I haven't posted in awhile, but I feel this experience is worth getting out there to see what others think.
I have been happily listening to my Transporter via wifi for some time now. No problems, great sound, no dropouts etc. etc. In my comparison to various USB devices I was quite confident (and still am) that the wifi approach was superior in some very real ways - jitter being one. A very happy camper. I have discussed on these forums with others the merits of using the wired option (ethernet) vs. wifi. It has been universally agreed that there is no technical reason to expect for there to be a difference in sound quality between the two. It made perfect sense to me and it still does. The bandwidth over wifi is more than adequate for the task. There is also the electrical isolation over wifi that cannot be matched with a wired protocol. Over wifi the digital is transferred bit perfect. The clock is also not a problem. On and on. I had to preface all that because I know this is going to cause a stir! On a whim I bought a cheep ethernet cable at walmart. Mostly because I hadnt tinkered with my system in awhile and I was in the need to tinker. I was quite surprised to hear the difference when I hooked up the cable. At first I thought that the "difference" was not actually a good one and I came to a quick conclusion that the wifi was better, unplugged it and went on with my life. The sound seemed a bit "harsh" on fist listen. I interpreted this as noise and thought - "I'm only out $10 for the cheep cable - no biggie". Then I started thinking - what if there is a volume difference and I'm not giving it a fair shake. That in fact was the case. I gave the cable another go. Yes there was a volume difference, but more than that, I would summarize the sound difference in several ways. 1. What I would call broader bandwidth (higher resolution) effect. The sound was more "complete" and detailed. 2. More "real" less euphonic. When I think of euphonic I think of "warmth". I would say the wifi was warmer in that respect. Sometimes this kind of clarity can become "clinical" but this was not the case here. All good so far. 3. Authoritative and very nicely defined base. This was huge. Base like I have never heard from my system. 4. My maggies projected sound with an almost eerie precision and focus. At low to moderate volumes the sound stage was holographic (if I moved my head from left to right and moved out of the plane of one of the speakers I could no longer hear sound from that speaker). I'm not talking about a small effect here. The more I listen to ethernet the more I realize that I'm not going back to wifi. Everything sounds better. It's not even close. Like I said - I haven't made any system changes in some time now. This was unexpected. I guess I have to pay homage to the saying "everything makes a difference". I have to conclude that this "difference" is in the positive direction, and definitely the cheapest tweak so far in this expensive hobby! Cheers! -- earwaxer Waxer Transporter Winsome labs mouse (modified) Maggie MMG's (modified) JPS Labs power cords Audioquest Granite speaker wire Silver Bullet interconnect HSU research sub ------------------------------------------------------------------------ earwaxer's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=32040 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=74721 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
