I am receiving the audio loading slowly message when trying to play audio on my Cambridge CXN100. It happens with different sources (local disc, Tidal). But it only happens when I have the Roon Ready Room Advanced Audio Transport as the streaming technology. It does not happen when connecting to the CXN100 via other streaming technology eg Airplay, Chromecast, suggesting to me that the bandwidth on the network is absolutely fine.
Describe your network setup
Roon Core is running on a MacBook Air M1 Sonoma OS 14.5. Modem is a TPlink Archer VR1600v. Router is a Netgear Orbi RBR50 mesh
RAAT sends uncompressed PCM/DSD. Airplay and Chromecast compress the audio to travel more nimbly throughout the network, which is why they endure the slings and arrows of network interference with seemingly greater ease. Roon’s native protocol has a habit of revealing latent issues in the network since it’s lossless.
We can verify whether this is in fact the cause of the error you’re receiving if we have a timestamp or the name of a track that was playing when you last experienced the problem. From there, we’ll activate diagnostic logging and use the timestamp/track name to pinpoint the event. Logging will help illuminate whether this is a network-related issue, and if so, how we might resolve it.
Thank you, @Wade_Oram and @Connor for your replies. I am travelling away from home right now so I can’t provide screen shots of the Chromecast example. But I did take this screen shot of the RAAT example.
As for time stamp and track details, it happens on every track, and within 10 seconds at most of the track commencing. I can give you details when I get back home next week.
As well as not happening on Chromecast, it does not happen on Apple Airplay either.
Often I can fix it by rebooting the streamer. It will play fine until the next time the MacBook is disconnected from the network. Which suggests to me that bandwidth, as such, is not the problem. But occasionally rebooting does not work (and I can’t work out what does end up working - powering everything off and on and eventually it sticks… until the next time when it doesn’t)
I do not experience the problem if the CXN100 is wired via ethernet, but I can’t have it on that way permanently because then my wife, who can’t use Roon when my MacBook is not at home plugged in, can’t use Tidal Connect on the CXN100, which only seems to work over the wireless network.
Hopefully getting a dedicated Roon Core will solve the problem, but I can’t afford a Nucleus and the Nucleus One is not yet available in Australia. All quite frustrating!
Using RAAT, you are trying to send a 705.6kHz/32 bit PCM over WiFi. That equates to ~45Mbps which, over WiFi, is ambitious in the extreme.
By contrast, other streaming protocols limit the sample rate (and add compression) so, for example,
Airplay is limited to 48kHx/24 bits (2.3 bps) and is then compressed further (so maybe about 1.5Mbps over the network).
Chromecast is limited to, I believe, 192kHz/24 bit or about 9.2Mbps before any compression.
I believe the very high PCM sample rate for RAAT comes about because you have added a Muse resampling setting of ‘maximum compatible’ (I can’t remember the exact wording and can’t see it on my phone so I can’t give screenshots at present).
Instead, you should try setting a maximum sample rate which is more in line with the capabilities of your WiFi - say 192kHz. Or maybe don’t resampled at all. The CXN 100 will resampled to its internal sample rate anyway so you may not hear a difference in quality.
The reason that your current settings work with wired ethernet but don’t work with WiFi is that wired ethernet is a full duplex uncontended system (meaning that only multiple traffic stream over the same cable in the same direction interfere with each other.
By contrast, WiFi is a contended system so all traffic streams interfere with one another irrespective of the direction and destination. Modern WiFi (WiFi 6 and WiFi 7) is better at handling this than previous versions but still has problems when dealing with high bit rates. Remember also, that all WiFi back off the macimum bit rate when the signal quality is poor in order to improve transmission reliability.
E. G. My WiFi 6 can achieve 1.9Gbps to me laptop when the laptop is in my dining room but only achieves ~450-600Mbps to the same laptop when in my lounge.
Thank you, that is interesting. I will try reducing the sample rate. But why then does it sometimes work fine when I reboot the CXN100, and then other times not work at all? Could it be something to do with the way the system works (or doesn’t work) when the Roon Core and/or the streamer reconnect to it?
The WiFi link quality - which varies with atmospheric conditions and external interference (like a neighbour’s WiFi, other radio transmitters or even, in some cases, your microwave oven).
The total traffic on your WiFi - not just that related to Roon.
When you have a good modern WiFi connection and the Roon Stream is the only traffic on your network, then it may well work - at least for some time.
The problem is that, with WiFi the connection quality and even the WiFi traffic (in multi person households) can vary significantly outside of your control.
By contrast, with a wired network, the connection quality does not change (unless someone severely mistreats a cable) and interference of traffic between users is often eliminated with no effort and if it is not, it can be, for the most part, by judicially using network switches to segment the network.
The only area of a wired network where conflicting demands on bandwidth can not be eliminated are:
Broadcast packets (which account for a very small percentage of total traffic at any one point)
Thank you for checking in @benjamin I have been away from home but I will get back tonight and will reduce the upsampling on the RAAT path and see whether that solves the problem.
OK, so I have got back home, changed the sample rate to 192 kHz… and the problem is still happening.
The following shows screenshots of what is causing the audio file loading slowly message to come on and the track to skip within 5 seconds of starting:
And the following shows what doesn’t cause any skipping or problems:
When I experience the audio file loading slowly problem, a reboot of the CXN100 and/or the Roon Core seems to solve it, most of the time. So could it be that the problem is something to do with IP address allocation on the router rather than bandwidth, as such?
