Mac mini (2020) (wired), 8GB with M1, macOS 13.5.1 with Samsung 2TB SSD for music library, about 21K songs in Library
Roon ver. 2.0 (Build 1303)
Networking Gear & Setup Details
Asus XT8 router, internet connection about 700 Mbps
Connected Audio Devices
Zen Stream (wired)
Hugo/2Go, and Poly/Mojo2 WiFi 2.4 GHz
Number of Tracks in Library
about 21,000 tracks
Description of Issue
Everything has been running very smoothly until about a month ago. I’m experiencing random brief dropouts every few songs, usually in the middle of the song
Here are some other the things I’ve tried for a fix:
Moved Library from wired NAS to USB SSD
turned off Background and On-demand analysis
increased resync delay to 2000 msec
did clean up un Library maintenance
limited Qobuz to 16/44.1
did full network reset
rebooted Core
checked Activity Monitor to check resources, no other activity above 1% of CPU usage
turned off Spotlight
You have an ethernet connection and Wi Fi ones , do they show the same drop outs.
There are literally dozens of threads complaining about dropouts , skipping and stuttering . All eventually come down to internal Network issues, not the Internet connection but you local Wi Fi normally
Do you have the problem with all of your audio devices or just with the Chord devices? I’m asking because my experience (I own Hugo+2go too), Chord WiFi is very finicky. I have well-provisioned UniFi networks with multiple wired WiFi access points, and even then, the only way to get relatively reliable Roon play on the Hugo is to force it to stick to a specific AP, otherwise it seems to keep hoping between APs causing it to drop play.
In contrast, I have a Zen Stream connected via WiFi on a different location, it’s rock solid.
Yes, the dropouts happen with both the wired Zen Stream and the Wi-Fi Chord devices. The latter have actually been rock solid since I switched to the Asus router.
My 2 cents:-
Experiment with the routers QoS config to give high priority to the roon traffic to the endpoints.
Experiment with disabling the AiProtection.
Use the real-time traffic monitor to see if anything shows up when you hear the interruptions.
Thanks for the suggestion, John. I’d been focus on potential probs with the Core. I found that QoS was turned off. I’m now immersing myself about the ins and outs of QoS. Then I’ll start monitoring traffic.
John, that pair of pennies turned out to be worth their weight in gold!
Asus software has an adaptive mode that lets you prioritize traffic by type. After putting Audio at the highest priority, the dropouts all but disappeared. Oddly, the 2Go has been perfect, but the Zen Stream still has one every once in a long while.
If it still is bothersome, I spend more time down the QoS rabbit hole to perfect it.
It seems there were issues related to a recent Roon update that affects the Zen Stream. I’ve switched from S/PFID to USB. Also, I increased both the buffer size and amount to buffer on the ZS. I’ll post back if this works or not.