Rebooting is always a first choice. I had the unfortunate experience once of wasting 4 days trying to figure out my streaming issues. I had forgotten that there was an ROON Core update, and I had not rebooted my server. Normally this is not needed but that one time the reboot solved everything.
Intermittent audio dropouts when streaming Qobuz Hi Res files on Lumin streamer
Hey all,
Has anyone experienced intermittent audio dropouts when streaming Qobuz Hi Res files (especially 192/24 & 96/24) on Lumin U1 Mini streamer using Lumin app?
I have assembled a system in my living room about 2 yrs ago and have been subscribed to both Qobuz and Tidal Hifi Plus. I stream both Qobuz and Tidal on my Lumin U1 Mini streamer using Lumin app. Everything has gone smoothly and flawlessly until about less than 2 months ago. Lately I have been experiencing intermittent audio dropouts only when streaming Qobuz Hi Res materials (particularly 192/24 & 96/24) but Qobuz CD quality files (44.1/16) are fine. But recently the audio dropouts has become much more frequent and more intense. Again the issue pertains only to Qobuz Hi Res materials (192/24 & 96/24), not the CD quality (44.1/16).
My Lumin streamer is hard wired using a good quality TWL (Triode Wire Labs) CAT6 ethernet cable. I have a fast internet connection and live alone so I don’t share internet with anyone in the house. I also have UpTone Audio EtherREGEN audiophile quality ethernet switch between my router and the Lumin streamer. The issue has only been occurring in the last two months, and it was fine before. So it’s quite recent. I logged out of Qobuz and disabled Qobuz app of the Lumin app and enabled it back up again and logged back in but the issue still persists. I rebooted the Lumin streamer and restarted it up again and didn’t make a difference either.
I have the latest firmware. Again the audio dropouts is intermittent and doesn’t always happen all the time but recently it’s becoming more intense and more frequent. Frankly it’s annoying.
I’m also subscribed to Tidal Hifi Plus and have been streaming Tidal Hi Res FLAC files (Tidal MAX) up to 192/24 on the same Lumin U1 Mini streamer using same Lumin app. Fyi, Last year (2023) Tidal has launched Tidal MAX for those Hifi Plus subscribers which allows us to stream Hi Res FLAC materials up to 192/24. But I have never experienced intermittent audio dropouts when streaming Tidal Hi Res materials up to 192/24 (Tidal MAX). So, it’s pretty obvious that the issue is with Qobuz, not my Lumin streamer or the Lumin app.
Has anyone experienced the same issue when streaming Qobuz Hi Res materials on their Lumin streamers using Lumin app or on any streamers using any apps?
I have contacted both Lumin and Qobuz but Qobuz’s customer support isn’t great. They were slow in responding to your complaints and issues. Lumin customer support isn’t the best either. They are suspecting whether the issue is regional in my area or universal across the globe. I live in Seattle, WA. They asked me to experiment with something and use my cellular phone as hotspot to my home internet/wifi network but I have no clue how to do that.
This living room setup is the only setup in the house where I stream Tidal and Qobuz and this isn’t my main primary system. I have two other dedicated main listening rooms in the house (primary main systems) but I don’t stream Tidal or Qobuz in these main systems in my dedicated listening rooms.
Any help, advise, thoughts and opinions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Showing 3 responses by yyzsantabarbara
I used to have streaming issues just as you have described. However, my resolution would not work for you since we have different streaming setups. One thing that I may be able to help you with is to help you reproduce the problem. In my case, I was able to reproduce the dropouts 100% of the time on the song HEAR ME LORD - on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass (50th anniversary hi-res version). At the 39 second mark George start humming and that always caused a dropout. I was able to use that knowledge to eliminate different potential offenders until I narrowed it down to the cause. This resolution was very difficult because the dropouts did not happen every time with regular playback. Finding a reproducible song was essential for me to figure out my issue. BTW - I used TIDAL and Qobuz and could reproduce it with both. My streaming has to travel though a bit of a maze.
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@caphill Peter at Lumin has given some good advice. One thing I would have asked him is how much buffering does their Lumin app do. Is there a setting to increase the buffering size. If the CDN you are connected to is slow then having a larger buffer on the Lumin app will help. I have seen Qobuz have some streaming failures in the past. More so than Tidal. Though in those cases I am pretty sure it was at the Qobuz side and not my gear. These were more than intermittent drops. In the last 6 months Qobuz has been faultless on my setup. I sometimes wonder why I keep Qobuz when Tidal is functionally better and for me the sonic differences are not anything I even bother testing. Other than messing up my ROON database of songs I could easily drop Qobuz. Try the song I mentioned in my first post with both Tidal and Qobuz at hi-res rates. At the 39 second mark the data demands are high. |