You are still comparing apples to oranges: The RAAT 192kHz 32 bit PCM bit stream created by the 192kHz upsampling equates to ~12.3Mbps.
The Airplay and Google Cast examples, however, have no upsampling and just send a (lossslessly) compressed version of 44.1kHz 16 bit PCM which equates to somthing significantly less than 1.41Mbps.
The the bandwidth requirement demanded of your Wifi for the RAAT examples is probably a little more than 9 times the bandwidth required for your Airplay or Chromcast examples and is thus more than 9 times as likely to suffer issues with WiFi link speed and quality.
Unfortunately, @Wade_Oram’s assessment is accurate. The WiFi bandwidth is insufficient for the uncompressed PCM stream, which is why ethernet plays back without issue.
The two options here would be to increase the WiFi bandwidth or to switch to a hardwired connection. Alternatively, you can lower the sample rate in Device Setup.
These are the slings and arrows of WiFi network interference.
Thank you, but I still don’t understand why it would be temporarily fixed by a reboot if it is a simple bandwidth issue.
Also, a Wifi bandwidth testing app shows average bandwidth of about 30 Mbps at the location of the CXN100. I know there is other traffic on the network, but we don’t stream HD video, for example, at the same time when we experience the problem.
WiFi is up and down constantly it is never consistent speed in any environment that is its nature. It also suffers from high latency due to the fact it can only send/receive data to one device at any one time. This is very quick but not quick enough in some cases.
Latency is the one the most common reasons Roon gives this message it’s not necessarily always bandwidth. Roon does want to have low latency to maintain an accurate sync of your using more than one zone. Even if you only have one zone it’s still required. As Wade already mentioned any WiFi is susceptible to interference from other households and any other WiFi devices in the house. So this latency can increase quite dramatically if more devices are using the WiFi or your neighbours systems are on the same channels as yours and this change all the time as people leave everything on auto settings. Also Roon is server client combo so it’s always taking more bandwidth as it’s pulling from the internet if streaming from Tidal and then pushing to your endpoint. If both devices are on WiFi then latency is even greater and bandwith is double.
Video streaming apps are built with much larger buffers to negate this phenomenon but it can still happen. They also stream in bursts of data not a consistent stream which is what Roon does.
If you only have one WiFi point covering a whole house or one larger area then this can be under a heavy load from other devices just trying to talk to it which all WiFi devices do and not just what’s being used on your network. If your using a mesh system then this if often wireless backhaul to router adding more latency. Add in that internet bandwidth is also never constant most domestic IPs can drop very quickly for no reason and it all adds up. Roon is more susceptible to poor WiFi conditions due to its latency requirements being very low. For me it works perfectly well but I spent a good time planning WiFi to cover my whole house and I get 320-900mb/s over WiFi dependant on device, location, time of day. This can drop by over 200mb/s or more at some points and this is a a very robust system. WiFi whilst can work well and does it often doesn’t in built up areas without some planning.
With WiFi, the average may well be 30Mbps but that does not mean that it can sustain a continuous 12Mbps stream. Also, just because another device achieves 30Mbps at that location does not mean that the CXN 100 will. Every device has a different number of antennas and antenna arrangement both of which affect the maximum data rate achievable.
Also, this is not a good WiFi connection. By comparison, I usually get at least 800Mbps from my WiFi but I still try to avoid using it for streaming.
With regard to the temporary reboot, fixing the issue, I think this must just be luck.
As @connor said above, you really need to use a wired ethernet connection to the CXN 100 if possible or upgrade your WiFi system.
If neither of these are practical, you could also try using a good power line adaptor to facilitate a wired connection from your router to your CXN 100.
In general, powerline adaptors are not recommended and are far from ideal because they suffer many of the same issues as WiFi and add latency, complexity (and, potentially, reliability) issues to your network. However, I have used them in the past with some success - even for connecting Roon Endpoints. In fact, until September when I am getting some network cabling installed into my house, I still have two endpoints using them. I have been able to stream to endpoints reliably even at 192kHz/32bit (the highest that I ever go). However, as with WiFi, do not connect your Roon server using a power line adaptor.
If going this route I would use a good, high bandwidth pair of adaptors (I used Devolo Magic 2 Lan devices - 2400Mbps advertised line rates but in practise achieving about 800-1200Mbps in my house) and use a pair of them only to connect your router to your CXN 100. As soon as you start adding more powerline devices onto a powerline network, the ability to stream continously gets degraded because every device contends for transmission time.
CA wireless dongle could be the answer , I have an old CXN v1 , which is the reason I ran ethernet cables. The local agent plus CA support could never get a stable wi fi signal, they even upgraded the dongle without success.
Bottom line is that Roon is very demanding of networks and often Wi-Fi doesn’t cut it . You may try it without the upsampling possibly , as the CXN will up-sample or down-sample to 384 no matter what you transfer in , its part of the design (read selling point) to always DAC process at 384
WRT to Tidal Connect , there is no reason that I know of that stops this working over ethernet. Are you using the Tidal app or the StreamMagic app ?
Maybe another CXN user eg. @SandsOfArrakis maybe could confirm this
