Lyngdorf and Nucleus do not always communicate

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)
System is ROON Nucleus (purchased May 15 this year)

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)
No Wi-fi, all cables Router is Telenor (a Huawei orginally, I think)

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

Lyngdorf 3400 connected to the router, as Nucleus is via ethernet cables.
Local library is on a 512GB memory stick connected to the USB input of Nucleus

Description Of Issue

Normally this works great! However, sometimes Nucleus cannot play music on 3400 and reports that it cannot set Lyngdorf input to Roon Ready. It has also on a few occasions reported that it cannot even find the 3400. If I look at the 3400, the display says that it is already set to Roon Ready input. Obviously, the two do not communicate in one way or the other. Either the 3400 fails to respond to requests or any message of the 3400 state is not sent or acknowledged. The fix is normally to switch the 3400 off and then back on again.

In case this does not work, I close the app and try again. In some cases I need to restart Nucleus (switching off and back on) or the tablet to make it work. This comes and goes, sometimes I can play succesfully for a whole evening, other days it fails 2-3 times.
Type of source (Tidal or library) makes no difference. If it takes a while from one piece of music ends and a new is requested by me, it is more likely to happen.

We also have a Sonos system wired the same way. This experiences no problems.

Any ideas?

Hi @Gustav_Ese,

Welcome to the Community!

Generally, we have seen poor performance with ISP provided routers as they sometimes do not properly pass multicast traffic, and we generally recommend customers to use standard consumer-grade router such as Netgear/Asus/TP-Link/ect.

I can’t say for sure if this is the cause here but I would keep this in mind as we troubleshoot the issue as this is also mentioned in our Networking Best Practices. If you by any chance have a consumer-grade router around the house, I would give this a try instead of the Telenor router to see if it will help.

Can you let me know the exact local time + date in your country of when this behavior next occurs? E,g, 1:17PM on 6/11/19? I would like to take a look at the diagnostics from your Core to see if there are perhaps any clues as to why the input is failing to switch. I can enable diagnostics mode for the Nucleus, but only after receiving the afromentioned timestamps.

Thanks,
Noris

it just happened again, Roon couldn’t find a zone. Now there is a switch where Roon and 3400 meet, but the behavior seems similar with or without the switch,

Thanks for your swift reply, by the way.

My local time (Norway) is CET daylight saving time. Time now is 20:07

Now I have turned the router upside down, it is a Zyxel P8 v2

Sorry, Zyxel P8702Nv2

Hi @Gustav_Ese,

Thanks for letting me know that router model. I have gone ahead and enabled diagnostics mode for your Core and what this action does is automatically upload a set of logs to our servers for analysis. I am reviewing the logs now and I did notice a strange event occur at 20:07.

From what I can tell, it appears that your Nucleus lost connection to our accounts servers at roughly that time and it took a bit of time to re-establish, indicating that possibly the network went down as well, I will also reach out to QA to confirm this aspect.

I am also seeing a few traces related to your USB drive and issues accessing the media files on USB30FD_PNY_USB_3_0_FD_070A8BF910AA7012_D019-6101-p1. I don’t think that this is related to the issue you reported but just to have a cleaner view of log traces here, can you please try temporarily removing this drive while we are testing for this issue?

I will let you know once I have analysis back from QA regarding the logs.

– Noris

Hello again,

Right now I am at the office, time is 7:35 here. Once I get home after work I will disconnect the USB from the Nucleus. However, I use the USB as backup for Roon, it asked me to establish that.

I did not have an SSD installed when I started to use the Nucleus. I then installed the SSD, but my company computer refused to let me in (a Domain issue, it said). I work with Cisco (not the router dept.) and I don’t want to mess things up on the Cisco PC. I am going to buy my own PC again, probably next week or so. I will then transfer the contents of the USB (my library) to the SSD. Will the fact that the USB is used by Nucleus to back up metadata, index, etc screw things up when I remove the USB? Should I set up the backup to take place on the SSD instead, before removing the USB?

There are some music files on the USB that Nucleus cannot find. They do not appear in Missing files either. As a test, I have edited the file names of one of the albums as per your recommendation on characters incompatible with Roon. That has worked fine.

I also turned my little switch upside down to see what brand it is. It turns out to be a Zyxel, as well.

most likely the issue is no active allow for SMB V1.0 setting on your windows PC

Great! I’ll check that out once I get a new PC. Thank you!

Hi @Gustav_Ese,

Temporarily removing the USB should not cause issues since the library resides on the Nucleus internal storage itself and the USB is just your library + Roon backups location.

Just to make sure I am understanding you correctly here, after making the name changes regarding incompatible characters, are all the missing files now showing up?

Do let me know if there is any change in behavior with the new PC in place and if there is any change in behavior after temporarily removing the USB drive.

– Noris

I replaced non-English characters with “standard characters”, i.e. removed accents and such stuff in the file names of those songs of an album having such file names. That caused the missing songs to appear and correctly become a part of the album after a rescan. I have not done this in more than one album folder.

I do not fully understand why these files do not appear as missing files. However, I know they are there, so I will (on a rainy day) sit down and go through all of library files and “clean” the file names.

Hi @Gustav_Ese,

Thanks for the update regarding the missing files. If Roon is unable to properly import the files at all due to these special characters, then it is possible that they will not show up in the skipped files area and the change to standard characters is needed. It seems like the results were good for that one album so I would say use the same method for the other albums as well (when the rainy day comes).

I’d like to request some more info for your Lyngdorf issue. When you are unable to output music to the Lyngdorf zone, do other zones work properly without having to reboot the Nucleus? I know you mentioned that the Sonos does not experience the same issues, but I just want to clarify that when the Lyngdorf and/or Nucleus is in this state that Sonos is still able to output music properly and without issue.

