I share the same story - N56U with Padavan is very solid, AC56U - terrible 2.4GHz performance. Lesson learned: I will never buy any dual-stream router ever again.
Merlin FW or stock, overclocked or not - the wifi portion on this router is just bad.
The only thing which may help a little bit - try to disable Bluetooth if you are not using it (not on the router of course - on your laptop/tablet/phone/etc.). I see slight improvement, so give it a try.
You just said that N56U is very solid, which is also a dual-stream router. If you meant dual-band then you'll be stuck at 2.4Ghz since 5ghz only wifi routers are pretty much non-existent(I've seen a 5-only bridge device once).
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