01-Apr-2022, 21:47
I can't answer all of your questions because I haven't tried all of the things you are asking about. What I can say is that I have tried both wifi and ethernet for network connections to my 140 Pro and I have also tried USB vs ethernet.
I started out trying to stream via wifi and I got poor results because of wifi reception issues. This was before the Expert Pros got the CI board upgrade so they had an internal rather than an external wifi antenna. For some reason I got patchy reception, sometimes good and sometimes bad. When the reception was good, wifi sounded good and when reception was bad wifi sounded bad. In the end I put a wifi extender device near the 140 Pro and connected it to the 140 Pro by ethernet. That solved the reception problem and I had good sound. Eventually I had a wired connection installed from the room where my router was to the room where the 140 Pro was. My streaming has always been trouble free with an ethernet connection apart from the rare network issue that I think we all have occasionally. Wifi was never trouble free for me. Theoretically there are some advantages to wifi, it avoids a galvanic connection, but the theoretically best approach is often not the best approach when it comes to results. The theoretically best approach will achieve far less than it could if it is implemented poorly and a theoretically less good approach when implemented well can often deliver better results than the poorly implemented theoretically superior approach. That's what people are often referring to when they say YMMV - "your mileage may vary". The quality of results can differ dependingi on how well you implement a given approach.
I also started out streaming with my only source being ripped music in my iTunes library on my Mac. I did not have a subscription to a streaming service. I moved from streaming from the Mac to copying my music library to an SSD in an Auralic Aries Mini which I connected to my network and tried connecting it to the 140 Pro via USB and by SPDIF coax. I preferred USB. I subsequently moved from tha Aries Mini to a music server running Roon when Roon introduced the option of streaming via Devialet's AIR protocol. I compared USB vs ethernet using the AIR protocol with that server and opted for ethernet but that was simply comparing a direct USB to Expert Pro connection to having both the server and 140 Pro connected to the network via a basic ethernet switch. I did not try using any USB or ethernet improvement devices at that stage. In fact back then there were several devices like the Wiyed4Sound one available for improving USB connections but none for ethernet. Technology and your options can change quickly here and what you think is best today is not necessarily best tomorrow.
So in the end I ended up using ethernet connections to both server and 140 Pro. I eventually signed up with a streaming service, started tinkering with the ethernet setup, and got to the setup listed in my signature. You're asking for lots of comparisons but I didn't go through that sort of overall comprehensive comparison. I made choices at various stages based on what worked for me (eg my initial ethernet vs wifi choice). When I moved my music library from my Mac to the Aries Mini I had to put the Aries Mini near the 140 Pro because it couldn't stream to the 140 Pro over ethernet, outputs were only via USB, coax, toslink, or analog. When I replaced the Aries Mini with a server running Roon, I simply put the server where the Aries Mini had been located. I never sat down when I first got my 140 Pro and tried to work out what you are currently trying to work out, I replaced an existing amp with the 140 Pro and simply continued using an SACD player as my only source. Then I decided to try streaming from my iTunes library and made choices based on getting that to work. That led to other choices over time. Do I think I'm doing things the best way? I don't know because I haven't tried doing things in all the other ways I could do them, I've simply built on what I got to work for me the last time I made a change and/or tried something new.
What I do know is that there are almost certainly a lot of ways in which a streaming setup can be configured which won't be convenient for some people, and also a lot of ways which some people will prefer or reject for reasons other than convenience and everyone is different. That's why I suggested first working out what kind of configuration would work for you in relation to where you want various bits of equipment located and what kind of connection methods work for a setup with gear in those locations. You've really got 2 ways of getting to a final setup. You can start by asking what's the best way to set things up for your own convenience when it comes to connections and in relation to things like whether you want a minimal amount of gear in your listening room or whether you're happy having some streaming components there or alternatively you can try to decide what approach is theoretically superior and then try working back from that to how to best set up that approach in your home and if you go that way you're going to face decisions about how to proceed when the best way of doing something presents difficulties you don't want to deal with and the way you'd like to deal with that is by using an approach you don't think is as good.
There is no perfect way of doing this. Every audio system, even the very best audio system, is built on compromises, on choices made for convenience vs ultimate sound quality, on dealing with limitations imposed by rooms and other things like wifi reception strength, aesthetics, budget, and what your partner if you have one is prepared to put up with. Nobody operates with no constraints. My advice is to start by working out what would best work for you in your house with your budget and tastes and family situation and then decide what's the best way of doing things that way for you. The best way of doing things for you may not be the best way in theory but if you implement what's best for you in the best way possible you'll probably get as good or better results than you will by going for the theoretically best way of doing it and not being able to implement that approach in the best way it could be implemented. Do what you do well and you will get very good results, results that will make you very happy, but there will always be someone around who'll tell you you should have done it some other way and that results would be better if you just do what they say. Just remember that you're building your system, you're going to spend far more time listening to it than anyone else, and the last thing you want to do is to put it together in a way which makes all of the critics happy and which doesn't make you happy either because you don't like the sound or there's something about the system and setup which simply doesn't work ideally for you and annoys you every time you use the system.
