Ipad endpoint with bluetooth

Flagging @support. This doesn’t really help you guys, but I’ll say that I use my iPad Pro with a Bluetooth speaker every day and don’t experience these issues, so this isn’t a universal problem — there’s something more complicated going on here.

@koen:
In all likelihood, this is all network-related. Roon sending raw/decoded PCM means it has more demands with regards to the quality and latency of your WiFi signals.

In my home network, I can play to my iPhone 8 with AirPods (bluetooth) as Roon zone without hiccups.

Squeeze/iPeng allows for sending out the stream as (compressed) FLAC (see device settings), thus having lower bandwidth demands. BTW: running 1.4, I can still use iPeng just fine, in the same way as with 1.3 (just checked). Roon is not suddenly withdrawing support just because they released iOS playback themselves.

@pieterdvr:
Let’s flag @support to follow up for you. You may want to add some details about your network and WiFi in the mean time.

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Rene, thanks for your reply. If this is the case, how do you explain that since 1.4, music on my iPad is not stable — even when also running iPeng — where it was before? And is it possible to adjust some settings, i.e. in Settings > Audio > iPad > Device Setup > Playback? I don’t see an option NOT to convert to PCM, or send a lower resolution to play over my iPad in any other way?

Thanks @RBM Rene,

Why is there a difference between bluetooth on and bluetooth off. It works well with BT off, but it doesn’t with BT on.

Pieter

@koen:

This is possible with Squeeze endpoints only:

I don’t think anything has changed in Roon that would impact Squeeze/iPeng playback in 1.4 – but of course my knowledge is limited. :wink:

@pieterdvr
WiFi and Bluetooth are competing radios on the same device. I’m just speculating here, but I’d guess that when WiFi is already barely making it, initiating a full bandwidth bluetooth stream from the same device could push things over the edge.

Anyway, since Support has been flagged three times in a row, I’m sure this will get Eric’s attention in due time. :slight_smile:

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There is not. However, there has been a Feature Request I think for this option.

@RBM and @Rugby, thanks for your replies. While looking for the screen Rene provided, I discovered that SqueezePlay for my iPad was disabled, probably with the upgrade to Roon 1.4. So I guess that’s why iPeng didn’t work anymore. I have enabled it again and will try it again to see if this solves the problem, while on the long term investigating what could be wrong with my network.

Rene, any idea what deselecting “Use FLAC compression” does? It suggests that files won’t be compressed anymore, so will use more bandwith. I’ve quickly tried both and in both cases, the signal path shows 44.1kHz / 16bit, suggesting there’s noi difference in resolution / bandwith. I hoped that would be the slider preventing Roon from converting to PCM, not sure what it does now?

If enabled: Roon sends the stream as FLAC (=less bandwidth) over the Squeeze protocol and iPeng does the decoding to PCM (less ideal, but not really important when using an iDevice as endpoint).

If disabled: Roon sends PCM to iPeng.

Thanks Rene, I’ll leave it enabled and try it tonight, to see if the performance goes back to normal.

It should. :slight_smile:

Couldn’t wait until tonight. Seems like it is. :slightly_smiling_face:

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@koen ---- Thank you for chiming in here to share your previously noted experience. I believe there is some feedback that I am still waiting on from the previous thread that hopefully you can provide some insight on. Please see below.

You shared this observations with us:

“Guys, I’ve done some more testing and it might be the case that I’ve overlooked something. I found out that when leaving the iPad in the living room (nearer to router/modem), I hardly have any hickups when listening to Roon over my headphones, either in the kitchen, the garden or upstairs.”

  • Is this still the case when the iPad is left in the living room?

From my reply to your post in December:

“To piggy back a bit, on @andybob’s post (:innocent:). I am curious, do you make the same observations while playing directly out of the iPad instead of via the bluetooth headphones?”

  • Rugby had made a similar troubleshooting suggestion to you as well in the same thread. Was this test exercise ever performed? If so, what was the experience like?

-Eric

Hi @pieterdvr ----- Thank you for the feedback and sharing this observations you have made while Bluetooth is enabled on the iPad remote.

Moving forward, I am going to enable diagnostics on your account as this action will automatically generate/upload a diagnostics report containing a set of your Roon logs the next time Roon is active on both your core machine and the mentioned iPad remote. While my gut feeling is that this behavior is related to something environmental, I am going to have our tech team analyze the logs to see if they identify any issues in the traces.

Additionally, would you kindly provide me with the following:

  • An expanded description of your current setup using this link as a guide.

  • Please briefly describe your network configuration/topology, being sure to provide insight into any networking hardware (i.e router, switches, powerline adaptors, etc) that you are currently implementing.

-Eric

Hi @Eric, I’ve been very busy with my new job, but to answer your questions:

  1. Yes, it’s still the case with the iPad in the living room
  2. Yes, I did perform the test exercise, back then and again recently. The results are that in both cases (directly out of the iPad speakers and through the PX bluetooth headphones) the connection varies, although they were and are much more unreliable (more skipping / dropouts) when playing through the headphones.

So both cases show more instabilty when playing Roon 1.4 without iPeng than playing Roon 1.3 with iPeng. Rene (RBM) suggested that this might be because iPeng plays in lower resolution than Roon. This means that when playing through Roon without iPeng, it demands more from my network.

