Please help with Roon server/core issue


Hi AGers, 

So long story short: I only stream music (do not own any). I have Tidal and Qobuz streaming through Roon. And that is my problem. I started out using a M1 Mac Mini to stream but I often lost connection to Roon. So I bought a Small Green Computer i5 Sonictransporter and LPS. SQ improved but not the Roon problem. 

We have fiber optic to the house, a fully wired network and I have Silent Angel N8 switch feeding the SGC Roon server and my Lumin T2. No wifi anywhere. 

Finally after a couple of years, the problems increased to the point that 192/24 files crackle and pop. So I wrote to the Roon Community Forum under the Support section.

The Roon support person wrote back that:

*****We’ve activated diagnostics for your account and RoonServer and here’s what we can confirm:

  1. Track downloads from Tidal and Qobuz’s servers are timing out with 24/192 FLAC files, and the prebuffer is barely ahead of playback. At times, it’s dropping out.
  2. There are sample dropouts reported with by RoonServer on T2 Zone. These at times accumulate sufficiently to cause unnatural interruptions on the stream.
  3. RoonServer constantly loses connection to upstream internet services due to network reachability changes in logs.

Your RoonServer’s intranet and internet connection appear to be struggling. How are you connecting your RoonServer machine to the internet?*****

Peter Lie from Lumin kindly wrote back and suggested I try changing my DNS to 8.8.8.8 - which I did. That did help a lot with SQ and speed but did not fully resolve the crackle and pop issue with 192/24 files. 

I would welcome any suggestions. 

Thanks, Nadine

128x128atanarjuat99

Showing 5 responses by erik_squires

OP:

Your basic step right now is to diagnose whether you have an internal issue or external.  External should be easy to see via any PC hooked up to Ethernet.  Use Ping and whatever your provider has for speed testing.

If that works well, then compare to measurements at the Roon server location.

As someone else has pointed out, it IS also possible you are having Internet routing issues.  that's more complicated, but first find out if your problem is internal vs. external.

Of course, the problem could be in your home.  Try pinging cnn dot com, and doing speed tests to another PC and compare that to what your provider is billing you for.

OP:

Also be aware that Ethernet cables do get misinstalled, and the ports on the routers do go bad individually sometimes.  Don't assume it must be a good port or switch.  If you have a port going to a PC which is known good you might want to swap it with the one going to your Roon as a test.

Well, Roon community forums are probably better places for such a specific question, but here goes.

DNS settings only help with initial stream starting.  Once a stream has started there should be no DNS requests again, unless the connection fails.

This sounds like a pretty basic internal network issue, which can happen from a lot of things.  You can put a PC/laptop at the same Ethernet location as your playback device and then run ping and download speed tests. 

The problem can be internal or it could be from your provider.  Usually if it's a provider issue you'll also have problems streaming Netflix, and other such services all around the home.