Lots of audiophiles, or plain music lovers, want to or have to take advantage of Wifi to get music streaming in their favorite Lady or Man Cave. Here are some tips on making this reliable.
Wifi is far from perfect. How far your computers, tablets and streamers are from your router and how many competing devices are using up the channel bandwidth can lower your bandwidth and reliability.
Tip 1: Switch to Ethernet
This
will always give you the most reliable signal, and reduce the chances
of your router overheating, in large part due to the overhead of
encryption. Is your router 6' from your TV? Cable it! The more cabled devices, the more you open up your wifi bandwidth.
If you are using Roon, it is especialy important your Roon core be on Ethernet even if your end points are not. This is because all streaming goes through it. If Roon core is on Wifi that means that you have 1 additional signal competing for bandwidth.
Tip 2:Examine your WiFi Neighborhood
You
can find Wifi analyzer programs for almost every type of device. PC,
Mac, Android, iPhone. If it has a WiFi connection you can probably find
an equivalent tool. The goal is to get your home WiFi on an unused
channel.Take your analyzer to your TV's location to see the quality of
your WiFi signal from the TV's perspective. For whatever reason, even
in the 21st century, the auto-channel selection of most WiFi routers is
useless. You need to pick your own channel and stick to it, even if it
means channel hopping a couple of times a year. Routers all tend to go
to the same channels, so they always get congested.
Let
me show you an example from MS-Windows 10, WiFi Analyzer. The Analyze
view shows all the channels available on the 5GHz band. Each colored
hump or hill below represents a router's wifi signal. Mine is on the
for right, labelled MiWiFi. As you can see, my signal is all alone, no
other routers overlap. On the other hand, if you look at the channels
on the left (36, 40, 44) they are all pretty congested. Channel 40
especially looks like it may have 4 or more routers competing for
bandwidth.
This is a frustrating situation because the quality of your signal
streaming will vary a lot based on how busy those users are right now,
and has nothing to do with you. The solution of course is to go into
your home router's admin page and change your router to use a signal
that is as clear as possible.
Typically the newest signal bands
are the most clear. That is, 5GHz tends to have more open channels than
2GHz, but this has changed as the older, single band routers have
started to age out of the population. It is however worth while to try
this experiment on 2GHz as well, just in case. :)
Of course, you
want your signal to be as strong as possible. If you can't get a better
signal than -60dBm and you can only do WiFi, try to orient your router
and TV for the best reception. Remember that routers transmit
horizontally and down. If you live in a 2 story home you probably want
your router on the top floor. If you still can't get a decent signal at
all because your home is too big consider a mesh router. They are fresh
on the scene, but I hear great things about the TP-Link offering, which is less expensive and less expensive to expand than others.
Tip 3: Router is always on top
Router's have a signal pattern that is hemispherical below it. That is, the signal goes across and down. Not up very much, so if you are in a 2 story or higher home make sure your router is on top.
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