So it took me a while, but by now, I too am getting fairly convinced that there must (still) be something wrong with my network. I seem to have a terrible router/modem from my provider, so I will pick up a second-hand Airport Extreme Rene advised me and see if this solves the (last?) problems.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Roon, I really do. It’s just that — although perhaps Roon can’t help it directly — all of this results in a very mixed experience. I’ve never had a better musical (re)discovery trip than with Roon, but at the same time I’ve never had to spend so much time and money making things work, whereas before “my life in Roon”, I just inserted a cd and it just worked. Hope I can report back soon that all my problems are solved. If not, I hope you guys can help me solve the last bits.

Hi @Eric,

Here you will find the info about my problem with my bluetooth connection to my hearing aids.

Cheers, Pieter



Describe Your Setup
• what version of Roon you are running (Settings > About; If you’re running Windows, please let us know whether you’re running 32bit or 64 bit)
Roon version 1.4 build 298
• What operating system you are running (Windows 7; OSX 10.9; etc)
MacOS High Sierra 10.13.2
• Basic information about the device you’re using (MacBook Pro 2011 w 4gb of RAM; HP Envy laptop w i7; etc).
Mac mini (late 2012), 2.3 GHz i7 16GB, 256 SSD
• Describe where your music is stored – this includes hard drive description and interface type (USB, Firewire, etc. If you are using a NAS or any other kind of network storage, be sure to include the information requested in the Network section below)
QNAP TS451 with 4x 3TB version 4.2.3
• Let us know your collection size (approximate number of tracks)
21.000 tracks
Describe The Issue
I have a set of Oticon Opn (BTE13 PP) hearing aids that are “Made for iPad (MFI)”. They are connected to my iPad 2017 through the iPad Bluetooth. They can not be connected through bluetooth from other manufacturers. You have to connect them through Settings – General – Accessability – Mfi-hearing aids.
Than they should stream the sound from Roon when I choose the zone that is my iPad.
Streaming just Spotify this way is no problem.
Also streaming to my hearing aids with an additional bluetooth-receiver is no problem.
As I understand Apple is using a specific kind of bluetooth that makes this direct connection possible. Just with this specific kind of bluetooth I have problems.


Additional Details
Describe Your Network
• What router are you using? When did you last update the firmware?
Apple Airport Extreme, last updated 31-01-18.
Connections:
Mac mini – wifi – Airport Express (1) – wired – Airport Extreme
QNAP TS451 – wired – Airport Extreme
iPad – wifi – Airport Extreme
and many more connections.

Describe Your Output
(if the issue involves playback via a specific output)
Lastly, if your issue is related to a specific output (meaning it only happens with Airplay, or with your DAC, or when linked, etc), let us know:
• What output are you using? (this could be System Output on Windows, a Meridian MS200, your DAC, etc)
Output Connected to this Tablet: iPad-Pieter
• What brand and model are you using (this could be the model of your DAC, or laptop, or something like Airport Express Gen2)
iPad 2017
• How is the output configured (the easiest way is to post a screenshot like below, but you can also tell us whether you’re using Exclusive Mode, how you have DSD conversion set up, etc)
• Are you using anything else in your chain (such as DIRAC, Amarra sQ, etc): No
• Does this issue happen with different kinds of media (Tidal, FLAC, DSD, etc): Yes
Screenshots of all audio settings (accessible from the small gear on the Audio tab of Settings) and Signal Path during playback: see attached.

Hi @pieterdvr,
A work around is to use another device for the Bluetooth connection.


Not the most elegant solution though …

I only use my iPad Pro as an endpoint to listen to when it’s taken into the bedroom at night. There is a lot of skipping of tracks or starting a track and then skipping to the next or next but one.

I assumed it was because I was further away from the router. I’ll see if the problem remains in the living room.

Edit: No, no problems in the living room when it’s close to the router.

Just for reference, Brian was pretty clear about our feelings on this router:

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Ha! That would give me a reason to (at least partly) disagree with @Brian – that’s a first. :slight_smile:

While I have little experience with using the router part, I’ve found that last-gen AEX’s are very reliable WiFi access points. At home I’ve had one since 2013 and is has yet to fail on me: strong signal, great stability. It has also behaved just fine with Roon (very fast reconnecting times with iOS/Android).

While these days a good mesh would probably be the best answer for WiFi, the AEX is still a great WAP/Switch. For friends having network eh… challenges, I’ve usually disabled the (mostly weak) WiFi in their ISP supplied routers and hooked up an AEX in bridging mode for WiFi duties. Great happiness ensued. :smiley:

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@koen and @pieterdvr ----- Thank you both for the touching base and taking the time to provide the requested feedback, the information is greatly appreciated!

Moving forward, being as this behavior appears to be readily reproducible while using your iPads as endpoints with the mentioned Bluetooth devices, I would like to enable diagnostics on your accounts so our techs can have a closer look into this behavior. However, before I do so, may I very kindly ask you both for the following information:

  • Please reproduce the issue you are experiencing with the iPad endpoints + Bluetooth devices and note the time when the error occurs as well as the track/album that was playing at the time.

Once I have been provided with the requested timeframes/feedback from above, I will go ahead and enabled the mentioned diagnostics on your accounts.

-Eric