ended up having an installer run a wired connection from a wall point near the amp back to the router in another room and using a wired connection all the way back to the router. I tried wifi again as a matter of interest after I got the amp back with that CI board upgrade and it seemed to work better but I didn't swap back to wifi. I had learnt that wired connections are much more reliable,
If you can connect via ethernet to your access point, simply try that. It will almost certainly solve your problem or at least minimise it. There's no way to totally avoid dropouts, simply because there's lots of things which can trigger then and networks do occasionally have problems. With a wired connection you should be assured of mostly trouble free streaming with extremely rare dropouts.
If you want to buy a streamer, fine, but how are you going to stream to it? If you're going to use wifi, then borrow one for a home trial to make sure that it doesn't have the same connection problems that you're currently having. Wifi works best with a clear line of sight connection and anything that interferes with that clear line of sight such as walls or furniture can result in weakened signal strength for the receiving device, whether that's your amp or a streamer, and can result in dropouts.
The simplest solution, if you can connect via ethernet to your nearby access point, is simply to do that.
If you can connect via ethernet to your access point, simply try that. It will almost certainly solve your problem or at least minimise it. There's no way to totally avoid dropouts, simply because there's lots of things which can trigger then and networks do occasionally have problems. With a wired connection you should be assured of mostly trouble free streaming with extremely rare dropouts.
If you want to buy a streamer, fine, but how are you going to stream to it? If you're going to use wifi, then borrow one for a home trial to make sure that it doesn't have the same connection problems that you're currently having. Wifi works best with a clear line of sight connection and anything that interferes with that clear line of sight such as walls or furniture can result in weakened signal strength for the receiving device, whether that's your amp or a streamer, and can result in dropouts.
The simplest solution, if you can connect via ethernet to your nearby access point, is simply to do that.
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
