How do you connect the Sonos?
I have an Anthem receiver in my office and can probably verify that possibility. I’ll try to get it hooked up next week.
The Sonos devices are recognized as endpoints over the network by the ROCK software running on the NUC. My music is stored on a Synology NAS on the same network.
As far as I can read here the distortion issue is only related to HDMI interoperability.
I guess we won’t get too many options/settings offered by roon to somehow circumvent this HDMI issue. May it be manufacturer, NUC or roon related. Because that’s exactly the area roon doesn’t want to invest for too long, since it gonna be rather complicated to support such a broad range of devices, all behaving a little bit differently when it comes to audio over HDMI. I guess in roon’s eyes audio over HDMI is and will be rather a workaound, since you “should better” invest in a dedicated roon compatible device, period.
IMHO, there’s only one chance this HDMI distortion can and will be fixed by roon. And that is they actually would find a bug on their side which they can and want to fix with rather small effort. I.e. not fixing it for some devices and introducing the issue for other devices at the same time 
.
If the problem is more on the manufacturer side, I think we can forget about a fix. They may say “buy one of our roon compatible devices” in case they offer such.
I certainly understand opportunity cost, but I’m not sure it’s manufacturer issue in this case. I’m using Roon all over my house, patio, and garage, but my main 2 listening positions are both connected via HDMI -
- Home Theater - Roon engineered NUC model → HDMI → Denon x3700h
- Office - Roon app → Nvidia card → HDMI → Anthem MRX-540
In both cases, I have severe issues (inconveniences really, let’s be realistic 
). And in both cases, I have multiple use cases humming along with no problem.
- In my HT I can run airplay, xbox, roku, apple tv, apple airport express, ps4, all without any audio distortion. I can run the receiver as a Roon endpoint, but I could have done without the NUC device if that was the plan. And I’m not sure I can play MCH over Airplay, haven’t tried.
- In my office I can run Media Player, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, games, etc. all in parallel without any problems, but in order to play 2 channel audio with Roon, I have to disable surround sound to everything else temporarily to get it to work. As a result, I’ve taken to listening to iTunes because Roon is too much of a hassle.
So I get they can’t support every possible combination of hardware / software, but they do seem to be an outlier in compatibility… hopefully someone can shed some more light.
I’ll test out the Denon / Marantz theory next week.
Hhmm… so, you do have distortion even without using any DSD/dsf files? If so you definitely must have a more severe problem.
If not, how could you reproduce the problem with your other signal chains?
The only time I have distortion is when using HDMI through the NUC to the AVR. Every time I’ve caught it beginning to distort, it was in the middle of a 2 channel track. There are a couple examples where I took screenshots further up this thread.
Hhmm… just a guess… for ROCK you always have to copy the necessary ffmpeg library file. Do you use the very latest version of this library?
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Sorry if I should repeat the question…
You run ROCK and roon server incl. your library on the same NUC? Do you actually need ROCK in this case?
I run ROCK on my NUC8 without using the roon server or any music files and library on the NUC. My roon server runs on a separate NAS, including all music files and the roon library.
Ever disabled CPU turbo in the BIOS?
I have the same issue on Roon Rock (Roon core/server on Rock, libraries on usb hard drives) on a Nuc10 (hdmi to AVR) with mch above 24-96.
Hdmi connection to AVR: that means PCM conversion
Mch worked flawlessy for two years, until a couple of months ago (cannot say exactly when)
Distortion starts whenever a mch file is played, pcm or dsf (doesn’t really matter because it’s converted to pcm anyway) above 24-96
No distortion below, nor with 2ch of any bitrate-sampling-format
None, and I mean none, hardware/setting updates or modification, nor any Roon setting change or AVR settings change
The only stuff updating is Roon itself
That means hdmi issue, nuc or other can be safely ruled out, or it would have never worked to start with
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Found this similar topic here… Roon and BlueSound Node Distortion issue
and here … 5.1 Surround Sound FLAC files stuttering via NUC HDMI output running ROCK - #28 by Riccardo_Sibilia
In many/most(?) reports with similar symptoms a NUC10 seems to be part of the chain.
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And this also
But in the cases where it’s happening over hdmi, it started after a Roon update
You already did a roon database and settings reset via ROCK web interface?
Sorry, but why should I do it?
Database is not corrupted and loads properly, settings never changed
What this has to do with mch only playback distortion, for files stored amongst 3 different HD?
Good question, but always the same answer
roon is a complete blackbox to endusers like us. We don’t know how things are linked and may have influence on things you’d never expect.
In this case we know/are informed about a performed database/library update after several roon updates, for whatever reason. Resetting or rebuilding the library should be rather harmless.
I know fiddling with such a system because of an issue like this is rather annoying, but in case you absolutely don’t get the necessary/promising help you need you should look for more unlikely or not obvious solutions
So, I would just rebuild the library because it’s heavily unlikely that this will damage something. And in the worst case it just wouldn’t change anything.
Try whatever you can do if it’s not breaking the system. If you are uncertain, make a backup first.
BTW, your library is located on an SSD, right?
I downloaded and updated to the newest ffmpeg codec, good idea there!
I’m not sure what you mean about needing the server. I’m using local NUC storage instead of network for the files, but I still need to run Rock there (unless I’m missing something). I moved it to the NUC to have it online all the time and have it connected to the receiver via HDMI for MCH.
I was previously running it on my main pc, which is fine, but would rather offload those resources to a dedicated device.
In my case, all of my files are flac. I have had the problem occur with both stereo and multi-channel files. I’ll also check to make sure my ffmpeg file is the latest.
Ah, okay. So, ROCK + roon core/server + library + audio files on the NUC.
I use the NUC only with ROCK as a roon bridge for HDMI audio output. So, without roon server, library and audio files. Those are all on my NAS.
Looking for similar issues it gets somehow obvious that in the very most cases a NUC 10 is involved. So, there actually seems something with this machine roon doesn’t like. Though, NUC 10 seem to be officially supported. Your concrete NUC 10 model is on their list, right?
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