@Geoff_Coupe: thanks for your feedback. The only real differences I see in our experiments are:
Windows 7 at my end vs. Win 10 in your system. But as @philr says I’ve missed the boat for that free Win 10 upgrade!
I have the HiFiBerry DAC+ on a RP3 as opposed to your RP2
@philr: are you suggesting running Roon Bridge on [1] the machine running Roon Core? That might improve the synchronisation between it and the RaspberryPi? Or perhaps you misunderstood my issue? The sync between the Windows machines [1] & [2](Core and Bridge) is good. It’s between the Windows machine running Core and the RaspberryPi running Bridge [1] & [3] which is problematic…
@Geoff_Coupe: regarding the skipping after prolonged playback, that is certainly not my issue. The sync issue I have is consistent: it’s there from the get-go. When I pause I hear the kitchen play on for maybe 1/4 sec before pausing. When I resume playback the delay is there again.
I’m on the road at present but once I’m back home tomorrow I will have another play…
I believe that you hit it on the nail and that it is a Windows 10 issue.
Roon is a network driven streaming program and is very good at it. However there are many stories out there about the amount of Network Traffic that Windows 10 adds to any network. As a matter of fact the more that there are Windows 10 PC’s on a network the more congested network activity there is.
Windows 10 is constantly phoning home to over 30 different servers for what that say is telemetry reasoning. Also Windows 10 Updates have been changed from the normal Direct from you to Windows Update Server to a Torrent Update Service. Bottom line, Windows 10 is network hog.
Er, except that Ed was having sync problems with Windows 7, and I’m not with Windows 10, so rather the opposite to what you seem to be suggesting.
I don’t doubt that Windows 10 is more chatty, but I don’t think this is an issue, particularly over a wired home network.
Where there does seem to be an issue is RAAT running over 802.11n WiFi. I’m consistently seeing skipping and dropouts here (with a RPI3, and with no other Windows 10 system using WiFi). Running RAAT over 802.11ac is much better, and wired endpoints carry on regardless…
I have an Intel NUC6i3SYH running Windows 10 Pro. More than enough for my Roon library (20,000 tracks) and running our Home Automation system (Domoticz).
By a “survey section” - do you mean what setups people are using for Roon? If so, then this is the thread to read.
To follow up, now that I’ve had a chance to play around a bit more I can confirm that I can reliably reproduce the issue: Win7 <-> Win7 players sync correctly but I have a lag between Win7 and RP3-HifiBerry+
Other possible experiments: I could:
try Win10 rather than Win7 on the Core machine. A bit of an expensive test.
try an RP2 with a USB wireless adapter rather than the RP3 with its built in wireless. Anyone in the UK able to lend me RP2 for a quick test?
try the IQAudIO Pi-DAC+ on my RP3 rather than the HifiBerry DAC+. Anyone in the UK got one spare I could borrow for a test?
I don’t normally run grouped zones, but for testing I ran a group of three:
Pi2/Digi+, wired
Pi3/IQ Audio DAC+, wireless
MacBook Pro w/Roon Bridge, wireless
It has been playing happily and fully synced for a few hours now.
That said, I do have excellent WiFi reception on non-congested channels, and both the Pi3 and the MacBook are within 5 meters and in line of sight of the access point (last-gen Airport Extreme).
Your lag has the smell of bad Wifi latency (could be the Pi, your network or both). Can you tell a bit more about your network (router/access point, Wifi speed, extenders in use)?
And could you – just for troubleshooting – temporarily run a wired network connection to your Pi and see if the lag is still there?
@RBM thanks for this, but actually I think my tests suggest the opposite – that it’s not network latency. I have two Roon Bridges set up next to each other in my sitting room:
Windows 7 over wifi
RP3 with HifiBerry DAC+ over wifi
The Windows 7 Bridge [1] works perfectly: the audio in the kitchen is reliably in sync with the audio in the sitting room. Whereas the RP3 Bridge [2] is reliably out of sync with the kitchen. It’s consistently about 1/4 of a second ahead of the Core machine in the kitchen, producing a nasty ‘echo’ effect.
So I think my original question stands: is this either:
a) a bug in HifiBerry’s implementation which it is reasonable or realistic to expect them to fix, or
b) is it a function of inevitable differences in hardware which it is only possible to overcome with a Roon work-around in the form of configurable timing adjustments to individual nodes in a zone or ‘group’?
@Ed_Davey, it appears as though (for both myself and @RBM) an RPi with a HiFiBerry Digi+ is in perfect sync with all other endpoints, but that an RPi with a HiFiBerry DAC+ is not. That seems to me to point to a strong possibility that it’s an issue with the HiFiBerry software…
Wiring it all up is just a quick little test to rule out any unpredictable nasties WiFi may cause. It never hurts.
As for a): have you tried installing Raspbian + Roon Bridge manually? (Little guide if necessary). This may (or may not) rule out any weirdness in the Hifiberry image (I2S DACs are not expected to have any latency).
And for b): I very much doubt whether the DAC+ should need a delay, but a future Roon release will have timing/delay setting for endpoints that cannot/will not convey this information to Roon core themselves.
