TL;DR Either AmpliFi Gamer’s Edition is magical, or I’ve been lucky,
I’ve just set up a new Roon system in a townhouse that does not have any usable ethernet or coax wiring into the relevant rooms. I thought I would be hosed given the experiences of many, including me, with poor streaming performance over WiFi. I’ve been surprised! WiFi is AmpliFi Gamer’s Edition connected to cable modem on the first floor where cable comes in, and WiFi-backhaul mesh points on the 2nd and 3rd floors. City location, with many other WiFi networks. Nevertheless, I’m streaming flawlessly into a Naim mu-so Qb (2nd generation) and a A&K SP1000M from a core on a fanless NUC-based PC with Ubuntu Server 20.04. Note that the SP1000M only supports 2.4GHz, which has been an issue in my other locations.
I was pleasantly surprised last week, I had to move my Naim Unity Atom HE out of its normal (ethernet) spot while we decorated , it worked flawlessly all week on wi fi. Maybe Naim have cracked the Wi Fi weakness
I ran the amplifi hd router /2 mesh points system for about 2y,its the stable system I’ve ever used,never gave me a single issue in 2y,there software is top notch
Neve tried my core wireless but most of my zones are and I have only had issue with an A&K Dap which was sent back as a result. Wi-Fi can and does work fine, but it’s setup and environment dependant.
I’ve got a hiby it was pretty underwhelming. Had to change my tidal email address as it was too long for the string they had assigned to email addresses in their app. Hmmmm
Wifi gets a bad reputation with streaming because so many consumer grade wifi routers are complete crap.
If you have anything reasonable and pro-sumer like unifi access points, it can be rock solid. But people who are using things like unifi accesspoints are also very tuned into signal strength and access point positioning etc, and so there is another advantage vs an all-in-one stuff in a utility closet.
I hard wire my main zones because I like to free up my wifi bandwidth, and my zones aren’t portable so wired connections make sense. But my wifi zones like my homepod never skip and they are wifi and move around all over the house.
I’m glad to hear that the more consumer unifi (amplifi) is also doing a good job. Ubiquiti has had issues with routing lately, but their switches and access points have been bullet proof for me.
Ubiquiti router, AmpliFi HD WiFi (bridged), city location, open plan house. Never reliable WiFi RAAT to A&K SP1000M or Hugo 2 + 2Go
All UniFi setup, multiple APs, rural location, large-ish modern house. WiFi RAAT success to outdoors patio needed adding another AP really close to patio.
AmpliFi Gamer’s Edition, city location, multi-floor townhouse. All WiFi RAAT endpoints work perfectly.
No discernible rhyme or reason for the differences.
This is interesting. I have a UDM-Pro router feeding 3 UAP-Pros (2 in the house, 1 in the garden office). Doesn’t matter where I am, Roon streams successfully to any device.
The 2.4GHz WiFi transceivers on the 2go and on the SP1000M seem mediocre, and RAAT hates packet loss. But to be honest, I wasn’t expecting the SP1000M to work reliably in the 3rd location, but it did for the few days I was waiting for the Zen streamer for my desktop headphone setup (Zen>Soekris dac2541>Magni Piety).
Neither do I except the A&K Kann Alpha as mentioned they use pretty old 2.4ghz chips that just don’t cut it. Saying that my SB Touch has just decided to no longer connect to my Unifi network it’s been dodgy for a while a known issue for many years with these units but it won’t stay connected at all now since last round of updates to my APs so had to retire it. Shame as it’s a great box and will work fine wired but I can’t get a wire in the kitchen easily.
Mojo 2 + Chord Poly in my case, but I assume a similar or identical chipset and stack to the 2go. UniFi end to end.
The Poly is a terrible client and, as you say, RAAT does not like packet loss. I found that Poly seems overly eager to jump between access points. I use it as a mobile listening station which I can carry around the house and it jumps very quickly when I do that. That’s not the only case, though, sometimes it just jumps when it has a strong connection to a. nearby AP. I’ve watched all of this using UniFi client notifications.
I mitigated this some by creating a 2.4GHz WiFi network dedicated to the Poly. I limited the APs to the several that made the most sense to me. I turned off all of the fancy stuff on that specific network (BSS Transition, Fast Roaming), though I don’t know that any of those were causing issues.
Maybe a similar approach will help one of you guys. Does seem that RAAT could be improved to be more tolerant of temporary issues but I tend to think the Poly is the real culprit since there are no equivalent issues when using my iPhone, the Roon app, and a DragonFly DAC.
While I agree with you a bit, household layout causes massive issues.
My house is probably 30m front to back, by necessity the fibre input is at one end. So is the router . Wi fi in the bedroom furthest away is zero , not that it really matters.
SA houses tend to be brick and plaster , no dry walls so absorption is high.
That’s not to mention interference from all sorts , microwaves etc, neighbours
