My Melco N100 is connected via USB directly to a Chord Qutest DAC for playing music. However it is also connected to my BT Smart Hub 2 via a Chord EE8 switch for wireless control purposes via the Melco app on our iPad. Just to be clear - no music is streamed via my home network. Despite this the router affects music playback quality from the Melco - hence the EE8 switch which definitely improves things.
My question is this. Is it possible to somehow configure things so that the Melco is still able to be wirelessly controlled, but is fully isolated from the BT hub? My thought is something like a wireless access point that is wirelessly connected to the hub but is connected to the Melco via ethernet. Is this possible - and would it do what I want it to, ie. eliminate all noise from the router? Would the wireless access point create less noise than the router? Thanks.
Thanks. My thought was that a WAP would not be wired to the router and also unlike the router would not be connected to the internet so would be inherently less noisy.
You would need this Black Box to dish out WiFi, but also be a DHCP server in order to dish out IP addresses to the Melco and your iPad. Also you would need to connect to that WiFi Black box from your iPad each time - although this maybe OK if you are going to basically assign your iPad 100% for this purpose.
Anyhow, given what you need in this Black box, then effectively it is a router, albeit not connected to the internet. So you could try this using an old router and see if it’s any better. Possibly also try an EE1 from the router as a test
I was afraid of it causing IP address issues. Whatever, it looks to be not a simple ‘plug and play’ thing like the switch was. Looks like it could potentially cause more issues than it solves and will certainly be introducing unwanted complexity. Idea abandoned! But that’s OK - I just wanted to be sure that I wasn’t missing out on something that would be dead easy and seamless to implement. So thanks for helping me reach my answer.
The only other way to do would be if the Melco can be assigned an IP address, plus assuming you can also add a network adaptor to the iPad, then possibly a single network cable wired as a crossover may work - but isn’t very user friendly.
Thanks @GadgetMan. The last thing I want is to make things more complex network-wise. It’s not an area I feel confident messing around with. As I said, if it was just a question of plugging in a box and switching on then OK. But everything works well at the moment - I really don’t want to risk upsetting anything and potentially getting myself into a hole I won’t easily get out of.
I use a Draytek router and two different Draytek WAP on my home network.
I have always found the support from Draytek to be very good, there is also a Draytek Forum.
If I may humbly suggest that you Google Draytek UK and post your query on the Forum and also contact Draytek UK directly, with your query, and ask for pre sales advice.