I am away over the weekend so I was just disconnecting the system given the thunderstorms forecast.
I was about to take the ethernet cable out when I discovered it was not plugged in. And had not been for some weeks. There are no aerials fitted to the NDX2 so I am pretty impressed that I had not noticed and shows the reception is pretty good albeit it is fairly close to the router.
There are other threads on here where people talk at length about the technical reasons why wi-fi cannot beat ethernet. It’s long, detailed and in its own way quite fascinating but it misses the fundamental truth that most ethernet solutions are implemented by people who want simplicity and so don’t lose sleep over fibre, switches, cable risers, whether more expensive cables do anything etc. In that context Wi-fi can comfortably hold its own and often better ethernet.
Wi-Fi takes more care to setup correctly and is subject to variable conditions, whereas wired Ethernet is a lot simpler to setup and requires fewer considerations to optimise.
If you can overcome the effort to do cable runs, once you’ve done that you’d have little to worry about and it would likely work without any changes for many years.
If the NDX2 is close enough to the router to be wired I’d be inclined to still wire it in regardless of whether it appears to work well or not.
Also bare in mind that without the Antenna connected the Wi-Fi radio in the NDX2 is having to work a lot harder, using more power and likely generating more internal interference, if you’re set on having it setup like that, do connect the Antennas!
No intention to leave it like that. It will be back on its usual Ethernet when I am back. Nevertheless I was impressed with how well the WiFi worked without any antennae.
It’ll be interesting to see how the NSS 333 shapes up in that regard, it ditches the external antennas and relies instead on the casework to act as an antenna for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Really ? So not only do you have to install the cabling, but then you have to consider whether switches will improve the sound, and if so, what combinations of cables between them and your streamer to employ.
In many people’s homes, WiFi is simply plug and go.
It looks like the NSC222 does the same - no sign of any antenna connections - ?
Well you can do all that if you like, I just use Excel cable and keyless jacks, nothing exotic!
I also have a Ruckus managed Wi-Fi LAN so best of both worlds.
Wi-Fi when it works is great, it does however have to operate in a shared spectrum and with changing environment conditions, that isn’t the case with a wired Ethernet connection, regardless of how much faffing you choose to apply to it!
I believe that also uses the same surface mount antennas yes, it should mean it’s less directional and capable of handling close proximity obstacles better. The issue with the previous rear external antennas being they are pointing towards a wall at close proximity and quite likely pointing in the opposite direction to the Access Point they connect to. Having them internal also means you can control their orientation better with a combination of both horizonal and vertical axis, I’d guess it’s a 2x2 design, dual band, switching.
I agree, and I would say the same about Ethernet wiring. In my experience it is entirely unnecessary to add or ‘upgrade’ network components to get good results. I’m not saying it can’t change what you hear, sometimes positively, but some people who read this forum are clearly put off the idea of streaming because they conclude that network setup needs to be complicated or expensive, and I think that’s a real shame.
I myself could not find any justification of spending $$,$$$ on some sorts of network switch + re-clocker + PS as advocated somewhere in some fora.
But depending on some implementation, the wifi adapters on some streamers can be a source of noises.
Ha, this is what happened to me. I was listening one night and thought, wow this is really sounding great. Then I noticed that the Ethernet was unplugged and I was on WiFi. The equivalent of a blind test. So I have been using WiFi ever since.
I only use wifi with my 222 and with my atom - I had an Ethernet connected but just couldn’t hear any difference. I did invest in a separate modem and router to get a steady wifi, but since that it works flawlessly.
It’s gonna start playing up now isn’t it….
If your own wifi-router is close it may even be an advantage not having the antennas, it will pick up less of your neighbors wifi-noise.
Would it not better to change the wifi chanel so there won’t be collisions? There are many tools in any OSes including Windows, MacOS, Linux, which tell you which wifi channels running on which frequencies.
Today’s routers should do this themselves, and dynamically. (Which can be a bit annoying, if they change too often.)
This of course very much depends on your surroundings. In a flat in the city center or large houses, there can be tons of networks.
For me it’s 40 2.4 GHz networks my router sees, and just 7 on 5 GHz. (Seems many people still use the basic/standard editions of their providers’ routers. Edit: and 5GHz has less range, which may help.)
And there’s still a large car park across the street.
I still found the 2.4 GHz more reliable for streaming, due to the weather radar avoidance on most 5 GHz channels.
The 5Ghz I use for my IT stuff, and in my flat I can use most of my 500Mbps downstream internet via WiFi. 
But will dynamic channel selection give the best results.
The router selects the channel based on WiFi traffic it can detect.
Below is the traffic at my router.
However, WiFi traffic is different at my streamer. See below.
Dynamic channel selection selected 1, but I suspect, 6 would be a better option.
But I’m sure someone will come along and tell me it doesn’t matter 
.
I agree, there can situations, where extra investigations can be helpful. Then again, there will be different situations in different parts of your apartment or house.
But it’s not something I would start worrying about, unless one has an interest or an actual problem to solve.
