MQA muting and not playing gapless to Ifi Nano IDSD BL

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

ROCK
Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

Wired
Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)
ROCK Roon Core
ROCK as endpoin to to Ifi Nano iDSD BL
Description Of Issue
When playing MQA some tracks just go mute and I hear no sound. Roon shows its playing, Ifi Nano shows its still shows MQA purple light. Also when playing a gapless album at the end of each track their is a pause and the next track is missing a second or so of audio.

If I turn of MQA then it plays fine, If I play Qobuz hires version its fine. It only seems to happen on MQA files.

Tried changing the USB buffer but makes no difference.

If I use the DAC on my Windows laptop then it works, it only seems to do it from ROCK or Roon Bridge on Raspberry Pi. All my other endpoints are fine with MQA and so is the Dragonfly Black.

I have contacted Ifi as well as it may well be a fault of the unit. But any advice would be appreciated.

Hi @CrystalGipsy,

Thanks for the report here. I don’t believe we have the Nano iDSD in-house to verify but let me double check with the hardware team.

Can I please ask you to reproduce and let me know a few timestamps of when this behavior occurs? Are you playing streaming albums or are these local MQA gapless albums?

Streaming from Tidal. Sure will try tonight

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10.49am GMT example of gapless not working on Rock endpoint only.

Fleet Foxes, Crack -Up MQA Tidal. Switching from Track Cassius to Naids, Cassadies.

I then swapped the Ifi to my Roon Core Rock and got a full mute at the same track change on the album. It does do it with all of them to some extent either not gapless or full mute.

PM’d the email my account is tied to.

Hi @CrystalGipsy,

Thank you for letting me know those timestamp, I have activated diagnostics mode for your Core and a log set has automatically been uploaded to our servers. I have reached out to our technical team regarding the logs and we will follow up again once we have more info to share.

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Hello @CrystalGipsy,

When you are using Windows to try to reproduce this behavior, are you using WASPI or the ASIO drivers? Could you make sure to try both WASAPI and ASIO and report back if you see this behavior?

-John

Sure will try that for you. But it only does this on ROCK im not using windows at all it was purely to test if the DAC did the same. I think it was ASIO but not sure.

@john just tested using WASAPI on Windows and it exhibits the same behaviour as on ROCK .Switched then to ASIO and it plays fine.

Hello @CrystalGipsy,

Thanks for running the WASAPI tests, I’ve included this information in the ticket. We’re able to reproduce some of the funkiness in-house so we’re investigating in-tandem with your report.

-John

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Hi John just checking in as not getting nowhere with Ifi. Is this a DAC issue or a Roon ROCK issue?At the moment I am not really understanding where the issue lays.

Hello @CrystalGipsy,

Thanks for your patience on this issue, it required extensive testing and spanned multiple products across multiple manufactures.

We were ultimately able to reproduce the issue you are reporting with a few iFi DACs, and we’ve made some changes that we hope to ship in the next release of the Roon client.

-John

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Good stuff. I have actually ditched the Ifi in this setup now for an AudioQuest Cobalt due to this issue as it works without issue. But I still have the DAC and may use it again with Roon in a different zone at some point so this is good news.

@john i decided to put my ifi Nano back in to my Roon setup connected to my NUC Rock as I am having volume issues with my DragonFly Cobalt (ticket is in) this is just an endpoint not core. Same thing is happening it can’t maintain gapless with MQA content at all, which is still disappointing. Now i have two DACS that dont work well with ROCK. :frowning:

Hello @CrystalGipsy,

We were able to reproduce this behavior, we’re preparing a technical report to deliver to iFi.

-John

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