I started out trying to stream via wifi and I got poor results because of wifi reception issues. This was before the Expert Pros got the CI board upgrade so they had an internal rather than an external wifi antenna. For some reason I got patchy reception, sometimes good and sometimes bad. When the reception was good, wifi sounded good and when reception was bad wifi sounded bad. In the end I put a wifi extender device near the 140 Pro and connected it to the 140 Pro by ethernet. That solved the reception problem and I had good sound. Eventually I had a wired connection installed from the room where my router was to the room where the 140 Pro was. My streaming has always been trouble free with an ethernet connection apart from the rare network issue that I think we all have occasionally. Wifi was never trouble free for me. Theoretically there are some advantages to wifi, it avoids a galvanic connection, but the theoretically best approach is often not the best approach when it comes to results. The theoretically best approach will achieve far less than it could if it is implemented poorly and a theoretically less good approach when implemented well can often deliver better results than the poorly implemented theoretically superior approach. That's what people are often referring to when they say YMMV - "your mileage may vary". The quality of results can differ dependingi on how well you implement a given approach.
I also started out streaming with my only source being ripped music in my iTunes library on my Mac. I did not have a subscription to a streaming service. I moved from streaming from the Mac to copying my music library to an SSD in an Auralic Aries Mini which I connected to my network and tried connecting it to the 140 Pro via USB and by SPDIF coax. I preferred USB. I subsequently moved from tha Aries Mini to a music server running Roon when Roon introduced the option of streaming via Devialet's AIR protocol. I compared USB vs ethernet using the AIR protocol with that server and opted for ethernet but that was simply comparing a direct USB to Expert Pro connection to having both the server and 140 Pro connected to the network via a basic ethernet switch. I did not try using any USB or ethernet improvement devices at that stage. In fact back then there were several devices like the Wiyed4Sound one available for improving USB connections but none for ethernet. Technology and your options can change quickly here and what you think is best today is not necessarily best tomorrow.
So in the end I ended up using ethernet connections to both server and 140 Pro. I eventually signed up with a streaming service, started tinkering with the ethernet setup, and got to the setup listed in my signature. You're asking for lots of comparisons but I didn't go through that sort of overall comprehensive comparison. I made choices at various stages based on what worked for me (eg my initial ethernet vs wifi choice). When I moved my music library from my Mac to the Aries Mini I had to put the Aries Mini near the 140 Pro because it couldn't stream to the 140 Pro over ethernet, outputs were only via USB, coax, toslink, or analog. When I replaced the Aries Mini with a server running Roon, I simply put the server where the Aries Mini had been located. I never sat down when I first got my 140 Pro and tried to work out what you are currently trying to work out, I replaced an existing amp with the 140 Pro and simply continued using an SACD player as my only source. Then I decided to try streaming from my iTunes library and made choices based on getting that to work. That led to other choices over time. Do I think I'm doing things the best way? I don't know because I haven't tried doing things in all the other ways I could do them, I've simply built on what I got to work for me the last time I made a change and/or tried something new.
What I do know is that there are almost certainly a lot of ways in which a streaming setup can be configured which won't be convenient for some people, and also a lot of ways which some people will prefer or reject for reasons other than convenience and everyone is different. That's why I suggested first working out what kind of configuration would work for you in relation to where you want various bits of equipment located and what kind of connection methods work for a setup with gear in those locations. You've really got 2 ways of getting to a final setup. You can start by asking what's the best way to set things up for your own convenience when it comes to connections and in relation to things like whether you want a minimal amount of gear in your listening room or whether you're happy having some streaming components there or alternatively you can try to decide what approach is theoretically superior and then try working back from that to how to best set up that approach in your home and if you go that way you're going to face decisions about how to proceed when the best way of doing something presents difficulties you don't want to deal with and the way you'd like to deal with that is by using an approach you don't think is as good.
There is no perfect way of doing this. Every audio system, even the very best audio system, is built on compromises, on choices made for convenience vs ultimate sound quality, on dealing with limitations imposed by rooms and other things like wifi reception strength, aesthetics, budget, and what your partner if you have one is prepared to put up with. Nobody operates with no constraints. My advice is to start by working out what would best work for you in your house with your budget and tastes and family situation and then decide what's the best way of doing things that way for you. The best way of doing things for you may not be the best way in theory but if you implement what's best for you in the best way possible you'll probably get as good or better results than you will by going for the theoretically best way of doing it and not being able to implement that approach in the best way it could be implemented. Do what you do well and you will get very good results, results that will make you very happy, but there will always be someone around who'll tell you you should have done it some other way and that results would be better if you just do what they say. Just remember that you're building your system, you're going to spend far more time listening to it than anyone else, and the last thing you want to do is to put it together in a way which makes all of the critics happy and which doesn't make you happy either because you don't like the sound or there's something about the system and setup which simply doesn't work ideally for you and annoys you every time you use the system.
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
