Can anyone recommend a good wireless card or USB stick for streaming?

Rich

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As the title suggests, I'm having trouble connecting my PC with my Transporter, I'm having no trouble connecting my laptop, so I'm guessing it's the wireless card in my PC, when the transporter's connected the signal goes up and down in quality constantly, but with the laptop, it stays at 100% even for 5000mps.

I haven't got much of an idea what's good and bad in wireless stuff, I've a Netgear 834GT router, if that's any help.


I guess this is the forum to ask this, but it's for streaming.
 
Unless you have a very odd setup - your transporter isn't connecting to your pc. It's connecting to your router. The router is the hub of your wireless network - so the pc, laptop and transporter all communicate with each other via the router.

So, the PC card will only help if your desktop is having trouble with it's wireless link to the router. From your description, I suspect that's not the case and it's simply that the Transporter is struggling to see the router.

I used to have a Netgear router and I had major problems with my laptop dropping the connection all the time. A friend suggested changing the 802 b/g setting - which had cured the problem for him - and it also cured the problem totally for me. If I remember correctly, the default setting is b and g, and you can change it to just the slowest (b?). Might be worth a try.
 
The transporter does go through the hub, but I tried loading music onto the laptop and got a perfect signal, I'll try changing the 802 setting and see how that goes.
 
Network test at 5000kps give only about 10% even on 'g only' there's no 'b only' on my router, the laptop is about 95-100%.
 
The 5Mb test isn't really relevant as you won't be using anything like that for streaming audio. The 1.5Mb would be more useful.

If the PC is where the SqueezeCenter is installed then that should really be hard wired to the router by ethernet. It's asking a lot of 11g Wi-Fi to talk to both devices wirelessly.

Try running Netstumbler to check for other routers in your area. It will tell you what channels they are running on if present. The clearest channels are 1, 6 & 11.

Using the 1.5Mb test, try different channels on your router until you hit on the one that gives the best results. Then experiment with the orientation of the router's aerial to see if you can improve it further.

You could also consider a higher gain aerial on the router &/or the addition of a parabolic reflector. This DIY jobbie gives my SB3 a little more signal from my DG834g.

If all else fails to get a reliable signal then you may have to ditch Wi-Fi & connect the Transporter to the router with Homeplugs.
 
The 5Mb test isn't really relevant as you won't be using anything like that for streaming audio. The 1.5Mb would be more useful.

If the PC is where the SqueezeCenter is installed then that should really be hard wired to the router by ethernet. It's asking a lot of 11g Wi-Fi to talk to both devices wirelessly.

Try running Netstumbler to check for other routers in your area. It will tell you what channels they are running on if present. The clearest channels are 1, 6 & 11.

Using the 1.5Mb test, try different channels on your router until you hit on the one that gives the best results. Then experiment with the orientation of the router's aerial to see if you can improve it further.

You could also consider a higher gain aerial on the router &/or the addition of a parabolic reflector. This DIY jobbie gives my SB3 a little more signal from my DG834g.

If all else fails to get a reliable signal then you may have to ditch Wi-Fi & connect the Transporter to the router with Homeplugs.

I want to be able to play high resolution stuff, that uses upto a 4+mb connection......the point your missing is, I can get the high res stuff playing fine on the laptop, it's just my PC that's the problem.
 
ⓡⓘⓒⓗⓐⓡⓓ;8451392 said:
I want to be able to play high resolution stuff, that uses upto a 4+mb connection......the point your missing is, I can get the high res stuff playing fine on the laptop, it's just my PC that's the problem.
You've completely lost me. :confused:

Where is SqueezeCenter installed?

How is that device connected to the router?

What are you playing on the laptop & how?
 
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The Transporter is either wireless or ethernet cable, the laptop(wireless) was being used as a big remote, controlling the music(that was on the PC), but I tried installing high res stuff on the laptop, that played it perfectly
 
What do you mean by "installed" music on the laptop? You're running SoftSqueeze on the laptop?

And what "played it perfectly"? Have you installed a second copy of SqueezeCenter on the laptop & the Transporter is playing that or the laptop is playing it?
 
>I haven't got much of an idea what's good and bad in wireless stuff<

I've had my music server and Transporter both connected by wi-fi to my router and it's worked OK with 24/96 material. That's using a DLink DIR-655 router and DLink DWA-547 PCI card so the music server and router use DLinks' implementation of 802.11n; the Transporter connects to the router using 802.11g of course.

