If I stream music with Roon over a home wifi mesh network system, will the packets of data remain the same with bit perfect, with no loss of any signal or data on the music file?
Describe your network setup
Asus ZenWiFi XD5 mesh WiFi 6 System; mesh node / access point in my living room connected by ethernet cable to my Aurender N200 streamer / server; playing from my Roon core being a MacBook Pro that is in my study; streaming over the wifi mesh system from the MacBook Pro to my Aurender; no ethernet backhaul.
Yes with a caviate. Provided the bandwidth is sufficient and the latency is low enough, the tranmission media (ethernet or WiFi) does not make any difference to the bit perfect nature of the transmitted packets. If the streaming protocol (RAAT, Airplay, Chromcast) can support bit perfect transmission at the required sample rate and bit depth, then the packets will be bit perfect.
The caviate is that WiFi is more prone to traffic congestion (caused by other traffic on your WiFi network) or interference (caused by Neighboring WiFi or, occaisionally, other electrical devices that emit interfering signals - Badly shielded microwave ovens and 2.4GHz Wifi is a case in point). As a consequence, although WiFi will maintain bit perfect packet delivery, it is not guaranteed to maintain ‘on time’ packet delivery and so you may get dropouts and crackles due to the late arrival of data. In the worst case, Roon may even detect that the packets are not being delivered reliably on time and stop playing with an error.
By contrast, wired ethernet does not suffer congestion in the same way is is effectively immune to interference in the home network. If you have both your Roon Server and the streamer connected to the same switch (or both to your router if appropriate), then, apart from a small amount of broadcast traffic seen on any network, there will be no congestion caused by traffic from other devices.
I believe:
RAAT can stream bit perfect up to 768kHz 32bit PCM or DSD512.
Chromecast can stream bit perfect up to 192kHz/24bit
Airplay 1 can stream bit perfect up to 48kHz/16bit (not certain of this - never used airplay)
Airplay 2 can stream bit perfect at higher sample rates/bit depths but I don’t know the absolute limits.
From Roon FAQs: “Mesh networks are a middle-ground that covers the majority of home networking scenarios while still achieving good performance. Mesh networking hardware provide WiFi access in rooms that cannot be hardwired, and some products can even expose Ethernet ports in those locations.”
That pretty much sums up my setup, and I’ve good wifi coverage with my mesh system. I never have dropouts.
In the image above, the -3dB headroom adjustment is not bit perfect. All the other stages are. I use the -3dB headroom setting because the IQAudIO Pi-DAC+ suffers from ‘intersample overs’ (a kind of clipping that can occur with some audio files) and thus the degradation due to the data lost (effectively just a slight increase in the noise level) is of less concern than the clipping would be if I left it.
Yes. I understand that mesh networks, when set up correctly, and preferably with a wired backhaul (connection between Mesh nodes), can work very well. However, there are also a lot of people with issues with WiFi mesh systems.
There is no doubt that good, modern Wifi system is capable of delivering bit perfect audio even at high data rates in the abscence of congestion or interference.
It is equally true that, with a heavily congested WiFi network, audio will break down before a similarly congested ethernet network.
Thanks. Intended to be used with a Network Renderer of an MSB Discrete DAC, that would be hardwired to my mesh satellite node (wifi access point) in my living-room. The MSB Network Renderer is Roon Ready, with the following values:
Works at rates up to 32/768kHz and 4xDSD
– MQA decoding
– Roon endpoint.
There therefore should not be any issues of packet loss?
You should also note that there is different 'degree’s of non-bit perfect.
In the Signal path that I posted above, the delivery is not bit perfect - but it is still a true representation of the audio signal albeit with slightly increased noise level (in this case, because of the 24bit bit bit depth, that still won’t be audible).
This is in contrast to the conversion to a lossy data format like MP3 or AAC which do not perserve an entirely accurate representation of the audio signal.
But the “break down” would be noticeable, right, rather than a non-accurate representation of audio signal? Such as with a dropout, breakup in the signal, buffering, etc.?
So, all my music is cd quality (or higher resolution) or FLAC, lossless with AIFF or WAV. As you say, Roon will show you the accuracy of the audio signal.
If it is significant enough, then yes it will be noticible. In very mild cases, the duration and frequency of the audio dropouts (not packet loss - which never occurs unless the WiFi link fails completely) may be such that you don’t notice it.
Okay, so one will still get an accurate representation of the music file over the wifi setup described, provided of course that the music file is not in lossy format?
Indeed. And far more often than not, no such dropouts would occur.
It may be sensible to limit expectations though. If, for example, the wifi quality to your streamer is sufficient for 100Mbps wifi data rates, it will likely work fine for 44.1kHz/16bit CD quality streams (1.4Mbps) or even 192kHz/32bit high res stereo streams (12.3Mbps) without any issues but expecting it to work reliably with 768kHz/32bit (49Mbps) might be unreasonable and, if you were do do such a thing, expecting 768kHz/32bit 5.1 surround sound (147.5Mbps) to work over such a link would definitely be unreasonable.
Hopefully your WiFi is much better than the 100Mbps example quoted above. My Wifi certainly is (~800-1200Mbps to my lounge) and I don’t have a mesh.
