Audio stops during playback

Support
26

Hello, thank you for these steps. I have tried them and sadly am still experiencing the issue. It has happened several times this morning. In one recent example, at 04/20 11:07:19 today (eastern time), the following local FLAC track stopped playing to a local audio device on the same machine.

[HighQuality, 16/44 FLAC => 24/44] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:07/3:49] Allergic (to Thoughts of Mother Earth) - Placebo

I tried the process of turning off the media player, turning off network devices, bringing them back up, and logging in again. Additionally I have twice tried creating a new Roon directory from scratch. I also replaced the network switch to see if that could have an improvement.

In the logs I see this message:

04/20 11:07:19 Trace: [raatserver] [RaatServer DESKTOP-V020T3P @ 127.0.0.1:9200] lost client connection. Retrying
04/20 11:07:19 Trace: [raatserver] [RaatServer DESKTOP-V020T3P @ 127.0.0.1:9200] connecting (attempt 1)
04/20 11:07:19 Info: [transport] destroyed zone PC (Default Device) was playing? True

Could you please confirm if it is expected behavior that when this connection is lost, the audio zone is destroyed within 1 second? I would expect a longer time interval and more retries.

Also would it be possible to clarify if this message is an error connecting two services within my machine (never going over network) or if this is a connection error when trying to reach Roon’s server? If it is a connection error reaching Roon’s server, I would again ask if it is possible to increase the timeout or add retries before destroying the playback zone.

27

Hi @michaelm,

Thanks for following up. Can you please confirm your current network setup, as a fair amount of time has passed since the issue has popped up? Per previous requests, we’ll need to test how things run with your core directly connected to your router, bypassing any network equipment.

With that, I’m also seeing some DSP-based errors in logging, can you please test out disabling any DSP while using the Focusrite as an output?

What is the default audio device set within your Windows core? Is it the Focusrite? I would check after the issue happens if your core still shows your Focusrite as the default audio device (that is, if it’s normally set as default in the first place!)

Do you notice any pattern in file resolution when issues arise in playback? Please test out different resolutions and let me know how things go.

I would also test trying the “System Output” zone and the WASAPI zone for the device if ASIO isn’t working correctly.

Lastly, I would triple check you have the latest drivers installed on the Focusrite, and consider potentially doing a fresh install of the current drivers if they’re already up to date.

Thanks!

28

Hi thank you for the reply. I wanted to double check if you saw my question above. I would like to understand what each of these log lines means. Could you please explain them? I am wondering what the lost client connection refers to here. What is the “client” whose connection was lost? What is that connection normally used for? That would help me narrow down what’s going on.

04/20 11:07:19 Trace: [raatserver] [RaatServer DESKTOP-V020T3P @ 127.0.0.1:9200] lost client connection. Retrying
04/20 11:07:19 Trace: [raatserver] [RaatServer DESKTOP-V020T3P @ 127.0.0.1:9200] connecting (attempt 1)
04/20 11:07:19 Info: [transport] destroyed zone PC (Default Device) was playing? True
29

Hey @michaelm,

Sure, these log snippets refer to a network timeout with RAATserver from your desktop remote. This means that RAATServer is detecting a loss of connection from the DESKTOP-V020T3P rather than RAATServer causing it to disconnect, so either the Desktop or the network itself is blocking the connection.

The [transport] section is Roon logging that it killed the PC Zone during playback. Most of the time it’s a timeout, or generic network error, which lead me to my previous reply if you could provide the requested information below:

Thanks :+1:

30

Thank you very much- I really appreciate the explanation! This is interesting to me because the RaatServer was running on the same device as the DESKTOP-V020T3P remote, which to me sounds like it was not a network error outside of that machine. I am now suspecting for that case it was related to either 1) Windows/another app killing the connection between the two services running locally, for an unknown reason, or 2) the desktop remote stopped responding for an unknown reason, possibly due to a bug/crash interacting with the audio device.

I changed my network setup yesterday, so it’s too early for me to report back on if that affected the issue.

My current setup is now:

  • Internet enters a Google Nest Home Router
  • Since that router has only one ethernet output, I connect it to a network switch: TP-Link TL-SG108
    • A Synology NAS is connected to the switch by cat6. This holds the music library.
    • A debian server on a dell micro runs the Roon Core with the NAS mounted. i3-8100T, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD. This device is connected directly to the switch by cat6.

Clients:

  • Android phone connects to Google Home Wifi
  • Windows 11 PC Connected to the switch via MOCA. The audio device is a Scarlett 6i6 gen 2.
  • NVidia Shield via cat6 directly to the network switch

Thank you for the suggestions of things to try.

  • I can’t connect the PC client, core, and NAS to the router directly since it has only one ethernet output. Since the PC is connected over MOCA I think that is an area of potential network issues, however since the errors happened in the previous setup where Roon ran directly on the PC while playing back files from a local hard drive, and the logs did not indicate an error reaching out to an external roon server, I do not see evidence for that. If an error reaching out to a roon server could lead to a timeout between the local RAATServer and the local desktop remote, I would request roon add logging for this case so that it is observable. If that logging is there already, do we see it anywhere in the logs above?
  • I disabled DSP for now. The DSP was a few db of headroom management as I had experienced clipping before.
  • Does Default Device here refer to using the windows default device for audio output? I usually select the focusrite asio output directly in roon to bypass windows, however I did have the issue appear with both options. After a playback dropout I didn’t notice any defaults change however sometimes roon lost track of the fact that it was playing anything at all and I had to select an audio device from scratch. Other times I would see the track as paused on the recently used device.
  • I have not noticed a pattern with file resolution. I have seen the issue at least with 16/44 and 24/48 and will try to notice if others appear.
  • I’m switching from ASIO to WASAPI and will see how that goes.
  • I reinstalled the latest drivers this week as a sanity check.

I’d say no need to dig much further on your end for now while I try out this new setup. I’ll post again if I run into issues. In that case I could try connecting the PC over wifi to the Google Home instead of over MOCA. That would have lower bandwidth but maybe avoids some other problem.

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