802.11n can push a huge amount of data, enough to keep 3 players running concurrently.
 
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What do you mean by "installed" music on the laptop? You're running SoftSqueeze on the laptop?

And what "played it perfectly"? Have you installed a second copy of SqueezeCenter on the laptop & the Transporter is playing that or the laptop is playing it?


I'll explain.......

1 Installed squeezecenter on my PC with all my flac files, which gave occasional drop-outs, even when playing the radio stations at 128kps.

2 Bought the girlfriend a laptop for Xmas, then installed squeezecenter on that, I was then able to control the Transporter with the laptop playing files that were stored on my PC, but this still gave me drop-outs.

3 There is an option on the transporter to connect to the laptop(even though there was no music on it), this gave me a perfect signal.

4 I wondered what would happen if I installed some high res music on the laptop, I tried that, this gave me no drop-outs at all.


I think that covers it.
 
So is it the case that your PC is connected to your router wirelessly? And it's not possible to use an Ethernet cable?
 
>I haven't got much of an idea what's good and bad in wireless stuff<

I've had my music server and Transporter both connected by wi-fi to my router and it's worked OK with 24/96 material. That's using a DLink DIR-655 router and DLink DWA-547 PCI card so the music server and router use DLinks' implementation of 802.11n; the Transporter connects to the router using 802.11g of course.

802.11n can push a huge amount of data, enough to keep 3 players running concurrently.

I'm hoping to avoid upgrading the router, as it doesn't seem to be the problem, I've spent so much money on my setup recently :rolleyes:
 
So is it the case that your PC is connected to your router wirelessly? And it's not possible to use an Ethernet cable?


I can't link the PC by cable, the transporter can be linked by cable to the router, with the same results.
 
&#9441;&#9432;&#9426;&#9431;&#9424;&#9441;&#9427;;8452344 said:
I can't link the PC by cable, the transporter can be linked by cable to the router, with the same results.

OK. In that case, I'd be inclined to follow the earlier suggestion of home plugs. I used some for a while to connect my SB+ to my router and it worked very well. I only stopped because I got an ethernet cable fitted between upstairs / downstairs.

I started using homeplugs because - although my SB+ seemed to see the router OK wirelessly - I did get occasional glitches in sound, and even occasional odd behaviour (I'd pause the music and it would suddenly unpause itself).
 
OK. In that case, I'd be inclined to follow the earlier suggestion of home plugs. I used some for a while to connect my SB+ to my router and it worked very well. I only stopped because I got an ethernet cable fitted between upstairs / downstairs.

I started using homeplugs because - although my SB+ seemed to see the router OK wirelessly - I did get occasional glitches in sound, and even occasional odd behaviour (I'd pause the music and it would suddenly unpause itself).



That sounds like the same problems I'm having, pauses and occasionally jumping to the next track for no reason.
I might even have a problem installing homeplugs there might not be enough room around the router's power sockets :rolleyes:

I might try getting a good quality USB wireless dongle.......see how that goes.



Something like this http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(19429)Netgear-WN121T-RangeMax-Next-270Mbps-WirelessN.aspx looks like it might do the job
 
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>might try getting a good quality USB wireless dongle<

So your router has NetGear's proprietary 'Super G' support, so one of their own PCI cards ought to work best, i.e. WG311T.

Or you could get some high-gain antennas from Maplins -

a42fy.jpg
 
Assuming that the Transporter is still connected to the laptop via the router, & not it some ad hoc way directly, then we're left looking at locations.

Have you tried the laptop in the same location as the PC to verify it still works? There could be something in that location that is causing interference such as a DECT phone or a neighbours router.

Pretty much all the advice I gave in the first post is still valid for getting the best performance between the PC/router as between router/Transporter.

The Netgear PCI card that Amcluesent referenced is likely to give the best performance with your router but may still not be enough. There any many environmental factors that can affect signal but if your laptop still streams from the same location, you "should" be OK. PCI cards should always give better performance than USB as the aerial can be manipulated or upgraded.

The USB adapter that you have linked to is of no use as your router can't take advantage of the "n" spec.

You can get Homeplugs with mains pass-through if that helps.
 
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I remembered I had an really old wireless card in the loft, after spending over an hour trying to find the drivers for it, I got it working.............and got 95%+ signal quality :clap:

No drop-outs or skipping so far.

I didn't realize you could get homeplugs with sockets attached, I'll have to consider them if this card still has drop-outs.
 

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