Apple M2 med 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU og 16‑core Neural Engine
8 GB RAM, SSD 256GB
Networking Gear & Setup Details
Internet: Fiber 1000/1000
Nokia Router
Wifi: Google Mesh
Connected Audio Devices
Streamer: Primare Prisma mk2 connected to amplifier with optical cable
Number of Tracks in Library
Around 6000
Description of Issue
In periods almost constant dropouts. Disappears after restarting the whole system, including internet fiber, router, and wifi.
No dropouts streaming directly from Qobuz.
@OEP, this may be due to a networking issue on your home network.
A few questions:
How is your Mac Roon Core connected to the network, via WiFi or Ethernet cable? If via WiFi, can you connect it with an Ethernet cable?
How are you Google mesh devices configured? Are they using cabled Ethernet to connect to each other, or only using WiFi to create the mesh? Are they in router mode or bridge mode?
Is your Nokia router also being used as a router (so you potentially have two routers in your network including the Google system) or is the Nokia router in bridge mode?
Mac (dedicated only to running Roon Core) is wired to Google Mesh with ethernet (Supra Cat 8 - which is an excellent cable by the way)
Google Mesh system is wireless, with perfect speed on all devices. The primary mesh wired to the router is in standard NAT modus, the other two in bridge modus.
Thanks @OEP. My first view is that the network appears to be in order. However, there may be some issues around your Cat8 cable. Cat8 Ethernet cables are designed for very short-run, extremely high-throughput datacenter interconnections. They have an extra grounding shield on them that is designed explicitly for these datacenter interconnection ports to ensure the high speeds. Consumer equipment such as the Google mesh system does not have the corresponding grounding connection, possibly resulting in grounding interference with the network connection.
Can you try replacing your Cat8 cable with a Cat5/5e/6 cable that does not have the extra ground shield built into it? Also, is the Mac Core wired to primary Google mesh device that is acting as the router, or to one of the downstream Google devices?
The cat 8 cable is only 1 meter, and there are no dropouts on other devices connected to wifi streaming 4K content. So it sounds strange if the delays are caused by the cable. That being said, I will try with a cat 6 cable. I do however very much like the supra cat 8 cable, as it actually improved the sound quality of the system quite a bit. I have always been sceptical to wheter ethernet cables can change the sq, but in my case it was clear that the ethernet actually did so.
Hello Menzies,
Thank you for your input. I can not wire the mesh system as described for aesthetical and practical reasons. The mesh system is covering 2 floors and different rooms. It has to stay wireless. Could changing from google mesh wifi to the new wifi pro solve the problem? As said, all other devices are workig perfectly, even when the whole family is streaming on different devices.
The Mac core does not provide wireless connectivity to any devices. The Google mesh network is what and how each wireless device sees each other. Do mean that the Prisma is connected wirelessly? Is it possible to connect the Prisma with an Ethernet cable to one of the Google mesh nodes?
I think this is a Qobuz via Roon issue and not anything to do with home network configuration. There are two other recent posts citing similar issues - all with using Roon to access Qobuz. I am having the same issue with Qobuz via Roon with many classical music albums. The issue seemed to start yesterday. There is no issue when using the Qobuz desktop app so the problem seems to lie with Roon (in my case ver 2.0 Build 1321 Early Access).
There’s am issue with Qobuz>Roon>endpoints over wireless: Roon downloads the coming track in a burst from Qobuz, saturating wireless and causing packet losses and retransmits on whatever track is playing from Roon to a wireless endpoint. My other systems are all wired, but the one I’m using currently has the Roon server wired to the router, and all endpoint wireless, over AmpliFi mesh. It works well, but I doubt it would given the network spike graph below while playing from Qobuz if the router>Roon server connection were wireless. It’s really worth investigating whether you could connect your M2 directly to the router.
Hi Jeff,
Thank you very much for your input. I think you are right, the dropouts has nothing to do with the network configuration. It works perfectly using Qobuz media player, the problem arises when Roon is being used.
Roon is much more demanding on the network than the Qobuz media player, so I wouldn’t be so swift to dismiss network issues as the cause.
Does your Mac have audio hardware/internal speakers? If so, you could try setting these up as a Roon Zone and seeing if you get dropouts with this configuration.
