Intermittent pops and crackles on Nucleus One during playback (ref#N0IYTO)

Chris_Leeper · April 18, 2026, 3:12am

Select your Nucleus model from the list below

· Nucleus One

I'm having trouble with my Nucleus hardware

· Other

Select the option that fits best

· The Nucleus boots up and I can connect to it in the Roon app without issue, but I have a question about configuration/storage/attached devices

Describe the issue

I replaced my 2012 Mac mini with a Nucleus One and I'm now getting brief, faint, intermittent pops and crackles during audio playback. They are intermittent and do not occur at the same place/time on a song. My previous setup with the Mac mini did not have this problem.

My setup is: Modem --> Eero Pro Router --> Netgear GS108E Switch. Out of the GS108E switch I have my Nucleus One and another Eero Pro router on the other end of the house hardwired. My Roon ready source is a pair of KEF LS50 wireless II speakers.

Looking for help on eliminating these pops and crackle.

Chris_Leeper · April 19, 2026, 1:27am

I’m running roon server software version 2.64 and KEF firmware 4.0.

I think this is related to two additional support threads: ref#940T7E and ref#RQBMH1

I can also confirm that playing MQA from tidal results in a warbly sound like its coming from underwater. If I disable all MQA capabilites in my device settings within roon it fixes it and the nucleus one does the unfolds.

magagne · April 19, 2026, 12:55pm

This issu was introduce since the Kef firmware 4.0, only happen through Roon Ready. Full wiring things or not, same thing. Wireless has nothing to do with this then. Streaming through Qobuz connect with the Qobuz app, do not do that too. So it’s clearly the roon ready protocol hand shaking with LS50. Will see if the update of roon on the 20 April 2026 will fix things.

Update:

By adding a crossfade of 1 sec, that resolve the crackling/pop’s meantime the real fix…

Chris_Leeper · April 20, 2026, 7:45am

You are right, this is a work around until they fix it properly. When I set crossfade time to 1 second the ticks/pops go away.

vadim · April 20, 2026, 4:11pm

Hello @Chris_Leeper,

Welcome back to the community! I am sorry to hear that your transition to the Nucleus One has been accompanied by these frustrating audio artifacts with your KEF speakers.

A huge thank you to @magagne for jumping in with that excellent observation, as they are absolutely correct.

Because the timing of your Nucleus One installation likely coincided with this recent KEF firmware update, it certainly seemed like the new Core was the culprit. However, this issue appears to be strictly tied to how the new KEF firmware handles the Roon Ready (RAAT) stream.

Because this issue was directly introduced by the recent KEF firmware update and affects how their hardware handles the incoming Roon Ready (RAAT) stream, we highly recommend reporting this behavior directly to KEF support. They manage the internal firmware for their devices and will need this customer feedback to implement a permanent fix.

Crossfade: As @magagne suggested, enabling a 1-second crossfade in your Zone Settings can help mitigate the intermittent pops and crackles during track transitions.

Please keep these workarounds in place for now, and let us know if KEF provides any helpful updates!

magagne · April 20, 2026, 9:04pm

With all my respect, that’s not part of Kef certification and Roon too, to garantie that the Roon Ready certification still fill all the requirement ? Else, that mean, anytime a firmware is touch of third party, the certification is potentially broken. What was in place to re-do regression certification test in that case ?

magagne · April 21, 2026, 9:13pm

I open a ticket to Kef to look at that. Very sad that we have to deal with both company to fix a streaming protocol that is suppose to be certified though.

Chris_Leeper · April 22, 2026, 12:58am

The pops and ticks were not between tracks. They were happening as the song was playing. That said, adding 1 second of cross fade does seem to address the issue during playback.

magagne · April 22, 2026, 12:23pm

The firmware update from KEF, 4.1 on the 21 April do not fix the issu yet of pop’s and crackling, and that was not in the note of kef that this 4.1 fix the issue, maybe in a subsequent update. Meantime, set your crossfade to 1sec.

