Click and pops when changing songs

Hi all, i’m trying Roon at the moment and I hear some click and pops when I skip song or fast scrolling in the actual track. This is happening on my PC, iPod and iPad.

I also have sometimes some clicking noise and pop while playing music on both my iPhone and iPad. On my PC I dont have this problem while playing music. Only when i skip a song.

I don’t use any DPS or Room management.

When I play FLAC from my NAS on the iPad I have lossless status at 16-44. But on the iPhone I get high quality status because in the process their is some upsampling to 24-48

What could cause these clicks and pop while palying music or changing songs or fast scrolling in a song ?

Thanks

It would be helpful if you listed the specification of your roon core and network.

Hi @SylvainP,

Are you playing to the speakers of each of these devices or are you playing to the same endpoint for all of them?

Hi, at the moment I use my PC as a Core.

My Pc has 4 cores (Clock at 4.5 Ghz)
16 GB memory
SSD drive (2)

Very easy to hear on this track

Artist: Jonh Stanford
Album: TimeScape
Track: The approaching light

I use TIdal version but I also have the FLAC from an original CD. Which I re-rip yesterday

When I listen to music from my PC to my PC speaker (Logitech Z906) I hear a clip and pop when I pause a song, restart a song, skip or fast forward in a music.

If I use the same song and using Foobar 2000 on the same PC I don’t get these click and pops.
I also tried Roon on my iPhone and iPad as endpoint (wireless) and using my Shure E535 earphone and I still have the same click and pop when using the pause and play. Do the same with Foobar 2000 and don’t have these click and pops

I also tried to connect my Ipad to my stereo system in the living room using a 3.5mm stereo plug to RCA directly into my Classé Audio preamp and amp. Same thing I can hear some clicks and pop while playing music. Doing the same setup with Foobar 2000 on the iPad and connecting the same way on my stereo system I don’t have these noise.

In Roon I don’t use any DSP, volume normalisation,

This is only for testing Roon at the moment because i’m in the process to buy a Streamer/Dac/Preamp
(NAD C658 or maybe the Auralic Altair G1) So i’m trying Roon and see if I like it and if it’s working flawlessly,

I also tried on my NAS upgrade with a Xeon CPU with 4 GB memory but with hard drive (No SSD). I get maximum 25% CPU load on the NAS.

But I tried my PC as a Core to see if their is any change in the click and pop during the song playback.
And the same result.

I can’t find what is causing these noise.

Also on TIDAL I hear a litle click when I press pause but I don’t have other noise after like in using ROON and the noise is not always at the same place so random.

After more testing with this song

Artist: Jonh Stanford
Album: TimeScape
Track: The approaching light

At 2:20 I can hear clipping. So I tried the headroom management with -3db and also the show clipping indicator active. What is strange the color doesn’t turn red so Roon don’t see clipping.

But the noise (clipping) is gone.

What is the difference between Headroom Management and the Volume leveling ?

When I get my streamer DAC will I have those clipping ? At the moment all my FLAC files store on my NAS as no replain gain embeded into the FLAC Files.

The differences can be read about here:

https://kb.roonlabs.com/DSP_Engine:_Headroom_Management

https://kb.roonlabs.com/Volume_Leveling

1 Like

Hi @SylvainP,

Just to confirm here, when you tried using your NAS as the Core, the clipping was still audible on all your endpoints?

Does the clipping only happen on this track? Or have you observed other tracks with this behavior?

Can you please share a screenshot of your Signal Path when this issue occurs?

[quote="noris, post:8, topic:79922, full:true"]

Hi @SylvainP,

Just to confirm here, when you tried using your NAS as the Core, the clipping was still audible on all your endpoints?

Yes, on the iPad using headphones, iPhone using headphones, and also using the iPad on my stereo as an endpoint for now until I buy my DAC/Streamer.

Does the clipping only happen on this track? Or have you observed other tracks with this behavior?

No, I have some issue on other tracks. Look like it random. My cable are good and make no noise when I shake it. It sound like a static noise with distorsion when I get the problem.

Can you please share a screenshot of your Signal Path when this issue occurs?
[/quote]

Today I remove the DSP Room management and at 2:20 on the same song I didn’t have the big distorsion noise. But I can hear a bit of very low noise on the piano. But again it seem to be random.

Even with using my PC as core and have some tracks with the noise and again seem to be random. Never had these glitch using Foobar 2000.

I use the NAS right now as the core and On DSD64 I still get 11x on the speed for processing and the CPU load on the NAS is from 10% to 22%

Playing HI-RES FLAC 24 - 96 I get around 50x speed on the signal path using the NAS as a core which I think it’s fast enough at the moment.

Forgot to mention that i’m using a netgear Nighthawk R7000 router for wireless connection and in the living room I have a Netgear 8 port (1 gigabit) smart switch (For TV, Xbox and soon the Streamer/DAC) but at the moment it’s wireless (5Ghz band). I live in a condo so all at the same floor.

Here also the screenshot of the path.

Hi @SylvainP,

Thanks for sharing that screenshot and additional information. Can you let me know if the behavior is the same if you reinstall Roon on your Windows PC and use it as the Core? You can set aside the old install by using these instructions:

  • Make a Backup of your current Roon Database
  • Exit out of Roon
  • Navigate to your Roon’s Database Location
  • Find the folder that says “Roon”
  • Rename the “Roon” folder to “Roon_old”
  • Restart/Reinstall the Roon App to generate a new Roon folder

If the behavior is the same afterwards, could you possibly record a short video of the pop/click you hear and upload it to Dropbox / Google Drive / Send.firefox.com?

I already fully uninstall Roon from the PC and all the database. Clean the registry, the Appdata folder under username, Reboot, rescan PC for any Roon related files. REboot again and reinstall Roon and same issue.

I think by using Roon we need to use the Headroom Management because otherwise we get clipping and distorsion on some tracks. These problem are less frequent by using in my case Foobar 2000.
But on the song fron Nigel Stanford I also hear the distorsion at 2:20

I also tried the same song using the Tidal app for Windows and not distorsion, clicks or pop on the same song. Maybe Tidal is using sound leveling or a DSP.

I think that song is bad recording and maybe semeone could try it in Roon with Tidal and see if they have the big distorsion at 2:20 and specially when the piano is playing.

Artist: Nigel Stanford
Album: Timescape
Track 3

Hi @Sylvian_Pineault,

I have followed up with you via private message. Thanks!

Hi @SylvainP,

I tried this song on my end and I do notice a “heavy” piano, causing some distortion around 2:20. I also tried the TIDAL version and it sounded very similar on my end.

I would suggest that you enable Volume Leveling for your zones as this may help a bit, but from what I can tell the distortions are from the recording itself.

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