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In Reply to: Any quality loss if you use a network attached drive? posted by orpheus on January 13, 2007 at 13:51:08:
Only from the dropouts that always occor when using wireless. Wireless uses TCP just like any other data sent over networks. So if a byte gest mangled by RF interference, poor signal, sunspots, or whtever it gets resent. Constant resends leads to low over all streaming bitrates, clicking, popping, stalls, and that dreaded "Buffering" message you see when it goes quiet.
Follow Ups:
> Only from the dropouts that always occor when using wireless.Yes, that's the big "gotcha" with **all** computer audio. Audio **demands** real-time precision, and PC subsystems (whether PCI buses or network attached drives) are simply not designed with this as a priority. This can result in ridiculous situations such as a 2 GHz PC simply not being able to play glitch-free audio while a different 1 GHz PC has flawless playback (because of differences in support chipsets, or whatever).
802.11g is no guarantee of perfect playback, no matter how many channels of 16-bit/44.1 kHz audio its bandwidth should support **in theory** (and however much buffering there is).
Networks can spring nasty surprises on you. When I dipped into wireless media players a few years ago (via the cd3o player) I had the bright idea of using a "spare" Windows 98 PC as a fileserver (the cd3o Music Server software required Windows XP). I never got this to work -- rumor has it that filesharing was badly broken between Windows 98 and Windows XP, but I never found out for sure. It wouldn't even work when I bypassed the cd3o's internal 802.11b receiver and hard-wired it to an external 802.11g bridge (linking to the Music Server PC via a Netgear 802.11g router, which was getting its WAV files from the Windows 98 fileserver via another 802.11g bridge connecting to the network through the same Netgear router).
You may luck out with your particular brand of network-attached storage. Or you may strike out. But you can be sure the manufacturer of the NAS system did **not** design it with audio in mind!
"low over all streaming bitrates, clicking, popping, stalls, and that dreaded "Buffering" message"
I have two Squeezeboxes and get drop outs every so often. It's infrequent so it's not a problem for me, but wireless streaming, even over 802.11g is definitely not 100% reliable. However, as pointed out, the sound is either there or it isn't. There is no loss of audio quality when the network is being ravaged by microwave ovens, cordless phones, etc.
The only reason there would be any sound degradation is from data trasmisition problems is the point I was trying to make.Otherwise why would there be any diffrerence in sound quality from the exact same digital audio streamed from a hard drive, compact flash card, SD/MMC card, memory stick, or any other digital storage media?
Unless your B/W is terminally crap.
I'd say that's a bit harsh. I've had wireless music access for about three years now and never had issues with dropouts.
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