I know this is an old thread, but I want to add my experience incase it helps someone.
I’ve had a lot of frustration with Qobuz and Tidal stuttering, skipping, dropping out, etc for hires music streaming (when streamed via Roon through my Chromecast Audio). More specifically, anything above 48kHz I would get the issue. The frustrating part was when I streamed Qobuz or Tidal from their respective app I did not have the issue - it played smoothly with no skips. I tried all of the tricks in this thread and (and other threads) and still no improvement. Until yesterday…
Playing around with my settings I decided to turn off everything related to MQA (no real reason, just messing around). Not just setting Tidal to HiFi only, but more specifically in the Device Setup menu for the Chromecast Audio device. I set it to “No MQA support”, but also I set “Enable MQA core decoder” to “no”. I have NO IDEA why this worked, but for the last two days I’ve had no stutters with hires audio on Qobuz. Obviously Tidal can’t convert MQA to 88.2kHz or 96kHz without this decoding, but streaming Qobuz directly with 88.2kHz or 96kHz I get perfect play back.
This makes no sense, everything I’ve read indicates this MQA core decoding options has NOTHING to do with Qobuz. But for some reason, when I turn it off, I get flawless hires streaming.
My theory is the issue is pretty complex, and the root cause of the stuttering is user dependent (what is being used for the core, network setup, etc). But for me, this was the final piece that made it all work! YMMV
So… hope this helps someone who is frustrated with the same issue.
To further underscore that this issue is user dependent / setup dependent: I was running my CCA’s with UGREEN ethernet adapters, and after about a week of no skipping issues it came back! Not nearly as severe as before, but small stutters from time-to-time. After trying various changes, I found that running the CCA’s wireless cleared up the issue, no more stuttering. So I reset the network switch I was previously connecting my CCA to, and disconnected everything else connected to that switch. And once again I’m back to no skips/stutters with the ethernet connection. Something about my network setup causes the issue to come back over time (cheep network switch?). Probably time for a network hardware upgrade…
Anyway, once again, I hope my experience here is helpful for someone out there. I’ve successfully got hires audio streaming through my CCA(s) via Roon (via Qobuz & Tidal), and it sounds great! Really a nice solution, when it works.
Interesting! I always feel like wired ethernet is the best possible connection. I have a few CCAs, and it’s one of the wired ones that has the occasional dropouts. I will test!
Disconnected ethernet from CCA, and stuttering is gone.
Now I’ll try resetting switch and reconnecting ethernet.
But, frankly, this one is the only one of my CCA’s that’s stuttering. It’s a bedroom system with some powered speakers, and I really don’t NEED it to be wired. Not like it’s a super hi-fi situation in there. (Certainly don’t need hi-res!)
One more update on my journey to get the CCA + Roon to sound it’s best in my system.
I’m happy to report no skips since implementing the above changes! Long road to this point.
With things running smoothly I decided to try out the iFi SPDIF iPurifier 2 on the output of my CCA (yeah, the economics make no sense, but I thought it would be kinda fun too see if it makes a difference). In general it works great, and I do hear an improvement in imaging/soundstage.
but… BUT! (with CCA I sware there’s always a but) I had a bunch of issues getting 88.2kHz to play reliably through the iPurifier. It plays fine on all my DACs. But skips periodically on iPurifier, and only with 88.2kHz. After some experimentation it became clear the issue was with the optical conection on the CCA. Twisting and pulling the connector would temporarily fix the issue.
I tried more than a dozen toslink cables (fospower, pangea, audioquest, misc no name cables, and the list goes on). The only (ONLY) cable that worked reliably for me was this stupid $5 cable:
I built a simple Raspberry Pi endpoint running Ropieee. It cost < $100, trivial to build and setup, and even with just the USB output sounds much better than the CCA. Someday I’ll experiment with an audio HAT. But this is already a nice step up for not much cost or effort.
I was wondering how good USB audio out of RPi would be. I have an unused RPi since I now use my Synology to run extensions. Will have to try that to connect to my soundbar (right now I have old Airport Express connected to it via optical).
Depends on the generation of the RPi, I believe. RPi 4 has improved the USB design over earlier generations. I’m using an RPi 4 to drive the USB input on my Quad Artera Link, and to my (old) ears it sounds perfectly fine.
I’m using RPi 4 as well, and over USB they sound great. The concern with RPi 3 is that the ethernet and USB share a power bus, so there’s pollution of the USB line from ethernet traffic. I have no idea how severe / audible it is, but some people find it to be a problem. If I had an RPi 3 I would try WiFi instead of ethernet to avoid that issue. Apparently the RPi 3 is better for using with audio HATs as it is generally lower noise. again, I have no idea how true it is. But for me, running the RPi 4 with USB sounds very good, much better than the CCA did via optical. That said, there is noise susceptibility. I’m using iFi iPower 5V supply on one of my RPi4 and it is noticeably better than the one with the stock supply. Not a huge difference. But if you are listening closely you’ll notice.
YMMV. One thing I found is that the CCA optical input socket is sensitive to the position of the insertion depth of the Mini Toslink plug of the cable. Pulling the plug out just a little bit has cured the dropouts for me.
It seems the optical coupling of the CCA socket / cable plug combination is highly variable. This would also explain why some cables work better than others.
I 100% agree! I have 3 CCA’s, and each one is a little different. In general I can get 44.1kHz and 48kHz to run fine. With some minor fiddling I can get 96kHz to run consistently with no skips. But for some reason 88.2kHz is almost always a problem. Unless I get the cable aligned just right it skips multiple times per song.
This is one (of many) reason why I’ve enjoyed getting away from the CCA for my main listening! Just not as reliable as I want it to be. But I do keep it in my system for easy streaming when I’m not using Roon as the source to my Raspberry Pi.
i’ve been slowly migrating out the CCA’s for RPi’s also. The fact that RoPieeeXL can also play Spotify Connect and Airplay makes it easy for guests/kids to connect.
I’ll still keep a few CCA’s in the mix (like in my outdoor workshop and garage), but I certainly prefer the RPi + Pi2AES HAT for the best sound quality.
I can relate to all of this and more… CCA’s have never consistently worked well for me for 24-bit “hi-rez.”
I have Roon set to downsample mutliples of 44.1 to 44.1 and multiples of 48 to 48 when playing to a Google Cast endpoint. That’s always helped.
But even 24/44.1 and 24/48 playback can be unreliable and glitchy. What I’ve found is that:
Having the roon app running on multiple devices at one time (Android phone and Android tablet, for example) can increase the likelihood of dropouts and inconsistent play
Have a bunch of apps running in the background on my phone can affect playback.
Rebooting my phone can help.
You wouldn’t think that what’s going on locally on my phone or tablet should affect Google Cast… you can turn the phone or tablet off and the stream keeps going. So I can’t explain why, but having my phone ON and cluttered up with a bunch of apps running alongside Roon can really increase the liklihood of faulty playback/dropouts, and just closing background apps and rebooting can help…
