Using Roon 1.3 (build 234) on Mac as my client and audio endpoint.
Using the same version as my Core on Ubuntu Linux (no physical audio devices).
All works great via Airplay and Roon Bridge devices, never a hiccup.
When I’m streaming audio to my Macbook or Bluetooth headphones, Roon can be fairly unreliable, cutting out from time to time with a message like ‘the audio file was loading too slowly’.
Most of the time hitting play causes the music to play just fine. Sometimes though (1/10 perhaps) I get an absolutely ear splitting bit of digital static. It’s loud enough that I have to tear the headphones off my head and loud enough that everyone in the room turned to look for the location of the noise.
Unsure if it’s damaged my headphones, but it’s certainly the loudest sound I’ve ever played through them.
I’ve had this happen with the following end points:
Bose QuietComfort 35 (twice)
Sony MDR-1000X (several times)
Macbook Internal Speakers (once)
Any ideas?
I actually had the logs outputting and was able to reproduce the problem with the Bose headphones and Internal speaker.
Hi @Leon_Roy ---- Thank you for the report and sharing your feedback with us. Both are very appreciated!
Moving forward, to help me better evaluate this issue may I very kindly ask you to please provide me with the following:
Can you please provide the specs of the Macbook you are noticing this behavior with.
Please verify where you music collection is being stored/accessed from.
Please briefly describe your network configuration/topology as well as being sure to provide insight into any networking hardware you may be implementing. I want to have a clear understanding of what the chain of communication looks like between your devices and what tools are being used to make those connections possible.
1x Gigabit network link from FreeNAS box to a HP 2530 Switch.
Roon Core box is on an ESXi 6.0 Server:
OS: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS
CPU: Xeon E5540
RAM: 4GB
2x Gigabit network links from the ESXi box to the same HP 2530 Switch. Nothing fancy done to either link, they’re in your default ESXi config (load balances I believe).
Macbook networking
Macbook is connected to a Ubiquiti Unifi AC PRO wireless access point. Both are in the same room so the synced speed is high at 800-1100Mbps. A quick network test confirms plenty of bandwidth. Never have any drops between Macbook and Unifi (AFAIK).
Macbook is set to never sleep.
Also have it happen when I VPN to the home network from the office.
Hi @Leon_Roy ---- Thank you for the follow up and providing the requested information, both are appreciated. My apologies for the slow response.
Being as we are seeing two different issues, I’d like to address them both separately moving forward Please see below.
Sometimes though (1/10 perhaps) I get an absolutely ear splitting bit of digital static. It’s loud enough that I have to tear the headphones off my head and loud enough that everyone in the room turned to look for the location of the noise.
Can you please provide me with screen shots of the device settings being used when you are making use of the mentioned Bluetooth headphones. This information can be located by clicking the gear next to the desired zone in the “audio” tab and selecting “device setup”. Be sure to take screenshots of all three tabs in the “device setup” window: “General”, “Playback”, and “Zone Grouping”.
When I’m streaming audio to my Macbook or Bluetooth headphones, Roon can be fairly unreliable, cutting out from time to time with a message like ‘the audio file was loading too slowly’.
The mentioned error message (“the audio file was loading too slowly”) usually points to some sort of bottle neck occurring on the network, which is causing the content to not making it to it’s destination quick enough. With this in mind I would like to have you perform the following test(s) to see if we can trigger a change in behavior here.
Can you please try (temporarily of course) taking the “FreeNAS” out of the equation and testing with some content stored on the Roon core box (ESXi 6.0 Server). If possible, I would recommend moving some content to an external storage device (just a few albums), mounting the storage unit to the device hosting your core, and then setting up a temporary watch folder in Roon pointed at the content. Please confirm if you still receive the same error message in Roon.
If I am not mistaken the HP 2530 Switch is a managed switch and we have seen a few issues crop up with these devices in the past ( Example: #1, #2, #3). I would recommend enabling flow control on the switch, as we have seen it help other users in the past.
Can you please provide me with screen shots of the device settings being used when you are making use of the mentioned Bluetooth headphones. This information can be located by clicking the gear next to the desired zone in the “audio” tab and selecting “device setup”. Be sure to take screenshots of all three tabs in the “device setup” window: “General”, “Playback”, and “Zone Grouping”.
Please see below.
