I’m using a PS Audio Bridge II and a Node 2 as roon endpoints, and attempting to play both simultaneously (using roon). The first issue is that they won’t stay synchronised. The second issue is that a change in word length/sample rate - which is seamless on the Bridge II - makes the Node 2 sound like a turntable getting up to speed. Incidentally, all connections are wired (with Cat 6 cabling).
I think this may be a roon/Bluesound compatibility issue.
…and received the following reply:
Since Bluesound Players only act as Roon End Points, this entire process is on Roon’s side(Unfortunately I don’t know how they play simultaneously).
Hi @Jack_Bolton ----- Thank you for report and sharing your feedback with us. The insight is appreciated and sorry to hear of the troubles.
Moving forward to help aide in our evaluation of this behavior with the mentioned grouped zones may I kindly ask you for the following:
A brief but accurate description of your current setup.
Please describe how these devices are communicating with your network/application. Having insight into any networking hardware you are implementing would be very appreciated as well.
Do you experience any issues with the mentioned audio zones when not grouped together?
In terms of the zone grouping which device have you assigned as the master and slave? Can you provide a screenshot of the clock master priority being assigned to each device?
Can you confirm if you are using the “resync delay” feature with the Node2?
The music library is on a Synology RS214 NAS. Router is a Draytek 2860 Vn-plus. Connections are Cat 6 via a Cisco SF24-200 switch.
Control is via a Mini iPad.
The two roon endpoints are the PS Audio Bridge II, and the Bluesound Node 2.
No issues when not grouped, as far as I can see. Switching from 16/44 to 24/96 (and vice versa) is seamless when using either endpoint singly.
In Zone Grouping, I’ve assigned 1(Highest) to the Bridge II , with no sync adjustment, and Default, 100ms adjustment to the Node 2. (I don’t think I can send a screenshot; all this is on my iPad).
I’ve tried different Resync Delay settings for the Node 2, between zero and 500ms, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference (the Bridge II has been zero throughout).
Last night, I played just 16/44 files for an hour, and didn’t experience any drift in synchronisation, so maybe it’s only hi-res files that are a real problem (although I have needed to change the sync adjustment on the Node 2 on previous occasions, and I don’t think I’ve always been playing hi-res files).
Hi @Jack_Bolton ----- Thank you for touching base with me and providing the requested feedback, both are appreciated!
Moving forward, I have a meeting with our tech team and members of our Dev team tomorrow to discuss open support issues and plan on bringing your case up for some additional feedback. In preparing for the meeting could you please verify the following for me:
When you notice this synchronization issue with the Bridge II + Node2 does it occur immediately OR do you notice the two zones drifting apart after a certain amount of time?
This is an interesting observation you have made (i.e when playing 16/44 content), out of curiosity did you do any more testing with 16/44.1 content to be 100% certain that the group remains in sync? Additionally, during this test run did you switch back to Hi-res content at some point? And If so, what was observed?
It seems that, once the two players are in sync, they stay in sync during that play session, unless there is a change of word length/sample rate. If I interrupt play, they may or may not be in sync when I restart. Also, the strange effect of getting up to speed (mentioned in my original post) can occur at start-up (16/44.1 files). This happened last night, for instance. Only the Node 2 is affected like this; the Bridge II shows no odd effects (I have a faint idea that, when playing in sync with the Node 2, the Bridge II/Direct Stream DAC doesn’t sound quite as good as when playing on its own, but this could well be my imagination).
@Jack_Bolton - that sounds a little like my more recent experiences with a Node and Flex - they’ll often now sync at 16/44.1 as long as I don’t pause or skip and as long as Flex is clock master ( see Third speaker out of sync ). I haven’t noticed that startup effect though.
Hi @Jack_Bolton — Thank you for the feedback and more importantly, thank you for your patience. I wanted to let you know that @mike has provided an update on this behavior, which can be found here: