· Roon has been pausing playback everytime there is a switch between playback from a hirez (24bit) and standard format (16bit). Sometimes the pauses arebrief and other times playback ceases altogether. It also seems to depend on the day....someday no issues other days major issues. TThe resynch is set to 0ms and chaging that makes zero difference. Roon was playing issue free until about 6 or 8 months ago.
Tell us about your home network
· Router is a Netgear Nighthawk wifi 7, English Electric switch, 1.2 g internet. No wifi 3xtenders or additional additional ons
Thanks for sharing the details of the issue with us.
Based on your description, this does not immediately look like a general network bandwidth problem. What stands out more is that playback appears to be struggling specifically when the system switches between different audio formats, such as 16-bit and 24-bit content.
To help us narrow this down, could you please try the following:
Temporarily disable DSP / Sample Rate Conversion / DSD upsampling and let us know whether the pauses still occur.
If you prefer to keep DSP enabled, please try converting everything to one fixed PCM format instead of DSD512, and check whether playback becomes more stable.
Let us know whether this happens only on the PS Audio PMG Signature 512 zone, or if you notice the same behavior on other zones as well.
If the issue happens again, please share the exact date and time of the pause/dropout so we can review the diagnostics more precisely around that moment.
These tests should help us confirm whether the behavior is related to output re-sync / format handoff rather than the network itself.
Yes, it happens on all zones. I recently upgraded to the PMG512 from a Hifi Rose RS130…the same issue was happening. It all started 6/8 months ago. Before that all was fine.
It also depends on the day of the week…for example, last Thursday pauses/stops were intolerable…once it attepted changing bit rates it would just sit and spin…the courser/status line would just move left to right and not begin playback. The very next day it worked without issue. Sat down last night to have a session and it went back to not responding or taking over a minute to load a track with a different bit rate. If the songs were all the same bit rate (all 16 or all 24bit) there were no pauses or glitches. At that point I just switched to Qobuz Connect directly onto the PMG and spent the rest of the night streaming that way.
Also, it is taking much longer to load the Roon homepage at times (same days when the pause is happening).
Thanks again for the response and any help you can give me. If it looks like the nucleus is about to crap out just let me know and I will figure out my options.
It’s unclear if you’ve run through some of the additional steps @alex_h has listed above:
Can you test to see if either affects your issue?
This sounds like a classic case of a handshake or buffer bottleneck within the Roon ecosystem, especially since it only happens when the bit rate changes and impacts the Roon homepage speed.
Because the issue persists across different streamers (RS130 and PMG512) and all zones, we can rule out the end-point hardware. The “ghost in the machine” is either your Roon Server, your network configuration, or how Roon is talking to the Qobuz/Tidal servers.
Even with a Wi-Fi 7 router and high-end switches, Roon is notoriously sensitive to network “hops.”
Test: Bypass the English Electric switch temporarily. Plug your Roon Core directly into the Netgear Nighthawk router via Ethernet.
Audiophile switches are great for noise, but occasionally their firmware or IGMP snooping settings can cause packet delays during the heavy "handshake" that happens when Roon switches sample rates.
Let’s also see if Roon is struggling with the transition or the data volume.
Test: In Roon, go to Device Setup for the PMG512. Go to the Advanced tab and set "Max Sample Rate (PCM)" to 44.1kHz or 48kHz (Standard CD quality).
If the pausing stops, we know the issue is the bandwidth burst required to buffer a 24-bit file. If it still pauses when switching albums (even at 16-bit), the issue is the software handshake, not the file size.
And, since you mentioned it depends on the day/time, it could be your ISP's DNS struggling to resolve Qobuz’s addresses.
Try: Change the DNS settings in your Netgear router to Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8).
Thank you for your response. Yes, one of the first things I did was take the network switch out of the loop and go directly out of the Netgear router. Had no effect.
Am not sure if I was clear in last communication but it is not limited to Qobuz, same thing happens with Tidal. And yes it is only when switching from 24 bit to 16 bit or from 16 bit to 24 (which happens frequently in my eclectic playlists - or a CD recorded in different bitrates).
The frustrating part is that nothing has changed on my network in over 2 years. This just started out of the blue 6-8 months ago first with the RS 130 and now with the PMG512.
From the first time I turned it on. I just switched the PMG settings and I am about to grab a beer and do some listening.
My current thought is if it persists to simply cancel my Roon subscription and just continue through Qobuz connect.
Thank you very, very much for taking the time and giving me some suggestions. It is much appreciated.
Thanks for the assist…still having issues. I had a lengthy listening session this past Saturday..first 2 or 2.5 hours were good then after I switched from a mixed format playlist to a mixed format studio album Roon crapped out. The breaks between 16bit and 24 bit were between 45 seconds to over a minute. If I am playing a playlist that is all 24 bit it plays fine no matter what the sample rate is (44.1/96/192). The second it changes from 16 to 24 or 24 back down to 16 it just sits and spins. Thanks again for the assist…if I simply need to replace the nucleus just let me know. Again it is not just with the new PMG512 was doing the same thing with my RS130 for about 6 months.
Thanks for the reply - please bring your Nucleus back online and we’ll take another look.
To determine if this is a hardware processing issue or a network handshake issue, try forcing Roon to stop switching bit depths.
Go to Settings > Audio > [Your Device] > Device Setup > DSP Engine.
Enable Sample Rate Conversion.
Set the Output Identity to a fixed bit depth (e.g., force everything to 24-bit).
The Test: If the pauses disappear when Roon is doing the heavy lifting to keep the output consistent, then the issue is likely how your DAC/Network is "re-clocking" when it sees a raw change from 16-bit to 24-.
I lost power this morning so had to reboot the nucleus after I got home…has been back online for a couple of hours…will try your suggestion again, forgive me I am ho computer guru but am confused as to how its a network problem when it was working fine for over a year with no changes to anything on my network and then one day just decided to start pausing…again it is only in Roon…no issues when I played throug the HiFi Rose ap or when I use Qobuz Connect on the new PMG. Sorry if im sounding unintelligent.
Switched as instructed last night and it completely failed to begin playback. Sat and spun. Switched to original settings (16, 24, 32 all active) playback began and was pretty good for the hour I listened. Will do a more lengthy session over the weekend. I am at the point where I am probably going to order a nucleus one next week and see what happens…as long as I am able to return if the problem persists with the new nucleus.
Thanks for the update! We were able to analyze another fresh Roon Server diagnostic report and saw some interesting behavior.
Looking at the playback logs from a good session (3/29 early hours), track switches between 16/44, 24/48, and 24/96 all complete in under 1 second — loading flips to playing almost immediately. So Roon’s format-switching machinery is not inherently broken.
We do see a single Qobuz file (qo/E3F4D19D — a 66.3MB hi-res track) got stuck in a catastrophic retry loop starting around 3/29 at 1:27 AM. By 2:01 AM it had already made 9,258 failed requests for block 0 of that file, and the retries never stopped. Across the log files, this one stuck file triggered over 33,000 failed download attempts, all showing download speed: -256kbps and missing block 0. A companion file (qo/F3563D48) stacked another 17,500+ retries on top of that.
I believe you are experiencing a known issue with Qobuz in which our development team is actively working on a fix for. Here is the tracking thread around this issue, as it’s fairly widespread:
The file was still in the file cache as of the end of log coverage. Because Roon Server wasn’t restarted, this zombie cache entry kept burning CPU/network on every retry. A restart clears it, which explains why some days are fine. When you happen to start a session after a restart, the deck is clean.
If you restart Roon Server right before any listening session, do you hit the same issue?
I believe what you are seeing was immediately following me changing the hardware on my network. I upped my speed from 1.3g to 2g and tossed out the nighthawk router and replaced it with my ISP’s eeror 7 mesh system. This helped Roon considerably. However, there is no1 second playback on my end when switching bitrates. Yes, album art loads almost instantly but playback is 5 to 10 seconds not 1. This is much better than the 45 to 1min previously so we are heading in the right direction.
