The only benefit is if you have patchy wifi. If you have a weak wifi signal, or interference from neighbours wifi, you’ll get packet loss and latency which could result in streaming issues. Like, the music stopping and caching for a second or two. If your wifi is fine, use it.
Streaming music uses fuck all bandwidth. Ethernet is recommended for streaming 4K video for sure.
Yeah. You can obsess over flat frequency response results, but you don’t listen to graphs.
My personal listening preferences line up closely to the Harman curve, so a boosted bass and warm rolled off upper frequencies. I’d likely much prefer OP’s EQd setup.
OP’s non-EQd results are textbook V shaped, which plenty of people enjoy. Neither one is better than the other for subjective enjoyment. Go with what you like.
The chest slam you feel in your body with drums and bass is around 50Hz, so well within the ability of your speakers.
You probably have room modes causing nulls at certain bass frequencies meaning yiure missing bass impact. Unless you have physical room treatment / bass traps or use room correction EQ, you will have uneven bass. It’s a 100% gaurentee.
I’m sure if you measure and EQ, you’ll get the bass slam you’re after.
A Raspberry Pi Zero (<$30) gives you a bit perfect, transparent streamer. The only reason to spend more is to get one with a built in DAC if you don’t already have DAC capabilities in your system. Or to get one with Dirac or PEQ.
REW is an application, used to measure your audio. It can also generate EQ filters based on your results and chosen house curve. It doesn’t apply EQ in itself. You need a DSP to use the EQ filters.
As you have the mic, download REW and start measuring your room. You’ll then see how good or bad your results are. If you just have some low frequency room modes, then you probably only need a few EQ filters to fix. The basic Minidsp 2x4HD without Dirac would suffice.
If you need correcting full range, I do recommend Dirac do either get the DDRC-24 or Flex with Dirac licence.
The past few generations of Monitor Audio’s various product lines have all had pretty industrial design, producing some of the nicest looking speakers on the market.
These are an abomination, holy hell!
Powerline adapters have their uses but often have horrible latency spikes that cause lots of dropped packets. Which is a disaster for streaming.
The software version is expensive compared to other ways to have Dirac.
The Dirac Live Processor (the PC/Mac software version) costs US$349 where as a Minidsp DDRC-24 costs US$400. You get more flexibility with the external DSP option and end results are identical.
You’ll need to buy a UMIK-1 mic for either option as that’s needed for the initial setup. It’s $50 when bundled with the DDRC-24 or $79 bought individually.
Minidsp let you transfer Dirac licensed between their devices.