I’ve recently been re-running RAAT DSD512 (upsampled) tests for our P1MINI, but the audio was stopped randomly, from the i5-6600 Windows 10 PC Roon Server I’ve been using for many years without any hardware change.
In case anyone is interested, here’s the steps I took to diagnose this problem.
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Changed the network cable and port. Made sure Roon is the latest version. Tried different tracks. Stopped Plex server (it’s running because we also support Plex).
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Since there was a “loading slowly” error, I suspected it was a Tidal / internet issue, and changed to play 44.1kHz FLAC on the Roon Server local hard drive.
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With local FLAC failing, I watched the performance indicator - it’s at 1.4x which was lower than I had 5 years ago on the exact same hardware. But this should still be sufficient. On closer look it would momentarily drop severely before going back up - this caused the playback stopping I experienced.
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Checked that Parallelize Sigma Delta Modulator was on. Made sure Roon was not analyzing the library. Rebooted Windows. Rechecked that analysis speed is set to throttled.
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Still failing, I looked at the Task Manager. Roon consumed somewhere from 30%-45% CPU time. No problem here. There does not seem to be other anomalies like drive taking up too much time.
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Other prominent tasks are Windows itself, and Windows Defender. Made sure firewall was disabled and Windows was set to private network. Went ahead to do registry hack to limit Defender scanning CPU utilization, and disabled real-time protection. Still not working.
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There is a Surfshark VPN taking 0% CPU time, since the VPN has been in a disconnected state throughout these tests. Without any other steps I could think of, I uninstalled the Surfshark software, which required another reboot. Then it seems to play without stopping!