Audiophile router configuration

I'm not sure why no one shared their experiments with router configuration that can improve sound quality after years of audiophile network switch hitting mainstream audiophile. So here's my recommendation for you guys to try and see if it will help in your system.

1. Use WiFi 2.4GHz for lower noise level

2. Setup 2.4GHz to use legacy mode (So you can disable WMM)

3. Disable WMM Support for lowest possible latency

Although your maximum bandwidth will be limited to 54Mbps only. However, you can get smooth bandwidth with lowest ping spikes with more micro detail. I'm quite surprised how WiFi can sound better than my expectations.

And if you want to have faster internet, you can always use 5GHz network and leave 2.4GHz for dedicated audio only. Some other options also affected sound quality too and I'm still testing to find optimal configuration.

2.4Ghz is the wild-west for people in dense housing. 5G offers a much more flexible channel plan.

Disabling WMM will kill features like WiFi calling.

Audio playback ISN'T latency sensitive. It's latency insensitive, high bandwidth. Same for streaming movies.

Don't do this people. If you live in a low density setting use 5G, VHT80, if you live in a dense area use VHT40. You should rarely have to use VHT20. If using more than one AP use a mesh / controller based solution and turn on 802.11 K/V/R for seamless roaming, managing client stick, and beam steering.

The team I'm on rolled out 1500 AP's in 2020 alone. I do heat map and SA, channel planning, and predictive design.

Yeah but have you tried? Maybe it doesn't cross your mind but you can imagine wifi router having a processor running with 20MHz clock or 40MHz clock for example. It's not hard to see how 20MHz can have less noise than 40-160MHz.

Just now, Windows X said:

Yeah but have you tried? Maybe it doesn't cross your mind but you can imagine wifi router having a processor running with 20MHz clock or 40MHz clock for example. It's not hard to see how 20MHz can have less noise than 40-160MHz.

ugh... years ago I posted a video of 24/192 over 802.11g via JRiver and you would see the wireless ramp up and then go to nothing while the music played. Then fetch (ramp up again) and then go to nothing. I finished the video by disabling WiFi via Airplane mode and letting the song play back.

I can't imagine my wifi router having a processor running at 20 or 40 or 80 or 160 whatever because it's your DSP on the wifi ap that is running the encode / decode at those 2.4GHz and 5GHz range and in those ranges, IEEE dependent, you have 20, 40, 80, 160 MHz channel width. The CPU is not involved in this aspect.

You can't confuse antenna tuning and CPU. Or maybe you can.

I would love to setup a computer with two Wifi adapters, set one for 2.4G VHT20, and another for 5G VHT80, and from the AP alternately disable each SSID broadcast and watch you squirm.

You know what is interesting. I never thought routers made a difference because I have everything behind a switch internally. But I found ... through a series of trials and tribulations ... that my fiber-to-the-home (Fioptics) supplied router was getting overloaded or whatever by my internal network (I think IPV6 stuff which wasn't working over my wireless) ... and so I put an Edgerouter Lite between the supplied device and my internal network, and now its handling DHCP etc, and voila the wireless is working correctly with IPV6 and sounds much better ...

I think sometimes we can focus endlessly on little details like 2.4 vs 5 Ghz or 20 vs 40 Mhz etc etc etc and its something else entirely.

Most issues I've seen end users have is simple deviation from sound practices and misconfiguration. I only let the ISP side do one thing and one thing only: Act as a L3 device. No DHCP, no NAT, no WiFi, no firewall. One can put together a $150 X86 box running pfSense or other similar that just kills the shrink-wrapped consumer boxes made for the highest possible profit.

Right, I don’t know much about these devices but the ER Lite is cheap and has hardware acceleration I’m told. Is pfsense more secure? Since I have 1Gbe fiber I wanted something that can handle the bandwidth...

8 hours ago, jabbr said:

Right, I don’t know much about these devices but the ER Lite is cheap and has hardware acceleration I’m told. Is pfsense more secure? Since I have 1Gbe fiber I wanted something that can handle the bandwidth...

I don't put Ubiquiti in the same class of product as low end D-Link, Linksys, Trendnet etc... pfSense can do more for sure and since it works on a wide range of hardware it's flexible. It can support enterprise level IDS/IPS, L4-L7 filtering, DNS Black-holing, HA active/active or active/passive etc.

7 minutes ago, plissken said:

I don't put Ubiquiti in the same class of product as low end D-Link, Linksys, Trendnet etc...

Read a fair amount of praise for Ubiquiti and would love to know more.  Please feel free to put this in another thread or PM if you feel it's more appropriate.

16 hours ago, plissken said:

 

I don't put Ubiquiti in the same class of product as low end D-Link, Linksys, Trendnet etc... pfSense can do more for sure and since it works on a wide range of hardware it's flexible. It can support enterprise level IDS/IPS, L4-L7 filtering, DNS Black-holing, HA active/active or active/passive etc.

 

Ooohh so I could block beacons and ads from my entire home? 😋 I know that netgate uses the same / similar chip that's in my ClearFog NAA for the 3100 ... its a bit annoying that only the x86 version of pfsense seems to be available for download...

Ubiquiti and pfSense both have a steep learning curve.  I chose Ubiquiti (Edge Router 12) largely because they have a great forum in which very knowledgable users answer questions.

Before I chose Ubiquiti, here's the best tutorial I found on pfSense:

https://nguvu.org/pfsense/pfsense-baseline-setup/

Ubiquiti's access points are all called UniFi, but beware that the routers & switches divide into 3 product ranges with very different configuration interfaces:

Edge — pro oriented

UniFi — pro/consumer hybrid

Dream Machine (UDM) — consumer; incompatible with most UniFi products.

What are your experiences with activation/deactivation of EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet) or Layer-2-acceleration?