Clicks and pops when listening. Very annoying!

When you connect the DAC directly to the Nucleus with USB, do you still get the pops and clicks?

It is @Ben_Hahaj not me …

Ah, sorry!

Changing the buffer size made it inoperable.

Still a valid question.

No pops and clicks connected directly to dac

Then it’s an issue between the Pi and the DAC. This is a Pi 4 using Ethernet instead of WiFi, right? I suspect the firmware in the DAC, as RoPieee works pretty well with lots of other DACs. The programming of the XMOS chip in that DAC has been a culprit in a number of other similar problems having to do with changes in sample rate. Have you contacted the manufacturer to see if you have the latest firmware update?

You say that if you turn on DSP, things work fine. What DSP is it that you turn on?

Did you make DSP speaker setup adjustment?

Adding positive gain may cause it.

I’m going to say it’s a bad cable. Try a spare cable?

Dac manufacturer is telling me to use cat6 or cat8 ethernet and don’t use wi-fi. He also said to use a regular stock USB cable. Firmware is up to date.

1 Like

All the different settings? It shouldn’t make it inoperable.

Try switching usb ports on the pi switching between the usb 3 and usb 2 ports to see if it makes a difference.

If you use the same ethernet cable on you laptop and connect it to the DAC using the same USB cable do you get the same issue? Will help rule out if these cables are suspect.

You could try submitting a bug report to the Ropieee developer to see if it shows anything obvious. You do this from the web UI for Ropieee in the Advanced section , send feedback copy the I’d and post it here flagging @spockfish to your issue.

When I connect the same ethernet cable from the router to the Dell pc or the Nucleus it works fine. It’s only when I use the Pi that I get the clicks and pops. If I enable sample rate conversion the ticks and pops go away but then the Pi and the dac lock up after a few minutes and have to be rebooted. The dac never locks up when connected via usb to the Dell or Nucleus.

Sure sounds like something is screwy with the Pi, then.

Could be a cable, though.

Why are you so set on using Ethernet thru an RPi?

Is it because you are following Roon’s recommendation about separating Core from endpoint or is it because the location between your Core and audio system is too far to use USB?

I bought the Nucleus thinking it would sound better than my Dell pc. It didn’t. Everyone here said the Nucleus was not intended to connect directly to a dac. They said to get a Pi and use it as a bridge. So here I am chasing demons.

1 Like

The Nucleus is a music server (mostly). It should not “sound” better. It is supposed to do a great job of delivering the digital files to your endpoints, which Roon recommends be separated from your server. In a perfect world, your Server (Nucleus, ROCK, windows, MAc, etc.) is connected to ethernet. Separately, your Roon endpoints are connected to ethernet, and your Roon endpoints are then connected to DACs, etc.

If all of these servers, streamers and such are not supposed to sound different why are there so many different ones? So nothing digital in audio should make a difference except maybe a dac because it does analog. Servers, streamers, cables, etc. should all sound the same but have different functionality maybe?

I would generally agree with these statements (assuming components are functioning properly to deliver the bits to the DAC input), but there are dozens of threads on this forum alone where people argue over this for 100s of posts. If you have a few spare years, you can read all this and maybe be more confused. But more specifically, Roon itself has never claimed that the Nucleus “sounds” better. Only that it is a turnkey “appliance” for serving as a digital music server that requires little or no intervention from the user.

Strange,
If you search the web for Roon Nucleus, roonlabs.com displays “Nucleus-The Roon Music Server Built for Sound Quality” They must think the Nucleus sounds better!

I’m talking about what their engineers say, not what the marketing department says. But the Nucleus is a very solid piece of equipment (I’m told) and does exactly what it supposed to do…deliver bits to the roon endpoints.

(Personally, I use a NUC running Roon ROCK, and it works perfectly. My roon endpoint is an rPi4B running Ropieee, feeding a DAC. I may eventually get a Roon Ready DAC, but don’t feel the need currently as my setup sounds great and does everything it is supposed to do.)

1 Like