I’m playing two endpoints in a single group. After about 20 songs, I’ve heard as much as a 1-2 second delay, Presently, there is about a half second delay. I’ve seen several threads on this issue, but nothing about if/when it’s going to be fixed.
I’m already frustrated with a decrease in quality on my high-end system. Now I can’t get endpoints to play without the odd “echo” effect. Does anyone know if/where the developers have mentioned if this can/will be fixed?
The source is a Windows 10 server that far exceeds the recommendations set by Roon and isn’t presently running anything else.
I read through the other threads you linked and found general requests for sync functionality (these requests predated our 1.2 release, which included that feature), and some issues with static delays and certain DACs.
The static delay issues are limited to situations where audio drivers were unable or unwilling to accurately report downstream output delays to Roon. The only way to work around these situations is to provide a setting that allows for a manual delay compensation. We have responded to those reports and committed to building that setting. It will be included alongside other DSP features in a future release.
Yours is the first report we’ve heard that describes devices drifting out of sync over time. This is new, unrelated to the others, and should be investigated separately.
@Vova, @Mike: lets figure out how to reproduce this. This is likely a matter of assembling a similar set of gear to what @Garrett_Williams is using and then playing a continuous stream for a while. Please keep me in the loop as you investigate.
Thank you for replying Brian. I’m LOOKING for a reason to buy Roon. I love the idea of it. I love the interface. If I could get to replace my Sonos OR be my default player for my high-end system, I’d be wiling. In a perfect world, it replaces both and I dance a jig. I really appreciate your response. Customer service is an important part of that equation too.
The delay seems to change each time a new song starts. Presently, it’s back up to about 1-1.5 seconds.
One endpoint is wired gigabit. The other is a stock Samsung Galaxy S5 (Android) cell phone, although it’s about 8’ from the router and gets a very good signal. Nothing else is running on the phone (it’s no longer connected to Verizon, its just a WiFi device now).
If I could get to replace my Sonos OR be my default player for my high-end system, I’d be wiling. In a perfect world, it replaces both and I dance a jig.
It’s supposed to replace both
Using an Android phone with zone linking is uncommon–I am guessing that there is an Android-specific bug, and people just aren’t running into it often enough for us to see reports. We should fix it regardless, but you might make progress in isolating the problem by pulling the Android phone out of the equation, even temporarily.
A lot of our users have been using Roon Bridge on inexpensive embedded computers like Raspberry Pi (often combined with a DAC, Amp or Bridge from HiFiBerry or IQaudIO) for secondary rooms.
Support for playing to Sonos devices directly is something we have planned. This would use Sonos’s zone synchronization mechanism, not ours.
I was using the Android phone since it was quick, easy, and free. I basically drop it in the baby’s room for music when he sleeps. But for long-term options, I’d not use a phone/tablet.
By way of troubleshooting, I did the same test on a windows desktop (wired ethernet) and had no variable lag. So, it seems it is an Android issue.
The one area Sonos excels is at integration of multiple services. Is there a plan and ETA to integrate other services?
What I’d really like is the Tidal or Deezer library and to use Roon’s “radio” feature to make use of them. That way, I could emulate what Pandora does but with Roon.
A related syncing point: it would be great if Roon had a mechanism that allowed a user to address the fact that different RAAT endpoints will have differing degrees of hardware delay, even though Roon is delivering its streams to each endpoint in perfect sync. For example, I have two RAAT endpoints; one is my Roon Core itself, which plays on my desk system through a Meridian Explorer 2 DAC, and the other is my main system, in which a Raspberry Pi/Digi+ is feeding a digital signal into a Linn Exakt system over Toslink. Linn’s Exakt processing adds a very noticeable delay to the audio coming out of this system, and at the moment, I don’t see a way to tell Roon to compensate for this when playing to both endpoints.
In my Squeezebox days, it was possible to address this issue by telling Squeezebox Server how much delay each endpoint imposed (which was necessary even before third-party Squeezebox endpoints exists because different external DACs resulted in different amounts of delay). A similar mechanism in Roon would make sense, since the echo resulting from imperfect sync is surprisingly distracting.
Not a huge issue, but perhaps one to put on the list to address at some point.
We want to reproduce your issue in-house, best way to do that is to simulate your setup and environment.
Would you mind to describe how everything was set on you end ? Feel free to use this FAQ as a guide.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Actually, I don’t think the driver could possibly know if the delay is caused by something later in the chain (like a DAC receiving SPDIF input), but agree that the only solution is the ability to manually input the delay applicable to a particular endpoint. Looking forward to seeing this in a future version.
Sonos integrates many services, yes, but they do it in a very simplistic way. Services are not fully integrated with or blended into your library. Each lives in its own ghetto, and you can browse them with a very basic list-based mechanism.
