Can RoonBridge Crash a DAC?

Roon Software Discussion
1

It all started when I reactivated my Roon subscription about two months ago.

My Roon setup is described here, which hasn’t changed very much since then (DACs are the same).

I own three DACs: 1x M2Tech Young and 2x M2Tech Young DSD

Each DAC is connected via USB to its mini PC running the Roon Bridge.

I use the Qobuz streaming service with Roon.

What recently started to happen is the following.

Specific songs can crash both of my Young DSD DACs (but not the older Young DAC, which has never crashed so far when playing music).

One of these songs is “Black Shoes” by Felix Laband.

The DACs suddenly and somewhat randomly stop playing “Black Shoes” with an audible “glitch” in the headphones, and that’s it.

Rebooting the Roon Core running on a Linux mini PC does not help.

Restarting the Roon Bridge systemd service does not help.

Removing and reinserting the DAC’s USB cable does not help.

Rebooting the mini PC running the Roon Bridge does not help.

The only thing that works is power cycling the Young DSD DAC (hence, the DAC crashed).

There are no logs (or I could not find them) reporting the DAC crash (I’m currently running Linux on the three mini PCs where the Roon Bridge is installed).

Has anyone of you ever experienced anything similar?

I.e., a song that crashes your DAC?

Any help is very much appreciated.

EDIT #1:

There is no randomness (I was mistaken); the DAC constantly crashes at 2 minutes and 58 seconds into the song.

2

What’s the source of your problematic tracks? Is it local ripped from CD or is it streaming? If local, it might simply be a corrupt file. Roon is usually pretty forgiving with corrupt files. I’ve had a few glitchey files that Roon plays just fine. They don’t sound good but they still play. I’m not familiar with your DAC, but it seems more likely the Roon bridge is crashing. Maybe restarting the DAC re-initializes the bridge. It’s definitely an interesting problem.

3

My experience is the exact opposite.
Files that showed corrupt in Roon and didn’t play at all could be played with LMS without a glitch.

4

Thank you for your reply!

Now, I know a few more things:

  1. The DAC constantly crashes at 2 minutes and 58 seconds into the song

  2. The song format, as per the “Signal Path,” is “Qobuz FLAC 44.1kHz 16bit 2ch”

  3. I’m applying a sampling rate conversion (via MUSE) to 192kHz to avoid hearing an audible glitch every time the song format, between consecutive songs, changes (this is a minor issue I always had with Roon Bridge and all the M2Tech DACs I own)

  4. If I turn off the sampling rate conversion from the Signal Path, the song might get played entirely, but not always, if I remember correctly

  5. I’ve already encountered a few songs on Qobuz that are crashing the M2Tech DSD DAC, but I’ve only noted down one: “Black Shoes” by Felix Laband

  6. Rarely, the DAC also crashes when a new song begins

  7. When the DAC crashes, Roon Bridge does not complain; it keeps “playing” the song as if the DAC were still alive (the Linux kernel reports no USB disconnections, etc.)

  8. I have tested the same DAC with two very different systems and experienced the same crash: #1 MacMini 7.1 running ArchLinux and Roon Bridge, #2 Raspberry Pi 5 running Raspberry Pi OS Lite and Roon Bridge

  9. The two Young DSDs never crashed this way until mid-2024, when I stopped my Roon subscription for a few months (was I so lucky to never hit a “bad” song in 3+ years on Qobuz? I don’t know…)

5

I looked at the specs for your DAC and it’s a somewhat unusual design. It’s likely the only one to know what’s going on here is M2Tech.

1 Like
6

Have you tested playing the same song with the DAC connected directly to the Roon server via USB? That would help determine whether it is a Roon Bridge problem.

7

I am also talking to the founder of M2Tech.

I asked him to send me the original drivers for Windows 7 since I want to investigate this as much as possible.

EDIT #1:

The DSD also crashes in Windows 7 with the DSD’s original drivers and Roon Bridge.

8

I have now removed Roon from the equation.

In Windows 7, the DAC still crashes when using the original/manufacturer drivers for the DSD and foobar2000 after purchasing the audio track from Qobuz in the same file format reported at the top of this thread.

In other words, foobar2000 is now crashing the DACs.

In other words, my best guess is that the DACs have a firmware issue.

If anyone is interested in testing the DAC with that song, the link to the FLAC file is here.

1 Like
9

Is this your normal environment? Microsoft stopped supporting Win 7 many, many years ago.

On the other hand, the M2 Young is also a bit long in the tooth by now. I can see it being appreciated by some still, though ( not by me :slight_smile: ).

Interesting scenario, nevertheless. It must be down to something in the bit stream which the DAC interprets in a malign way (Or rather the USB reciever in the DAC).

10

No more. I mainly use ARM SBCs with the Linux OS for the Core, the Bridges, and the Desktop.

11

Are you aware that you can set a Resync Delay in Roon to avoid glitches in sample rate change?

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12

Yes, I do, but it does not eliminate the glitches with the M2Tech DACs I own. It’s probably another firmware issue. I’m now waiting for M2Tech to tell me why the DSD crashes so severely with that song. Hopefully, they’ll do it.

FINAL EDIT:

Well, they won’t.

The DSD was EOL about 7 years ago and has a firmware bug in the USB section of the DAC, which will not be fixed.

I don’t like it when companies leave behind their products. I really don’t.

Roon Bridge was not the problem here.

Thank you all.

1 Like
13

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