I have Roon core on my Mac mini. On my bedroom there iMac where I run Roon as a client only. Sometimes it works without any issues, sometimes there is network issue and music playback stops and/or sometimes goes to next track.
Is there any possibility to cache whole song before the song starts because at this moment it is quite annoying and I have to use another app on my iMac for music listening (since I want to listen music without audio dropouts because of WLAN)?
I have many albums on my iMac so I just created network share so Roon core can found albums there. I have not yet tested it but should this fix the issue or how Roon works behind the scenes in this kind of situations? I mean does it transfer music first to the Roon core and then back to this computer over the WLAN or does it just play the music directly on iMac but just shares information about plays etc. to Roon core?
Is there any other way how I can listen my music on Roon on different rooms (without stopping audio when WLAN has problems) without buying another license just for another room where is issues with network?
Hi @Aleksi_Rasanen ---- Thank you for the report and sharing your feedback with us. The insight is appreciated.
Moving forward, one of the biggest features of Roon is the ability for multi room playback and another license shouldn’t be required in order to get this to work. My sense is that something is occurring in your environment that is causing these audio dropouts to occur. To help aide in our evaluation of this behavior you are reporting, may I very kindly ask you for the following information:
An expanded description of your current setup using this link as a guide.
Please describe your network configuration/topology, as well as providing insight into any relevant networking hardware you are currently implementing (i.e router, switches, powerline adaptors, etc) .
Is the iMac the only client/endpoint you aren noticing this behavior with?
Cable modem / WLAN: Sagecom, Model F@st 3686AC DNA (Via finnish teleoperator DNA, justom firmware I guess)
All Roons are up-to-date
Core (Mac Mini) is connected to WLAN and so is client (iMac)
One possible issue is that I live in area where is lots of WLAN’s. I have tried to change my WLAN channel already but still randomly Roon starts dropping audio, but this does not happen all the time.
I have noticed this issue also once or twice with iPad client.
I have had lot’s of audio and video streaming problems over wlan myself. Turns out, most modem/routers provided by your internet provider are of a variety “it just works”. Wich is fine for internet access but not to built a home network around. Bying a decent wlan router was the best network investment I ever did. All dropouts are gone, speed and coverage has gone up and it runs stable even when the modem kicks out again.
I bought a new WLAN router, ASUS RT-AC51U but noticed still same issues in my apartment. I have changed the channel on WLAN but still random drops happens. Of course one reason might just be that my walls does make some issues for WLAN signal. Also there is lots of WLANs in this area and I cannot do anything about those.
Anyway I got veeeery long ethernet cable from my friend and connected my iMac on my bedroom via cable to that Asus WLAN and also Mac mini (Roon server) connects to same router using cable. Then I was listening music and tested my network speed -> Roon started again stopping music and dropped whole audio signal if there is too much traffic on the network so it does not work very well with cable either if there is too much traffic (updates etc. on computer)
Hopefully in future there would be possibility to cache whole song to memory before playing starts + background caching for next songs since this is just annoying especially since whole music stops and skips to next song. It makes whole multiroom useless in some kind of situations since you cannot always prioritise network traffic easily unless you just do totally different network for Roon computers
Thank you for touching base with and sharing the observations you have made during your troubleshooting @Aleksi_Rasanen, the insight is appreciated and sorry to hear of the continued troubles.
During your troubleshooting of this issue…
When you tested with hardwired connections between your devices did you make sure to disable Wifi on the MacMini and iMac to ensure they were making use of the LAN connection(s)?
I understand from your report that your music is stored internally on the iMac and a you have a share setup so the MacMini (i.e core) has access to this content. Have you tried temporarily disabling the network share and hosting some music on the internal storage of the MacMini to confirm how playback responds?
If you play directly out of the MacMini into a pair of headphones for example, do you still notice stops during playback?
Both devices were connected on cable and WiFi was disabled
Music was stored on Mac Mini internal hard drive during those tests (I just copied those from iMac to Mac Mini since there was no local file playing possibility anyway)
If I play music directly on Mac Mini in outputs there has no been issues but if I make a zone and whenever any of clients disconnects (which happens almost every time via WiFi since these rooms are made from stone) music will stop on all playbacks and song will jump to next on all of the devices.
Yesterday I just throw iMac away from bedroom and switched mainly to CD-player there, it just works without too much configuring
I later copied some of songs to laptop and connected laptop to DAC and played music from local MBP with different app so there were no any network issues either (since I also disabled WiFi and played only on hard drive).
Do you have any plans to do Roon Clients more “smart” which could play music on those devices hard disks if there are clones of songs which can be found also on Roon server to be able to do local caching which does not require any kind of Internet connectivity? At least on my house that would be just handy and would give possibility to use Roon on bedroom and kitchen also
Of course that local cache would give possbility to use Roon on many rooms without different licenses but that issue could be fixed to check license once in a week or something if that is partly because of license question?
