Roon installed on a Macbook Pro running Catalina 10.15.3 w/16GB mem and 512GB internal SSD. Roon v1.7 build 528. Macbook Pro is using wired ethernet to a Netgear switch where the NAD C368 is also wired. Both using brand new Cat6 short patch cables. Nothing else is running on the Macbook Pro. All music either on internal SSD or streamed through Tidal. CPU usage on the Macbook Pro while streaming is under 20% total and Roon is using most of that. Memory usage is negligible (6GB out of 16GB). Firewall is off on the Macbook Pro. See screenshots of “About This Mac” and “Signal Path” in Roon.
When using Roon to stream either local music or Tidal to the NAD, the music occasionally stutters while playing. This occurs on both wired and wifi connections. I’ve played with the DSP settings in Roon, but settings don’t matter. Stutter occurs even with DSP turned off and no filters enabled.
When using the BluOS app to stream Tidal (Roon not involved) to the NAD, no studdering occurs. This, at least for me, points at some issue either in Room on the Macbook Pro, or the Macbook Pro itself.
This stuttering seems to have started after Roon downloaded an updated v1.7 build and after the NAD was updated with a new version of software (I don’t have the versions). That said, BluOS app is still able to stream Tidal to the NAD without stuttering.
Can you please provide some more information regarding your Netgear switch? Is it an un-managed switch or a managed one? Managed switches (ones with configurable settings) sometimes take some tweaking to work properly with Roon, so I just want to confirm this.
Does the same behavior occur on any of your other endpoints or is the NAD the only one affected? If you try to start playback to your Macbook Pro’s “System Output” zone (the Mabook’s internal speakers), do you notice this behavior there as well?
Switch is a NetGear 5 port unmanaged GS105 switch. Nothing to play with there.
I have three endpoints that I can use: NAD, System Output on the MacBook, and a grouped pair of Sonos Play:1 speakers. I just played the same songs through all three endpoints. No stuttering from the MacBook or the Sonos speakers. NAD starting stuttering half way through the first song I played.
I’ve rebooted the BluOS card in the NAD, but I guess I will reinitialize the card now and see if that helps.
Thanks for the additional info and checking the other zones. As for next steps, can I please ask that you reproduce this behavior using local library content (not TIDAL/Live Radio) and provide the following information?
What is the exact local time + date + track that this behavior occurred?
Can you send me a copy of your Roon logs after reproducing by using these instructions?
Can you access your NAD logs and send me these as well? You can do so with these instructions: You can get these logs by navigating to Bluesound’s IP Address in a web browser -> Diagnostics -> More -> Copy+ paste the text into a text editor
Please send the logs as a shared Dropbox/Google Drive link. If you don’t have either service, just let me know and I can provide alternate upload instructions. Thanks!
Thanks for those timestamps and logs! I have requested the technical team review them and as soon as I have the completed report from them, we will reach out once more. Please leave the logs uploaded to your Dropbox for the meantime.
Looking at the logs you provided, we are unable to locate any indication of playback errors in the BluOS or Roon logs. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t an issue somewhere causing these stutters, but we can say that the diagnostic logging information does not give us any hint to what this issue might be.
Some background – The Roon logs cover the actions relating to the Roon Core and it’s communication with the C 368. Roon uses the Roon Ready (RAAT) protocol to transfer audio from the Core to the endpoint device. The endpoint (C 368) runs the Roon Ready client on its network board, its job is to take the audio stream data from RAAT and pipe it to the audio output on the board.
If there were errors during the transport from the Roon Core to the endpoint, they would show up in the Roon Core logs as dropped packets, slow filling of the buffers, or large packet round trip times. We do not see any of these errors in the Roon logs.
In the BluOS logs, we can gain further insight into what’s happening to the audio stream after RAAT has transferred the audio data to the BluOS audio stack. We are not experts in interpreting BluOS logs, but a cursory look at the provided log does not show any obvious signs of erroneous behavior.
We’ve tested Roon Ready streaming to our in-house C 368 unit and have not experienced any stuttering during playback.
Have you reached out to NAD regarding this issue? I’d be curious to see what they have to say about this behavior. I can say that from Roon’s standpoint, it appears that everything is working as expected. I would double check the state of your setup by playing to the “System Output” zone on your Roon Core for a few hours to see if you experience the same behavior.
Thanks @john. I have not gone to NAD support, but I will now. I appreciate your assistance in figuring this out. I updated both Roon Core and the BluOS software at the same time when the issue began (I’ll not do that again). I started searching the Roon Labs Community for anyone who had experienced this issue, and ended up posting about it. I’ll go talk to our friends at NAD now.
I forced the BluOS software update to the NAD again, this time from the front panel of the C368. Keep your fingers crossed, but so far so good. No stuttering through several songs. Thanks again for your assistance. I’m gonna stay home and listen to music now.
