I have a PWDII with bridge that I purchased from the original owner. I’ve heard in this forum several folks saying the bridge sounds better than USB and Paul McGowan stated the reason is due to the bridge running off two digital lens (because the bridge has its own lens) vs one with USB. I don’t plan to hook up my PWDII to my router because I use my Macbook Pro directly into the PWDII via USB to stream music. However, since I have the bridge and if it sound better, I’d rather use it, but when I connect an ethernet cable (cat 5) from the Mackbook Pro directly to the PWDII bridge, there is no sound and the bridge shows no network connection. How can I make this connection work? Someone mentioned you need a conversion cable because the bridge is meant to be connected to a router. Where do I get a conversion cable and is that all I need?
This should work because to my knowledge the ethernet port of the Macbook Pro is auto mdi/mdix. In this case you don’t need a crossover cable. Once I tested this method at home with my Mac mini (JRiver) and it worked. Did you give both devices a static ip-adress within the same range (e.g. 192.168.1.x and 192.168.1.y)?
They say you need to use a crossover cable but I think Wybe is correct that newer Mac models can use a standard patch cord. If you have an older model you might need a crossover cable (or adaptor to work with a patch cable) (both readily available at Amazon and other sources). A crossover cable should work with any vintage Mac.
Thanks for the link! I have a Macbook Pro from 2011 and I tried to connect a regular ethernet cable, but still does not work. I will get a crossover cable and see if that works.
Ok, so I purchased an ethernet crossover cable, hooked it up between my macbook pro and the MKII, followed the instructions in the link from stevem2, and everything looks all set. The MKII bridge shows connected and I have different IP addresses while the subnet is the same. However, one problem… No sound. I am using iTunes only so not sure if I need J River software or similar. Does anyone know how I can use only iTunes and get the bridge to work?
Does anyone know how I can use the Ethernet connection on the bridge, rather than USB, to play Spotify on an older MacBook Pro that has an Ethernet port? The bridge shows network connected but unable to get any sound playing Spotify. I’m using a crossover Ethernet cable. I have no problem with using USB, but heard than the bridge sounds better with its own digital lens, so thinking I should use bridge to play Spotify.
I don’t know anything about playing Spotify but I assume you would need an application that supports it and can play to the Bridge, such as maybe JRiver Music Center (again, I don’t play Spotify so don’t know what software supports it; hopefully someone who does will chime in). Before you get Spotify to work you would need to be able to stream music from your server. Can you do so? As discussed above and you have found, direct connections are problematic and it would likely be a lot easier to go through a router.