WIFI Powerline adaptor noise through HIFI

My listening room is in a separate building from my house and for the foreseable future my wifi in that room is only available by use of powerline adaptors between the house and the remote building (so using mains as the network effectively). BTW we are rural so 4G is also not easily available at any useful signal strength.

The issue I have is that there is clearly audible noise through my HIFI system, coming from the use of wifi powerline adaptors (unplug the listening room powerline adaptor and the noise goes away).

When actually using the HIFI, the noise generating powerline adaptor is not a problem, as I can simply unplug it whilst having a listening session. However, I hear the low level noise through the speakers whilst the HIFI is just sat dormant (I leave the HIFI all powered up) if I'm in the room either quietly reading or watching the TV in there.

If I were to plug my HIFI to the mains power socket via some sort of mains filtering device is that likely to stop the Powerline adaptor generated noise? If a mains filter is the solution, which would be recommended.

 

I had hearable noise once when it was too near the satellite plug. Once moved not hearable at all.

 

Is the the outbuilding too far for wi-fi extenders?

 

Am I missing something?
Surely if there is a mains supply to the 'outbuilding', it ought to also be possible to run an Ethernet cable?
Alternatively, when a powerline adapter in my system was making noise through my phono stage, simply unplugging and replacing it cured the problem.

 

Check out this old thread:

https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/a-question-about-netgear-powerlines.194752/

 

I tried Ethernet over mains wiring adaptors once and they interfered with my phono stage of the time so they went and i had a proper ethernet cable put not the wall.

 

I’m afraid my experience was the same as yours.

But I also found the power line adapters - even when self rated at a theoretical 1gb - actually have effective speeds around 30-50 Mb. Not really fast enough for much I wanted to do (stream, Zoom etc). This is just the reality if you google around.

I ran an Ethernet cable down to top edge of my fence to the shed and fed it into an old second router I had.

alternative: in the house I got a mesh system which extends Wi-Fi over…Wi-Fi. Works really well and limiting factor is speeed to house not over that.

hope it helps. Never found any way to stop phono stage picking up noise. But also didn’t try very hard given other issues anyway.

 

Add one of Flash's network switches. That'll soon gobble up all that nasty noise.

 

My listening room is exactly the same, using powerline wi-fi, and I don't have any noise problems at all.

Which component of your hi-fi is picking up the noise though?

 

It can be very component dependent. I’m using power lines and neither of my systems pick up any noise, but I did try a heed phono stage in the TT system and that did pick up noise that I just couldn’t get rid of

 

One solution is an RF filter for the HiFi.
A better solution is to run some fibre between the buildings. Copper Ethernet can reliably do 100m, but vulnerability to lightning surge might be a problem

 

Thanks very much for all the very quick replies.

Half of my listening room outbuilding is subterranean, the walls are traditional cavity, but the outer skin being 'flat laid' breeze blocks, the inner skin being standard laid breeze blocks, so the structural elements of the walls are total 415mm thick, the house is about 40 metres from that outbuilding, so those combined result in wifi not making it from the house.

When planning and constructing the outbuilding services I did have forethought to lay 3 ethernet cables (one plus a couple of spares) between the two buildings, its just that none are connected at the house end quite yet (still doing significant remodelling on the house for about another year or so).

I'll try to narrow down what's picking up the powerline adaptor noise, like some comments my initial thought was phono stage, although the noise can be heard through the speakers (NBL's) without phono as the selected input, and even with mute selected on the pre amp (NAC52).

 

I had problems such as this but have managed to overcome them.

Two pieces of advice

1) Don't plug the powerline into the same socket as your phono stage. Plug it in to the socket furthest away as you can and use a long ethernet cable to hook up whichever pieces of equipment need it.

2) there is huge variability in the noisiness of the adaptors, both within samples from the same manufacturer and between different manufacturers so buy a few used ones on ebay and select the quietest ones.

 

Thanks Colasblue. The PLA is as far away as it can be from the phono stage, diametrically opposed across the 9.5m x 4.5m listening room.

I'm on the third PLA's but only because the first two used ones off EBay didnt seem to work at all, then bought a new one, which gave wifi but after a while once I started using the room I noticed this noise issue.

 

I have the same problem In my garden room although the noise is only evident when phono is selected. I just switch off the tp-link adapter when listening to vinyl which works fine for me. From what I’ve found, introducing a filter is not guaranteed to work and is more likely to affect the sound quality adversely. I’ve actually got a 50m cat5 cable ready to hard wire the connection but I’ve been too lazy to do it so far. I think it’s the only real solution.

 

The nature of PLA is that going any distance requires high modulation voltages - AC power cables are not good quality RF transmission lines, so not surprising some adaptors did not work.

 

Why not power down the hifi when you’re not listening to it and save electricity?

 

I'd rather not power the system down, then back up each time I use it. The electricity saved for the system sat in idle mode would be negligeable, versus the potential for an issue in switch on and off each time, for each bit of kit.

I think for now (until I connect up the network house end) I'll unplug the PLA when no interweb required.

 

I'm not here to argue since I used to think the same and it's entirely up to you, but I discovered there is no 'issue' when turning stuff on and off, unless you do it every ten minutes.

 

I'm more concerned about speaker clicks I have observed on some occasions when powering back up (even though most of the electronics have been recently serviced or newish).

I use and love NBL's, the drive units of which are I understand nigh on unobtainable now, so weighing up a teeny weeny thimble full of electricity, versus the potential for damage on power up, I'm happy to opt out of the process of turning off/on so many boxes each time, apart from when there is a lightning risk in the area of course.

I guess its all about weighing up risk, every case differs.