Suedkiez · April 23, 2026, 6:22pm

I believe they certify the hardware device and Roon Ready implementation. The manufacturer can and should test their subsequent updates.

According to the docs, they do have every Roon Ready device in the lab for analysis if issues surface, but surely this is on demand if necessary. Surely they can’t re-test and re-certify every firmware update of every manufacturer. Can you imagine the workload?

magagne · April 23, 2026, 9:14pm

And why not ? That kind of stuff should go through « Automated regression test » process.

Suedkiez · April 23, 2026, 9:17pm

Every time someone from tens of manufacturers releases a firmware update? For code Roon doesn’t have? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the manufacturer’s job.

magagne · April 23, 2026, 9:27pm

Off board.

noris · April 27, 2026, 7:34pm

Hello @Chris_Leeper ,

We have forwarded your report to our hardware team, but we suggest that you reach out directly to KEF if you haven’t yet, so that they are aware of this issue. We will assist as much as we can to help speed things up from our end as well.

connor · April 30, 2026, 5:43pm

Hi @Chris_Leeper, @magagne,

At your convenience, please share the following here:

A screenshot of your Signal Path in Roon for the configuration with which you encounter these audible artifacts
The name of a track that was playing that exhibited the artifacts (it can be any track; we just want to pinpoint the event in logs).

Thank you!

magagne · April 30, 2026, 9:36pm

Low base noise floor album to really hear the crackling/pop’s

Artist: Oceanic Piano

Album: Elegance Inside

Track: pure intro

Signal path: no DSP in Roon, no zone, and default KEF setting.

For the log, base on procedure, I should get a link to upload my log from a support Roon agent.

“A support agent or moderator will reply and provide a personalized upload link”

meantime, this is not suspicious?

