Android: Staggeringly playback when Roon out of GUI focus

Roon Software Discussion
1

Reported also approx a year ago, repeat:

On a LG V10, i.e. a pretty modern mobile device:

When roon is out of GUI focus, for example because of reading a newspaper or whatever other activity, roon playback becomes staggering (chopped up), indicating insufficient priority put on the playback process. As an Android developer, I have experienced this when non-GUI activites are nevertheless run on the main thread (the GUI thread), indeed a no.no

It appears as if Roon is doing so much on the GUI thread that when down prioritized by another app, this is the severe result. For the user, the result is the inconvenience that nothing else requiring GUI focus could be running while playing with Roon. Cumbersome!

Not ruling out other explanations, could you please, please fix this bug. Put any cpu consuming activity out on a separate thread. This should solve the problem.

Thanks!

2

@eric, I am expecting a response to this bug report. Thankyou.

3

Hey @Carl_Henrik_Janson – we are planning some work on our Android audio stack to implement Android 5.0 Audio, which allow us to better support USB DACs.

This work will likely to require a rewrite of much of our audio code on Android, so for the moment audio bugs on that platform will probably be lower priority, since all that code is slated to be replaced. That’s why you haven’t received a response here.

I’ll definitely make a note of this in the ticket where we’re tracking the upcoming work. I don’t have a firm time frame for when it’s going to happen, but in any event we appreciate the feedback here. Thanks!

4

This is an incorrect analysis. All the Android audio works not only happens in a different thread, it happens in a different process. This is not the case on iOS because iOS apps can not be multi-process, but on Android, we run the audio processing in an Android Service as opposed to Activity.

5

@danny, ok. Waiting for fix.

6

@support

Hi, I don’t want to hijack this thread; but I’m wondering what the status of this bug is in August 2018? I have this behavior on my LG G7 and my V30, and it’s very frustrating. No other audio player I use behaves this way, including Tidal.

Both phones are on Oreo and use LG HiFi DAC.

Thanks, austingonzo.

1 Like
7

@Danny, and @mike, I believe my analysis is correct. Try to put the playback code in a background thread and you will see that it is indeed a remedy. Use activity, not Service. Study this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5575844/why-does-android-service-needs-to-run-on-ui-thread

I agree with @David_Mathias, and you are now on timeout with respect to slow response. I kindly ask you to come up with a fix now, even if you are rewriting everything else. I don’t use Roon on Android, I use Tidal, for this very reason. So now I like Tidal and you loose out. Please understand. Thanks.

1 Like
8

@support, I’m not sure of the history of this bug, and how much of the issue is directly attributable to LG and its Android implementation and/or the DAC hardware choices in the three phones mentioned above.

I’m writing this reply from my Sony Xperia XA1 Ultra with Roon running in the background. Not a blip to the performance can be noticed at all.

Bizarre…