pi3 sd card vs Pi4 wifi or ethernet sq

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Hi,

I found the sound quality of Pi3B+ playback from SD card vs from NAS through ethernet definitely better, more airy.
Is the sound quality of Pi4 + wifi or Pi4 + ethernet playback equal or better than Pi3B+ playback from SD? 
Is it worth to get a Pi4 1GB for better sound quality through wifi playback?

Thanks
Lacas

Hi, although some advice to avoid wifi data transfer for hi-end reproduction, the data transfer speed SHOULD theorically be more than sufficient for a perfect reproduction also for highest quality data files (still with an old 182.11 g/n protocol). What I personally experienced is that there might be some latencies in the wifi transfer due to various problems (radio interference, latencies in sending data from the NAS, etc.) and you can perceive that as little distortion: this was really terrible when I tried to use a Mi Box S with Android TV as digital player in my system (but you cannot really compare that stuff with a dedicated machine). Moreover, there are theorical possible interfences between the hardware componentes (Wifi, ethernet, USB) although Archimago in his blog posterd demonstrations that this does not actually affect the data trasnfer quality.
I personally chose to play my files directly from the SD card, because I found it a more convenient solution (it requires the minimum hardware possibile and you don't have to use multiple USB ports at the same time). But I still take the WiFi on for the connection to the LAN.

As first step, you could verify that you set the player to pre-load the file in RAM before playing it: this should solve any slow transfer of datas problems. If you still find a difference between playing from local SD drive versus ethernet/WiFi connection with the NAS, since good quality SD cards are nowdays relatively inexpensive, you should buy one and make this upgrade.