No they generally have 100mb rather than 1gb.
I made quick stats (TCP Throughput, TCP WindowSize and TCP RTT) of network traffic between RoonServer (RealTime linux kernel, heavily stripped-down OS, 4xcpu fixed to 2,4GHz) and RoonBridge (RPI4, also RT kernel, stripped down, 4 cpu underclocked to fixed frequency 400MHz).
I’m not defining any conclusion based on the stats, just sharing for curious ones…
My general observation is, that EtherRegen is probably chaning WindowSize to fixed value and that with EtherRegen the RTTs were without occasional spikes.
Methodology:
run tcpdump on RoonServer, just before hitting play button in Roon. Tcpdump is filtering only traffic between Server and Bridge.
Test scenarios:
RPI connected directly to LAN switch at 1gbps
RPI connected directly to LAN switch at 1mbps
RPI connected to EtherRegen 100mbps “B” port, which is connected via 1gbps OpticalModule to LAN
RPI connected directly to LAN via WiFi (it was mostly reportig 100% sigal quality and 72mbps rate)
Results:
FLAC-44.1: https://localhost.sk/dropzone/PCM-44_1-Pics.zip
DSD-128: https://localhost.sk/dropzone/DSD-128-pics.zip
I have also original pcap files if someone would be interested to see them…
I don’t have UPnP dumps available at hand, but the major difference between RAAT and UPnP was that UPnP was heavily buffering on the beginning of track, then almost no traffic for say 30 seconds and then again quick big chunk of traffic , while RAAT is working with much smaller buffers. I would wish Roon would have options to set % of track to be preloaded before playing , then setting it to 100% would basically play from RAM. To me it seems, that reducing network interrupts during playback on the transport side (RoonBridge) have positive impact on SQ. I’m sure not all transports have enough RAM to buffer whole tracks in high-res, but for people with RPI transport this is no issue as there are 8GB Rpi4s available…
My Bluesound Node 2i has a 1Gbit interface. I assumed that was pretty standard these days. Having said that, my TVs are all 100Mbit. However, 4K video streaming doesn’t seem to present any problems there.
When I installed my NAS recently, I noticed that 4k streaming through the Plex server on NAS (in another room) actually worked better over wifi than ethernet. Main reason probably is that my LG OLED only has 100mb ethernet connection as you said.
I guess it all depends on how your network is cabled and configured. All of my hard-wired devices are on individual network ports back to a single network switch. I’ve not experienced any performance issues with any of my network to date (touch wood).
2 Likes
@David_Snyder conducted some quite similar measurements regarding network latency with different endpoint implementations on the RPi 4 over in the VitOS Thread.
The idea here was, that low latency and low variance in latency have positive effect on SQ - as claimed by VitOS programmers thunder data.
Regarding the buffering of RAAT i would guess that the feature of synced playback in different zones simply doesn’t allow for aggressive buffering. At least a regular “heartbeat” is needed to keep clients synced. This produces contious network traffic between core and endpoints anyways.
A simple test shows the buffer size of RAAT. By pulling the ethernet plug on my RPi 4 running VitOS i get around 3 sec of continued play before the music stops (CD-quality audio 16/44).
Regards, Roland
2 Likes
Innuos streamers allow an option for Roon Core to be run in “experimental mode” using squeezelite. It allows buffering/latency and my experience is improved sound quality over running the core and endpoint on the streamer. There is an occasional trade off with glitching when changing tracks without first stopping the stream.
However, my experience is that moving the core off the streamer is better than experimental mode with latency.
Somehow both situations makes the 1’s and 0’s better behaved. I’m sure there is some science behind it all, but were too primitive a society to understand it now.
2 Likes
maniac
Check out this post by Nenon on AudiophileStyle. It elaborates on your observations
1 Like
Ahhrgg!!!
I thought I was in a good place. I’m not sure it is a mountain I can climb. VLAN’s and HQPlayer Pro to store upsampled files? Not sure I have the skillset for that.
I am going to hold my breath and wait for the next big Innuos update thats supposed to include a better player option and may keep Roon for surfing music.
FWIW I just added a MasterClock to my Etherregen and SOtM switches. The good, it removed a big layer of what I will call grunge I did not recognize was present and also solidified timing and cohesiveness. The bad, it unmasked or added an edginess in the upper registers on some but not all tracks. Overall its more intoxicating but occasionally irritating.
1 Like
Who remembers hearing a great track on am transistor radio in the 60’s and getting excited by the music? Just sayin’…
8 Likes
Therefore these discussions are not about music, they are about something else.
Music is emotion, memories, feelings… not edginess, sonic proportions and noise floor.
5 Likes
Here you can listen to a switch test to hear the difference between a normal and some high-end switches https://youtu.be/0ZU92jfL-YU
Nice to see Courtney Marie Andrew’s in that video, as we hosted her last year…
Here you will see her singing right into my cameras and I had to turn gain up to max due to no light, but I got the shot… lol an experience that will surpass any. Cable swap in my hi fi ever…
Well she was there when I first looked, and now I can’t see the section… Confused… Am I going mad here, as I zoomed it out to check before I posted…
1 Like
Well according to ‘Nenon’ in that link from AS you are wasting your time messing with switches to ‘fix’ problems when the Roon SQ is so bad to start with:
Many of us have tried to convince them to do things to improve the sound quality but they have been ignorant and arrogant for the most part.
I don’t recall ‘Nenon’ posting on here, so what name do they post under on this forum?
Yes, and they’ll show you their measurements to prove it
Most streamers use TCP to transfer the file to a local buffer/cache before playing, if any packets fail a checksum the streamer just issues a resend request via TCP until complete.
Even Roon does this, your audio file is not being played from the network (streamed) it is being played from the transports (Roon) local cache.
How does a network switch make that sound better when it’s not even part of the playback path?
9 Likes
By believing that there is no way a network switch can affect the sound of an endpoint are we perhaps perceiving no difference, where, in effect, there maybe a large difference 
? Just saying 
1 Like
Nope. Couldn’t hear any difference.
It’s not a case of belief, it’s scientific proof:
Beyond having a stable, reliable network, you don’t need any fancy gear for music streaming - it’s just data, after all.
Save your money, or spend it on something that really matters, like room treatment…
2 Likes