Complicated, not. Expensive, yes. It’s not because you didn’t heard differences with your system and ears that other won’t.
In my case I trust my ears. Going from a cheap Netgear switch to something like an Etheregen and Audioquest diamonds cables gave a big box upgrade. And we are a lot here with the same experience.
1 Like
+1 for the EtherRegen, it was a nice upgrade from the fiber media converters I had in use.
1 Like
If you read some experiences of people having the best streamers available, some costing more than 100 k, no one uses WIFI. It’s not considered optimal and has coins vs Ethernet.
But of course if someone finds Ethernet in his home not sounding better vs Wifi, I understand that it’s much more convenient to have Wifi and cheaper too.
Hi @IanRobertM
More my domain. The NDX2 is based on. 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac design using an NXP/Marvell chipset.
The antennas are quite unique - it uses a slot antenna design where we use a small cavity behind the heatsink, a precisely calculated slot and a very determined pitch of the heatsink (pitch and depth) to act as a 2.4/5GHz wave guide. The resuit - Hifi grade metal box, but top notch RF performance.
Best
Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.
9 Likes
I suspect, maybe I am wrong, that you may have some sort of general issues with the internet like Netflix/media streaming, internet surfing, browsing, slowness, etc. i.e. anything to do with the internet in general? It could be because of these issues that make you resort to some boutique network switches?
Not at all - I use Ubiquiti gear with POE switches which is all rock solid. The EtherRegen just sounds better than regular switches (and the optical bridge I had set up) and I was surprised by how much.
1 Like
Then there must be something wrong, but I know that Naim officials or your Naim dealer won’t say one way or another.
The question being asked, originally by @Mr.M , was concerning the 222 and/or 333 - not the NDX2…?
It’ll be based on the same radio one would imagine, incorporated within the Stream Unlimited (Stream 810 from memory) based NP800 which is common across products. What differs is primarily the antenna design and optimisation which differs between products, Naim may have made some improvements to the driver layer, Steve will know, whereas I’ll just speculate!
I would expect at some point for HiFi equipment manufacturers to start promoting the benefits of using the 6GHz spectrum as well as other benefits arriving with Wi-Fi 7, the fact Naim are optimising an existing design and mature radio stack makes a lot of sense, there are potential improvements enabled by later revisions of the Wi-Fi standards particularly regards traffic priority and managing latency, both of which benefit these sort of devices.
The challenge here is at what point to evolve the NP800 subsystem and with what overall gains and benefits to an owner. I’d expect that the radios for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are closely coupled to the streaming processing pipeline so simply swapping in a new radio may not make sense, you’d also need more antennas and to accomodatate them in the design to factor for diversity and interference.
1 Like
Hi @IanRobertM
It’s all the same antenna tech. We introduced this technology in the current Uniti range (Atom etc) and have applied it to all other new classic products that have similar chassis construction.
Best
Steve
1 Like
I’m a bit confused, so what are the external antennas used for?
So it’s wrong with all the high end streamers, as the owners use quite all expensive switches and linear ps.
Apologies guys,
2 different techs mixed in this thread as the thread starts off as ndx2 then drifts to new classic.
Ndx2 uses the traditional whip antennas.
New classic (222,333) use the slot antennas
The slot antennas give a superior 360deg performance.
Best
Steve
5 Likes
Thank you. That’s the answer I think that @Mr.M and myself were looking for… 
So… the case - and its fins… are the Antenna…!!! That’s clever.
There are absolutely technical reasons why wifi can be preferable to Ethernet for home audio in terms of sound quality.
The marketing opportunities to consumers is less with wifi so tends to be less promoted to consumers in higher value domestic audio.
All things being equal wifi using a relatively recent protocol is preferable or is on a par with direct fibre Ethernet. Twisted pair Ethernet is fraught with challenges. However the quality of the wifi implementation in the streamer is critical.( and really antennas have very little to do with it, other than the most basic). Quite frankly wifi doesn’t even need WMM enabled to work well in streamers… remember in home audio the media is not sent real time… it’s sent in bursts of TCP segments, validated, data reassembled, and then sent to the digital audio circuitry.
If home streaming audio was using ultra low latency real time UDP… then casual domestic consumer wifi equipment might not make muster… but it doesn’t.
For optimal wifi it is generally preferable to have over lapping meshed or better yet , Ethernet connected , wifi access points covering where your streamer is. This way the wifi can load balance and use the most optimum signal strength (which should be as low as it reliably can) to your streamer. Your streamer should reciprocate.
14 Likes
Simon - sorry, am a little slow today, stupid question time. In your suggestion, is the Ethernet connection from the last access point to the streamer or from the hub/router to the last access point ?
The “weakest reliable signal” (my words) suggests to me that I should trying first the 2.4ghz band. Is that right ?
If you can use a Wi-Fi network scanner/analyser app (some free, some paid for with more features) and make an assessment pf how congested the channels and bands are. You’ll find 2.4 GHz tends to have better rate/reach vs 5GHz but is typically more congested.
Your client will determine what’s the best connection it can negotiate based on a number of environment parameters, such as RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator), the stronger the signal and lower the noise the more preferable the connection. The link state will be reviewed and renegotiated if neccessary at a predetermined interval.
Wi-Fi operates on spectrum and channels which are open to access from any capable device so you’ll be operating within a shared and potentially noisy and congested RF environment.
Ideally you want to hard wire the Access Points back to your router and ensure the last Wi-Fi hop to clients is short and maintains acceptable RSSI and SNR levels.
You can extend reach wirelessly with a mesh capable system, again these work relatively well when setup correctly but work best when each AP is hard wired back to the router.
2 Likes
Thanks. My confusion arises because another poster @Blackmorec went into great depth to improve his WAP (an RE650), but then hardwired that to the streamer - not the router.
You should treat Wi-Fi as a convenience for the last hop to portable or hard to reach devices. The Wi-Fi LAN will perform best when the Access Point is wired to the router, whilst it’s possible to support a mesh of AP’s and connect them over Wi-Fi on a backhaul 5GHz radio, this will typically be the weakest link and hard wiring or even connecting an AP for power and data concurrently using PoE is preferable.
Your coverage and rate reach modelling can be determined from a simple site survey to measure both local noise and building material interactions with the AP’s.
1 Like
with regard to wifi access point connectivity - you can optimally connect your wifi access point via ethernet to your home router either one of the router’s switch ports or LAN switches between the access point and home router.
If using wifi let the streamer work directly with wifi - so the streamer works optimally. Having a wifi bridge of some sort connecting two ethernet segments is really not an optimum solution for the Naim streamers though it will work… but anyway your are not getting the benefits of using wifi for your streamer that way.
Using a mesh of access points overlapping in a reasonably high density helps mitigates neighbouring wifi activity/interference from other networks. For optimum performance on your WLANs aim to keep the number of SSIDs to a minimum for maximum efficiency. Try and avoid using any more than two or three - and ideally one.
These days modern wifi protocols are very very capable and are highly effective. One consideration is if you have a very old wifi device with very old wifi protocols - consider replacing it if you need to use wifi as it will drag your whole WLAN along with it for a given access point. ie 802.11 b or 802.11g. Think of it like having to run your ethernet with a hub connection as opposed to switched connections. Back then wifi was inferior to ethernet for many applications. I would consider 802.11n as minimum. Remember only one old device with a legacy protocol on your shiny new WLAN network will hold the whole WLAN network efficiency back unless you can isolate it to a single access point away from your streamer.
3 Likes