Cheap router good router

Hi

I keep losing connection from the IOS to the Bartok, either the Bartok disappears or duplicate devices appear on the screen with the same I.P. address then when I select one the rest go away. Don’t think I fixed the I.P. so must be dynamic

Bartok never loses connection to the internet, it always keets playing, just the IOS/Bartok connection is a problem.

I’m thinking the router/wifi hub is the likely culprit, rather than the IOS, it’s a freebee that came from the service provider. I was wondering, is there any sonic benefit from a better Router, or is it like an ethernet cable and doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated,

Really?

As routers supplied by ISPs vary significantly from both company to company, country to country and time to time it may assist in recommending an alternative if you told us what you have now.

However I suspect that the problem you have is more likely to be one of configuration rather than the variety of device. Just about any home router, even the most basic, should maintain wifi connection with an i-phone/pad within a reasonable distance so there is probably more to it.

Hi

The Router is a U.K. spec Brightbox 2 from E.E. I’m not experiencing any other issue than this, that said it’s a basic unit and I was thinking of swapping it anyway as it has limited functionality.

I have a Draytek Vigor for work so was thinking of another of those as I’m familiar with it. I was wondering if one router over another might offer any sound quality benefit in addition to hopefully sorting the connection issue.

The IOS isn’t losing connection to the wifi/internet, just the DCS. I close mosaic down, reboot mosaic and re-choose the DCS, the I.P. is always the same but there is sometimes up to four of the same devices to “choose” from. Happens maybe once or twice over a few hours and I can’t see a pattern.

The route is Brightbox Cable Netgear switch Cable,

The cable is a cheap unshielded to the switch and a chord c-stream cable to the DCS. tried removing the switch and swapping cables for others but no change.

Bartok, IOS and Mosaic are all are on the latest firmware/release. The problem has been since I had it 6 months or so ago but I’ve just not got round to looking at it.

Any thoughts appreciated

Maybe the C-stream cable is not a big enough step up from the cheap one,

I’m sure I read a DCS engineer saying the ethernet cable made little difference, perhaps I misunderstood.

I’ll re-read the ethernet cable posts.

Forgot to say, all coming in via Tidal, no CD player or internal storage.

Graham, your main connectivity problem would seem to be to do with the configuration and not the performance of the router. I am no expert on this subject ( or any other for that matter :thinking:) so I hope others may come in to help you.

I actually didn’t know that EE acts an an ISP, I thought they were just a mobile phone network. Ignorant me. However you can bet that a large company like them in our very competitive market in the UK will ensure that the “free” ( you do pay for it if not upfront) routers they supply will be more than adequate to supply music streams from Tidal. What is your typical download speed? I have run Qobuz hi-res ( 24/96 flac) successfully on a Samsung phone from a 7Mb connection out in the sticks.

I doubt that any make of home router will make any difference to the SQ that you experience. Audiophile network switches may , controversially, be a different matter but I will leave it at that. You can find a good discussion about this aspect in a thread further down the page ( the Anybody use Innuos Zenith one).

I’ve had similar occurrences happen in the past, but very rarely, and usually when I was doing something else funky on my home network.

Like Pete suggests, there could be some other underlying issue at play.

Are you only listening to Tidal tracks with Mosaic? Does the problem happen every time you’re on Mosaic? Or like once a week kinda thing? What model Netgear Switch are you using?

I have often found the provided routers from ISP here in Sweden not to be the best choice. A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine had similar problems with his Lumin streamer loosing control over wifi. He re-placed his router with some Netgear model and the problems went away. Everyting else was fine with his network but the router was clearly doing some strange things that the Lumin was not happy with.

I am happy my ISP that supplies fiber to my house only use a fiberconverter and I can choose what ever I want to use as a router. I went with a Ubiquiti Edge router with external accesspoint that works really well.

Hi All

Thank you,

Petes question, upload is 20mbs and download of 65mbs, latency is 11ms, its fiber to the cabinet in the road then copper to the flat. I was thinking something kooky must be happening somewhere in the setup, I’ve tried removing everything else to no avail.

Netgear is a cheapy, GS305E. Have tried removing the Netgear completely and gone Router -DCS. I note that others are using Cisco’s low noise switches.

Anuk, all steamed from Tidal, now switched to Quobuz but still getting the occurrence, happens at least once each session (2hrs) so would say once daily, can’t find a pattern.

Thanks, Octaviars, a propper access point might not be a bad shout as they are not crazy money. I was thinking Draytek Router with a Ubiquity Acess point, at least then I can rule out a quality issue.

The I.P. on the DCS is not fixed, I assume I could fix it?


Could I ask a side question, as you have obviously looked into cabling/routers and switches in some detail? The phone line enters the building in copper, would it be better to have the router positioned so that the entry cable is as short as possible? In other words, the Master Phone socket is positioned where the phone cable enters the flat. This would mean I would have to go approx 10m - 15m on Cat 5 to the DCS.

Making the assumption that you have experienced better sound quality over a better ethernet cable would I be correct in thinking the Cat 5 from the switch is more significant than the one from the router to the switch? This is the advice I received from the Hifi shop.

Ideal = Draytek router - 10m certified cheap-ish cat 5 cable - Cisco low noise switch - 5m fancy Cat cable - DCS

I ask because I’m rewiring so have a 1 off opportunity to resolve the above issue and possibly make a sonic improvement at the same time.

Thanks and sorry for the sidestep,

I have only ever had one major dropout problem and that was solved simply by plugging my PC network connection ( This was before I had a dCS streamer) into a different port on the router - maybe the contacts just need a clean by wiping? Anyway if it works then it is the simplest solution.

Graham, on your Brightbox 2, not that it’s causing the problem you’re experiencing, but you might want to disable it’s UPnP function, which it appears to have Enabled by default.

Also, on your Netgear GS305E, if you plan to put it back into service, you definitely want to Disable IGMP Snooping on it, again its apparently Enabled by default - that would have definitely caused problems with your Bartok-Mosaic connectivity (see User Guide, page 49 on how to disable it)

As for locating your router, Ethernet cable length, etc., 10-15m with CAT5 shouldn’t be a problem, just don’t route it along/parallel to power cabling. W.r.t to Draytek, be careful with that Router, it’s highly configurable, but that can be a bad thing if you’re not sure how to configure it properly, another poster on dcs.community recently had problems with one.

There are a few known issues here and one of those is the duplicate devices shown in the selector. The discovery code has been completely re-written in Mosaic 1.1.1 (coming soon) so you should see some improvement there.

Having said that it is common to see discovery issues with ISP-supplied routers. We typically recommend replacing the ISP router with something more robust or placing a more robust router between your network and the ISP’s router. The choice depends on the ISP and how dependent your connection quality is on the use of their hardware.

As for recommendations, I hesitate to make these as they do very by market. In the UK we’ve had good luck with the Netgear Nighthawk.

Thank you, Andrew and all

Great to hear you are looking into this.

Thanks for the Tips Anup, I’ll take all these into account on build-up.

Pete, I tried swapping ports, cables, and even removing the switch. None sorted or improved, I’ll swap the router, followed by the switch.

Perhaps my S.Q. test on ethernet cable needs another look, I’ll give it another try.

Thanks All