dCS Network Bridge and DSD playback delay with build 274 [Resolved B276]

Since updating Roon to v1.3 build 274 yesterday, I am experiencing a 6-7 seconds delay with every DSD file on my dCS Network Bridge. So DSD playback in Roon behaves as if there is a resync delay enabled, even when I set the resync delay to 0ms in the device setup. This issue has been confirmed by other Network Bridge users too.

What might be the issue here and how to solve it? It’s very annoying… Restarting all components in the chain did not help.

We are investigating this. Hang tight.

I have the delay on the dCS Upsampler…except it starts then stops then starts again with no audio

The only work around I have found is to set delay to 7000ms which is an eternity…269 was perfect

BTW in 269 I had delay set to 50ms

We’ve been working on this all day…wanted to share an update.

The change in behavior happened in context of some tuning changes made to RAAT to help the stability/performance of some WiFi speakers. These were relatively minor tuning changes, and the parameters that we changed are within a range that Roon Ready products are expected to tolerate.

The fact that this type of change caused a problem at all suggests an underlying issue in the dCS firmware. I believe that they are working on stability improvements in this area, and we will follow up with them about this soon in case there is any way in which we can assist.

Anyways–this week, we received a few reports of trouble with the Network Bridge and one reporting similar symptoms with the Vivaldi Upsampler.

Over the past 36hrs we’ve performed extensive tests on both products and both Roon builds. We also engaged the assistance of a knowledgeable dCS dealer, who duplicated our tests to produce an extra data point.

Those tests found that B269->274 did not modulate the behavior of the Vivaldi Upsampler or Rossini, but did cause a new bad behavior on the Network Bridge.

I’m fairly certain that the problems @G997 is having have the same root cause as the problems that Network Bridge users have reported, despite our inability to make them repeatable on two separate dCS Vivaldi installations. This discrepancy leads me to conclude that there is something setup dependent or environmental happening in addition to the changes in Roon.

Since we could reproduce the issue on the Network Bridge, we were able to figure out which change caused it. For the sake of continuity, will revert the new tuning changes for dCS products only in order to make time for dCS to investigate and address the underlying firmware issue that causes them to be incompatible with the new tuning.

This temporary fix will go into alpha testing tonight. If all looks good, we will try to release it to stable as soon as possible afterwards.

If I understand correctly, you will issue an update addressed only at dCS endpoint devices until dCS sort out their own firmware. Do you have an exact timeframe for this?

Roon Core Build 274 has regressed playback with the dCS Network Bridge.

All of my other Roon end points are fine, but the dCS NBR is a mess.

Specifically:

  • Start playback
  • The track comes up, and is stuck at playback second 0.
  • It is stuck there for 5-10 seconds and then playback starts

This happens 100% of the time if up-sampling is on or if you are using hi-rez content

44.1 content seems to start playback normally.

Stability also is degraded.

I never re-boot my NBR. Now after a few hours of use, Roon can no longer find the NBR

The dCS App can find the NBR no problem

The only fix to make Roon find the NBR is to re-boot the Bridge.

I’ve gone back to the dCS App until Roon gets its stability back with RAAT to dCS :frowning:

I just upgraded to Build 276, that just came out.

Its a little better, but still slow.

Now with up-sampling on

  • when you start a track, it gets stuck for 2-3 seconds instead of 5-10

Hey @Mohammed_Samji – take a look at Brian’s post above.

We’ve backed out of the only change in 274, so for now we are going to have to wait on more news about some of the underlying issues Brian mentioned above.

Thanks. I’d be happy to test any future update if you want to see if there is a repro again.

I am using the Network Bridge + Vivaldi DAC + Vivaldi Master clock config

Any idea why with 274, it kept on loosing connectivity to my NBR? I’ll keep an eye to see if it happens again on Build 276,

thx

Yes. The device was unexpectedly sensitive to some minor performance tuning changes that we made on the Roon side. No non-dCS products were affected.

As a near-term fix, we made a special case in Roon to keep the old tuning in place for dCS products until this is sorted out. So the behavior of Roon with dCS products is now exactly the same as with Build 269 and previous builds.

We sent over a detailed post-mortem of the issue to dCS today to make sure everyone is on the same page and they have what is needed to move forward on this.

Thanks for reverting this so quickly. Much appreciated.

-Mohammed

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Great job, Roon! Everything is back to normal with my Network Bridge, DSD works now without delays!

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Well there still are delays with the Upsampler but they are much less with 276 and appear to be similar to 269

And yes thanks to the entire Roon team to deal with this!!

Since I rolled to 276, things are back to super stable. Been playing my dCS Network Bridge almost continuously and its been a champ.

The delay (when playback starts) still feels longer then it has been, but is much better and easily tolerated for now.

Happy Thanksgiving to our US friends. Enjoy some great music today.

3 posts were split to a new topic: Playback issues with the dCS Upsampler (Build 298)

A post was merged into an existing topic: Playback issues with the dCS Upsampler (Build 298)