4/30 17:42:47 Trace: [KEF LS50 Wireless II] [Enhanced, 16/44 QOBUZ FLAC => 16/44] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:24/0:53] Pure Intro - Oceanic Piano
04/30 17:42:52 Trace: [KEF LS50 Wireless II] [zoneplayer/raat] sync KEF LS50 Wireless II: realtime=2843882780436 rtt=5809us offset=2807849597us delta=-326us drift=3700us in 30.61396205s (120.883ppm, 435.178ms/hr)
04/30 17:42:52 Trace: [KEF LS50 Wireless II] [Enhanced, 16/44 QOBUZ FLAC => 16/44] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:30/0:53] Pure Intro - Oceanic Piano
04/30 17:42:53 Debug: [easyhttp] [1425] POST to https://api.roonlabs.net/porttest/1/port/check returned after 9148 ms, status code: 504
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Testing IPv4 Connectivity...Port Check Requested: 504
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Testing IPv4 Connectivity...Port Check Error: error code: 504
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Testing IPv4 Connectivity...Result: NetworkError
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Connectivity task finished. Task: VerifyConnectivityIPv4
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] All Connectivity tasks completed! Tasks Pending 0
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Processing results...
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Gathering diagnostics data...
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] New Status: NetworkError
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Status Changed: NotReady
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Announcing...
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [servicemanager] cloning service com.roonlabs.roon.broker.tcp with localEndpoints=tcp://192.168.2.55:9331
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [servicemanager] cloning service com.roonlabs.roon.broker.tcpv2 with localEndpoints=tcp://192.168.2.55:9332
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [servicemanager] cloning service com.roonlabs.roon.broker.http with localEndpoints=tcp://192.168.2.55:9330
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [servicemanager] cloning service com.roonlabs.roon.api.tcp with localEndpoints=tcp://192.168.2.55:9150
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [servicemanager] cloning service com.roonlabs.roon.api.http with localEndpoints=http://192.168.2.55:9330/api
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] OnChanged Event
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Status Change Done!
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Exiting Verification Task: {"ipv4_connectivity":{"status":"NetworkError","status_code":504,"error":"error code: 504"},"external_ip":{"actual_external_ip":"70.aaa.bbb.ccc","actual_external_ipv6":"null","router_external_ip":"70.aaa.bbb.ccc"},"natpmp_autoconfig":{"status":"NotFound"},"upnp_autoconfig":{"status":"NotFound"},"multinat_autoconfig":{"status":"Success","error":"No Error","routers":1,"routers_mapped":1}}
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Verification Task Completed!
04/30 17:42:53 Trace: [mobile] [remoteconnectivity] Got Verification Task Result: {"ipv4_connectivity":{"status":"NetworkError","status_code":504,"error":"error code: 504"},"external_ip":{"actual_external_ip":"70.aaa.bbb.ccc","actual_external_ipv6":"null","router_external_ip":"70.aaa.bbb.ccc"},"natpmp_autoconfig":{"status":"NotFound"},"upnp_autoconfig":{"status":"NotFound"},"multinat_autoconfig":{"status":"Success","error":"No Error","routers":1,"routers_mapped":1}}
04/30 17:42:53 Debug: [easyhttp] [1426] POST to https://api.roonlabs.net/roonmobile/1/cores/announce returned after 98 ms, status code: 200, request body size: 1 KB
04/30 17:42:58 Trace: [KEF LS50 Wireless II] [Enhanced, 16/44 QOBUZ FLAC => 16/44] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:35/0:53] Pure Intro - Oceanic Piano
04/30 17:43:00 Trace: [prebuffer] short read: 0 / 8820 fill=428820
04/30 17:43:00 Info: [stats] 437308mb Virtual, 1579mb Physical, 963mb Managed, 616mb estimated Unmanaged, 11.96% of runtime in GC pauses, 6ms last GC pause duration
04/30 17:43:03 Trace: [KEF LS50 Wireless II] [Enhanced, 16/44 QOBUZ FLAC => 16/44] [77% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:40/0:53] Pure Intro - Oceanic Piano
04/30 17:43:08 Trace: [KEF LS50 Wireless II] [Enhanced, 16/44 QOBUZ FLAC => 16/44] [29% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:44/0:53] Pure Intro - Oceanic Piano
04/30 17:43:10 Trace: [prebuffer] ready 149940/441000 (34%) @ 0/141 sec
04/30 17:43:13 Trace: [KEF LS50 Wireless II] [Enhanced, 16/44 QOBUZ FLAC => 16/44] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:49/0:53] Pure Intro - Oceanic Piano
04/30 17:43:15 Info: [stats] 437314mb Virtual, 1582mb Physical, 964mb Managed, 618mb estimated Unmanaged, 9.45% of runtime in GC pauses, 2ms last GC pause duration
04/30 17:43:16 Debug: FTMSI-B closed file for qo/849189BA; open files:0
04/30 17:43:16 Debug: FTMSI-B qo/849189BA download status: AllBlocksDownloaded accessTimeout:True openFiles:0 prev:(AllBlocksDownloaded,False,1)
04/30 17:43:16 Info: [library] recorded play for profile 6d64195a-4798-4512-b827-ab2204d4e7c6: mediaid=50:1:1e954d7d-0165-4cbc-bc2f-ff1641f3cd13 metadataid= contentid=202:0:187033014 libraryid=50:1:1e954d7d-0165-4cbc-bc2f-ff1641f3cd13 isfromradio=False isfrommix=False isfrommobile=
04/30 17:43:16 Info: 
--[ SignalPath ]---------------------------------------------
SignalPath Quality = Enhanced
Elements:
    Source Format=Flac 44100/16/2  Quality=Lossless
    Raat Device=KEF LS50 Wireless II
    DSP Subtype=kef_phase_correction PresetKey= TruePeak= Value= StringValue= Model= FromSampleRate= ToSampleRate= Quality=Enhanced PresetDisplayName= ModeDisplayName=
    WirelessTransmission BitsPerSample=24 SampleRate=96000 IsMqa=False
    Amplifier Method=kef Quality=Enhanced
    Output OutputType=Local_Speakers Quality=Enhanced SubType= Model=
------------------------------------------------------------