Just joined and posted my first thing in the HiFi corner section, but thought this might be more suitable for here.
I have just bought the ND5 XS2 and having previously used an apple airport express (please don’t laugh) the quality is incredible. I can’t recommend it highly enough. There is a lot of talk about how to connect so I thought I would give my thoughts.
I started connecting with wifi. The sound quality was excellent, but the usability was poor. I had to keep logging out of the app as it kept disconnecting, despite an apparently good signal. There was no buffering or drop out, but I couldn’t easily go from one track to another in the app. I ran the diagnostic as suggested and it showed the connection quality to the streamer was amber, to my phone was green.
I therefore tried a gigabit powerline adapter. Usability was much improved. There were no app/streamer disconnections and I could pause and search and play tracks with very little / no lag. The sound quality however took a noticeable hit. Not sure how to correctly describe it, but it sounded “muffled”. So back to wifi as I thought I could deal with the app lag. Turns out I was wrong so I installed ethernet cable from my router through the loft, down an unused TV coaxial cable conduit (replaced with ethernet Cat6), which came out directly behind my hifi rack.
Welcome to the board. I’d never laugh about this as I used to use it myself. I went through all kinds of transports but landed on the ND5XS2. It’s a really nice piece of kit.
I’d ditch the power line adapter, I used one for a couple of years and recently got round to running an armoured Cat5 up to be cabin at the top off the garden. Apart from not having to switch it off when listening to vinyl due to noise picked up by the phone stage, there was a noticeable uplift in streaming quality. The noise the adapter puts on the mains is significant.
I’ve also noticed that devices on the mesh network in the house only show up in the house and those on the WiFi access point in the cabin only show up in the cabin. Sometimes, they show up in the house but very rarely. The access point and mesh have the same network name and password.
How are IP addresses handed out in your network? It may be that your mesh network and AP ore providing IP addresses to devices on different IP network ranges. It’s best to have only one DHCP server on a network handing out IP addresses. Generally that would be your Internet router. Allowing other network devices to also run DHCP is a recipe for such network connectivity issues.
Can’t see a setting for dhcp on the access point but you might be right. It’s not an I issue though, I’m either in the cabin or the house. The only thing in the cabin is my NP5 which shows as on another network in Spotify when I’m in the house. The NDS just disappeared but I’m just using it as a dac now.
It’s possible your router is running DHCP and handing out IPs to devices connected to your AP and the mesh system is doing the same for those in the house.