Hello again,
I have been away for the weekend, hence this late reply. While I was away, I had the entire system shut down and disconnected. We had a bad thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago, which blew the power supply of my cable TV tuner. I had to order a new one. Luckily, the Lyngdorf/Nucleus combo was shut down and disconnected as a precaution. That principle is now expanded to include all our internet connected devices.

As per Murphy’s laws, the Nucleus/Lyngdorf combo has behaved excellently since Wednesday last week. However I will check with Sonos the next time to see if this is a network related problem. Thanks for the tip.

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Hello again,

At 20:46 (CET Daylight saving time) yesterday, my Lyngdorf 3400 / Nucleus ran into communication trouble again after a few days of wonderful, trouble-free operation.

Nucleus reports that it cannot set 3400 to the ROON Ready input. However, the 3400 was already set to ROON Ready input, because Nucleus had done that, since I had been playing via Nucleus for a while. This took place when I wanted to listen to another piece of music (the current had ended).

I did what you suggested and switched to the SONOS zone to play the piece of music that did not work on 3400 to see if contact could be established. It could. On the next occasion of communication problems (a few minutes later) I switched to SONOS, who had been playing all the time, but I saw that Nucleus briefly reported trouble finding the SONOS zone and then continued playing the music as it was supposed to. I cannot say whether there was a brief drop-out during the time the warning was displayed, I was in another room.

Rebooting 3400 is normally the cure here, so it was yesterday. But, on one occasion, the 3400 recovered by itself (assuming 3400 is the suspect here). The initial volume setting on 3400 was -23dB. Upon recovering, ROON Remote reported a volume setting of -50dB(!). This is strange given the fact that the default start-up volume setting is -40dB, as set by me.

The volume, however, was acoustically still -23dB until I started to adjust the volume of the 3400 by means of the ROON Remote. Then it suddenly dropped to -50dB acoustically, thereby complying with the shown setting and I was able to set it back to -23dB by using the ROON Remote. This has happened a few times before.

One more thing here. Lyngdorf has an app that lets you control volume, input source, voicing etc. It even provides access to the web interface of the 3400, which is a convenient tool for setting up the fairly complex system.

If I open the app to use it to control input source and volume, then put my phone on the coffee table to listen to my choice, and then log into my phone again to adjust something, it will in most cases tell that it is unable to find 3400. It asks me to confirm which device I am looking for and presents me with alternatives. The alternatives boil down to 1, which is my 3400. The identity seems to be its MAC address, but I am not 100% sure and the Lyngdorf documentation is among the worst on the market, so it is difficult to find out.

On a few occassions I may find the 3400, but in almost all cases there is nothing else to do than to close the app and restart it. This app failure does not affect the streaming, which goes on completely undisturbed, be it from Sonos (which was previously connected to the 3400), the built-in internet radio of 3400 or a NAS-disk I used to have connected.

If I enter the web interface from the Lyngdorf app, it opens in a browser, which stays open at all times (it appears to have no relation to the app). Even if I do something else with my phone or tablet, the web interface seems not to be prone to this communication problem. If I open the Lyngdorf app I will in most cases run into the communication problem again, while the browser with the setup still works perfectly fine.

I have, through the setup of the 3400, granted permission for streaming services to control source input setting, volume and to have the 3400 being switched on from stand-by.

Should I disable these permissions? Will ROON Remote object if it can’t find the state of the 3400 input source and volume, when communication between the two goes via ethernet and not USB?

IMHO, it should work nicely without these permissions granted. After all, they have learned to know each other by the time I established the zones. Could this step make them stop having these disagreements?

I will try this tonight.

Please advise.

Hi @Gustav_Ese,

Thank you for providing that additional info. I am going to reach out to our hardware team to see if they can schedule some testing to try to reproduce this behavior with the equipment they have in-house.

You can give this a try, although I am not sure how exactly it will impact Roon’s behavior. If you make any further discoveries that may assist in testing do let us know.

Thanks for your reply

Last evening I disabled the permissions granted to Nucleus by the Lyngdorf 3400 (ability to control the input source setting, the volume and wake-up from standby).

One evening is not enough to conclude, of course, after all, Nucleus and 3400 may both have been in a good mood, and so may my network have been as well.

However, Nucleus and 3400 both behaved excellently yesterday. I did the usual stress test:
First, I listen to music through ROON for a while.
Then I switch 3400 to listen to internet radio directly through the built-in internet radio capabilities of 3400.
Finally, after an hour or so, I switch back to ROON to stream more music.

Up to now, I have almost always been forced to reboot (turning off and back on again) the 3400 to be able to make the ROON/Nucleus/3400 work as it should.

Every time I unlocked my Samsung S5 tablet to select something in ROON, it just worked! As it should, that is, of course. And the sound reproduction quality is just awesome! Even better when the functionality leaves nothing to desire, of course (that’s how we humans are, after all).

Lyngdorf’s own app stayed online almost all the time. It failed once, however, and in a more severe way than normal. Normally, it fails after a while, asking me to confirm which device I want to control (see also above for more on this). It suggests the only alternative, the 3400, and offers me to confirm. Sometimes this works, but in most cases it doesn’t. I must then restart the app.

Yesterday, it could not come up with an alternative at all. Nothing to confirm, in other words. First time!

However, restarting the app made it work again. It is very tempting to suspect the problem to be a problem of Lyngdorf’s.

If you could look into this and maybe discuss this with Lyngdorf, to see if this can be replicated, I would be very happy. Should this be something about my little LAN, one could argue that some of the involved equipment may be somewhat too sensitive to such matters. I should then not be the only one experiencing this.

Now I am going to test this further in the next few days. I can live happily without Nucleus controlling my Lyngdorf, but the control abilities are very nice, if they work.

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