I have been using Roon through the Roon-enabled Dutch&Dutch 8c speakers for three years now, without any glitch at any point.
The companion iOS app - Ascend - contains a ‚network test‘ tool, I assume it checks the quality of the LAN communication between the two speakers.
The last time i was clicking on this tool, about a year ago, the results were always „good“ (3 bars on the scale of 4). By chance and without any real reason I clicked again today but now the results are consistently given as „bad“ (1 bar on the scale of 4).
What confuses me is that I have no problems listening to the music, i.e. Roon recognizes the speakers as always, there are no hiccups or stuttering, and I cannot perceive any quality degradation in the music playback.
The only explanation that I have for this change is that a couple of months ago I switched internet providers.
I now rebooted the router, unplugged and plugged back in the power supply of the LAN network switch to which the speakers are connected, and turned both speakers off and back on. The network test tool still says „bad“. The speakers are on the latest firmware (2.6.40).
Did any of Dutch 8c users experience „bad“ network test results and do you have any tips what to change? I assume the problem is with the network settings of the speakers, and not with the Roon itself.
And since I am not perceiving any problems with the music, should I just ignore the bad network test results? The only anxiety that I now have is that I do not really know if the sound quality or anything else would be better if the network results were better.
Just ignore it if there are no actual problems. Who knows what the tool does.
There is no quality degradation. Audio codecs are not like video codecs that dynamically adjust bitrate depending on the network speed/latency. With audio codecs, it either works at the chosen quality level or there are obvious dropouts.
I’ve only had my Dutch & Dutch 8c for a couple of months and they’ve been solid as a rock.
I also recently changed my broadband connection from cable to fibre with a new supplier.
I swapped out the modem/router and rebooted everything. Before this, my test results were always excellent.
Now, the speakers wouldn’t connect and my test results failed completely so I started cable swapping and found one of my short Ethernet cables had gone bad. With that replaced, all is back to normal.
Looking back, the new supplier and modem/router swap shouldn’t have made any difference as that only delivers my streaming service, Qobuz, to roon via Ethernet.
Maybe a cable swap might pinpoint the problem? Edit: I think the Ascend network test only measures the ability of the speakers to talk to each other and are capable of receiving an input signal and, as @Suedkiez says, if it’s not affecting performance then maybe it doesn’t need attention.
The ability of the speakers to talk to each other much faster than the sample frequency is essential for the speakers to keep at the same pace, that is playing each left and right sample at exactly the same moment.
Indeed, the network test that I refer to is to my understanding only testing the communication between the two speakers within the home network (to ensure they are in sync) and probably is not affected by the change of internet provider or internet speed (my ISP change a couple of months ago was from cable to glass fiber and the internet speed that was already fast in the past is now even higher).
I am using Roon only with the locally stored music and am not streaming Qobuz or Tidal.
Both speakers have been connected to the same network switch with the same Ethernet cables since day 1 of the installation three years ago so I assume changing the cables won‘t do anything.
I can see both speakers and their IP addresses in the router administration panel, and i can also reach each of the two speakers though http://8c-xxxx.local:10000/ (xxxx=their serial numbers).
Perhaps if would be helpful if @Martijn_Mensink from Dutch&Dutch could jump in with any thoughts about how to interpret the results of the Ascend network test, i.e, what do those 4 quality bars mean, and whether „bad“ results (1 bar only) is a cause of concern.
The network testing tool works by sending a series of ping messages from one 8c to the other, measuring drop-outs and round trip time. Based on these measurements, it provides a score indicating the quality of your network.
From:
If the tool works accurately, I would expect any home LAN to score perfect results with pings, so it may be worth investigating for general network health, but again, if you don’t experience any actual problems, making them perfect won’t cause any immediate improvement in SQ or functionality.
What kind of switch are you using? D&D advice is Netgear GS105, basically as simple as possible. Anything with VLAN or any other kind of sophistication could have a negative influence on the D&D connections. Maybe recent changes? Absolutely sure the cables are 100% OK? Maybe try other ports on the switch (or another switch)? Indeed, some help ftom D&D could be very useful (but I guess they are busy with the 15C…).