I'm having trouble playing music
I'm hearing dropouts
I keep having playback issues related to dropouts (as reported in the logs). While I would love to blame my ISP (Xfinity), now that it's happened with both Qobuz and Tidal, I'm beginning to think it's something else. Help!
This is with a Nucleus directly connected to the local router. What other technical information do you need?
Hey @Sean_Birdsell,
Sorry for the delay in getting to your thread! I wanted to check in and see if you were still having dropout issues?
Can you reproduce the issue when only streaming playback from the system output of one of your remote devices?
If so, please take note of the date, time and track playing, and we’ll take a closer look. 
No worries. Here’s one that only involves a single device:
03/16 20:51:11 Warn: [J2 - Living Room] [zoneplayer/raat] Too many dropouts (>3s dropped out in the last 30s). Killing stream
Nothing more recent as I’ve been gone. Looking through all the logs, I see 36 “stopping stream” messages, of which 16 are when streaming to multiple devices that have been grouped together.
How is your endpoint connected to the network ?
Which one? I have several; they’re a mix of wired and wireless. The “J2 - Living Room” end point is connected directly to the Nucleus via USB (and the Nucleus is wired into the router).
do you get the same dropouts on all connections ?, I am thinking wireless interference possibly
More information for you. At around 23:00 UTC I started trying to listen to Elbow’s new album via Tidal on the J2 - Living Room device (so, everything is directly connected–no wireless involved other than Roon Remote on my laptop to the Nucleus). Immediately start getting timeouts. I switch to playback from Qobuz, same issue. I check my internet speed from a wired device: multiple tests show ~900 Mbps. Problem persists. Finally, I reboot the Roon Server Software via the web interface. I do this twice in a row, waiting about 60 seconds between the first and second. It is now playing back from Qobuz without issue. The uptime for Roon Server Software was 6 days 22 hours when I rebooted.
I should also add, this is never an issue with the native applications, just Roon.
Hi @Sean_Birdsell,
Thanks for the additional information! A follow-up test for you: does the issue happen if you disable any DSP?
Does the same issue occur if you change the clock master priority to something other than the Combo384 Amanero?
I’ll absolutely try turning off DSP the next time it starts happening. Given what I’ve seen up to now, I suspect it will be another day or two before there are problems again. Why would DSP affect dropouts and why would rebooting “fix” it?
On the clock master…sure, I can test that too, but my understanding is that is about timing for group playback, no? Last night’s issue was with a single wired device. Also, how much should I adjust when I try that? Set it to 5?
I don’t have a complete answer for you yet, but signs are pointing to issues with DSP. I’ll spare you the long version (unless you need/want it) but I adjusted my DSP settings when I started getting dropouts and it’s looking like it cleared up the problem. Specifically, I turned off Sample Rate Conversion.
Prior to the change, my DSP chain included Headroom Management, Sample Rate Conversion, Convolution, and Speaker setup. I’ve maintained everything except for the Sample Rate Conversion.
If you read this and think “yes! of course!” (b/c of the combination of SRC and Convolution) could you please explain the issue?
What did the performance indicator at the top of the signal path say, while using the DSP settings that were associated with the dropouts?
Hmm, OK. The 4.4x processing speed multiplier is still OK, but might it have dropped lower, e.g. when playing higher than 44.1/16 resolution source material? If it dropped to 1x or below, you’d get dropouts
@benjamin Anything else jump out at you from my additional information? I turned DSP back on without issue, so I don’t think that’s at the root of the problem.
Hey @Sean_Birdsell,
Unfortunately, we’re still seeing network bandwidth-related issues related to your dropouts:
Trace: [NAD CS1 () @ 192.168.1.116:44765] [raatclient] GOT [2462] {"samples":22040,"status":"Dropout"}
Trace: [NAD CS1 () @ 192.168.1.116:44765] [raatclient] GOT [2462] {"samples":22040,"status":"Dropout"}
Trace: [NAD CS1 () @ 192.168.1.116:44765] [raatclient] GOT [2462] {"samples":22040,"status":"Dropout"}
Warn: [NAD CS1 - Bedroom] [zoneplayer/raat] Too many dropouts (>3s dropped out in the last 30s). Killing stream
Trace: [NAD CS1 - Bedroom] [zoneplayer/raat] too many dropouts. stopping stream
Warn: [zone NAD CS1 - Bedroom] Track Stopped Due to Slow Media
Info: [audio/env] [zoneplayer] All streams were disposed
How is your NAD connected to your server/router? I’d look at any options you may have to temporarily simplify your network setup and test for any dropouts. Add each component back into your network setup until you experience another drop out.
The NAD CS1 is networked over WiFi…I’m not too concerned about dropouts there (I understand the limitations of WiFi). The one that has concerned me is the J2 - Living Room end point as that is directly connected to the Nucleus via USB. Looking at the log files, it would appear that the J2 - Living Room hasn’t had a network bandwidth related issue since 28 March. What changed? As far as I’m concerned, nothing.
Hi @Sean_Birdsell,
Heres a snippet from a recent unnatural stoppage:
Warn: [tidal/http] GET https://api.tidal.com/v1/tracks/1402277/playbackinfopostpaywall?countryCode=US&audioquality=LOSSLESS&assetpresentation=FULL&playbackmode=STREAM => Unauthorized {"status":401,"subStatus":4006,"userMessage":"Session does not have streaming privileges"}
Trace: [dbperf] flush 0 bytes, 0 ops in 7 ms (cumulative 534579824 bytes, 406414 ops in 282071 ms)
Trace: [dbperf] flush 0 bytes, 0 ops in 10 ms (cumulative 534579824 bytes, 406414 ops in 282081 ms)
Warn: [tidal/media] could not get playback info for 168:0:1402277: Result[Status=Unauthorized]
Info: [zone J2 - Office + J2 - Living Room] OnPlayFeedback StopUnnaturalpedEndOfMedia
Are you still having this issue on the latest Roon build? If so, it appears to be format based - I’d look at streaming issue tracks in other file formats and seeing how things go.
@benjamin: It has gotten infrequent enough that I’m going to suggest you close the ticket. If it ends up being a problem in the future, I’ll try and get a more complete understanding before I reach out. Thank you for all your help.
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