Our approach–seamlessly blending your content with content from services, and allowing for the same ownership-like experience for streaming and local content–is significantly more ambitious.
It is important to us to line up at least one other streaming service, so that we are not solely reliant on TIDAL. It will have to be lossless to make sense with such a quality-focused product–which limits the options. This is an area where we’re actively working, but not a fast process. The technical/data pre-requisites that are required to accomplish our style of integration are more than these companies are accustomed to providing, plus many of the most popular streaming companies (Spotify, Pandora notably) do not like to work with others on stuff like this at all.
We don’t share ETA’s until work on a project is substantially done and into alpha testing. Too many variables or opportunities to change plans or re-prioritize. It just leads to disappointment.
Don’t see it as a systemic Android problem, might be a galaxy S5 problem. After reading your posts I put a Note 3, a Note 4 and a Note 5 and a desktop in a group and played them for 6 hours straight with no syncing issues at all.
I run Roon core on a Windows 10 computer, and not much else (Plex, anti virus, etc). Media is ripped from CDs and stored as FLAC files. I use a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro, Windows desktop to control Roon playback. My endpoints are a Bryston BDP-2 and the above listed devices as well as the Samsung Galaxy S5. Everything is stock (no rooted phones, alternative boot loaders, etc.) Everything that can be connected via wired ethernet is. The wifi router is within 10 feet and 2 walls of everything in question, providing quite a good signal. The local network is 5GHz in 802.11AC with little other traffic and excellent signal strength.
Please let me know if you need other info. I’ll try to test this again with one of my other wired devices early next week in case the issue is localized to the S5.
An interesting experiment would be to try putting only the two or three samsung galaxy devices in a group, playing the audio out the devices speakers (ile not restreaming to a bluetooth speaker), and see if they stay in sync. Which is what I did,.
I’ve been experimenting with multi-room playback of ‘regular’ audio files: flac and mp3 format files (44.1 kHz / 16 bit) with mixed results.
Setup
In my home I’ve set up a ‘downstairs’ group as follows:
kitchen
Windows 7 running Roon core and playing via ‘system output’ thru a Behringer USB DAC into a stereo amp and speakers
sitting-room
Windows 7 running Roon remote and playing thru a Cambridge Audio USB DAC
RaspberryPi 3 with HifiBerry DAC+ running their 1.0.4 Roon image
[2] and [3] are connected to different inputs on a stereo amp.
Results
Positioned in the sitting-room with the door open, so that I can hear the kitchen audio too, when listening to:
[1] & [2] the two Windows systems are in perfect sync,
[1] & [3] the Windows and RaspberryPi are out of sync
I was initially delighted by the first result [1] & [2] which is something I’ve been unable to achieve with JRiver zones, but the promised land of [1] & [3] seems still out of reach: sending synched music to a dumb, cheap, dedicated endpoint.
Conclusions
I’m just a novice with Roon, but it would seem that:
the poor syncing between [1] and [3] is a function of device-specific implementation differences rather than network latency
the specific solution for getting my RaspberryPi in sync with Windows is either:
a) correcting any implementation error in the HifiBerry Roon image. If the HifiBerry DAC+ is
‘unable or unwilling to accurately report downstream output delays’
then is that a bug that the HifiBerry DAC+ Roon image maintainer can fix?
b) adjusting the timing of this particular node in the setup of the Roon ‘group’ – and I understand that this kind of timing adjustment is a planned feature.
I hope this is helpful as, for me at least, reliable multi-room playback is a critical feature.
@Ed_Davey, prompted by your experiments, I thought I’d do one of my own. For some reason, I’m not getting sync problems (at least so far).
Setup
See here. For the purposes of the experiment, I had the microRendu connected to the QUAD HiFi, and repurposed the RPi3+ IQaudIO Pi-DAC+ as a headphone driver. The RPi is using WLAN.
I grouped the following endpoints into a single zone:
Desktop PC running Windows 10 (ethernet connected)
microRendu + Dragonfly v 1.2 driving QUAD HiFi system
I have two pi3s and a Windows 10 PC all running Roonbridge and they sync ok. I have a few times found them getting out of sync but a reboot solved things.
Try Roon bridge on the Windows 7 machine if you are not already doing that. Seems like you are past the time for the free upgrade to Windows 10. I don’t have any firm evidence but I think this has been better since I took the plunge and upgraded from win7 to win10 recently. My core is on another machine like yours that has been running Windows 10 for a while so I did have two different versions of Windows for a while.
I would add that I am getting (after an hour or two) instances of tracks stopping playback, and Roon skipping to the next track. Playback remains in sync across all zones - it’s just that Roon is reporting “Too many dropouts” in the stream, thus it stops the currently playing stream and moves on to the next track, e.g.:
I really appreciate your response. Customer service is an important part of that equation too.