Music stops and Roon endpoint intermittently disconnects (ref#DMPNJ4)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· None of the above quite fits

None of the above quite fits

· None of these quite match

Tell us what's going on

· Music stopping by itself and Roon endpoint disappearing and then reappearing a few moments later

Tell us about your home network

· Ubiquiti EdgeRouter, Linksys switch

2

Roon core is running on a M1 Mac Mini and the roon endpoint is Chromecast on KEF LSXII LT’s. Are there any logs generated by Roon?

3

Hello @Paul_Bellamy ,

Welcome to the community! Yes, Roon logs can be accessed by using these instructions. We have also enabled diagnostics for your account, and what this action does is deliver a log set to our servers for review. Can you please provide a few examples of the exact local date + time + track playing when this issue occurs next time? We’ll look over the incoming diagnostics to see if there are any clues, thanks!

4

Thanks @noris

The issue just occurred on the 11th of March at 9:44am NZST while playing “Lose Yourself to Dance” from Tidal.

If you could look at the diagnostics that would be fantastic!

5

Hello @Paul_Bellamy

Thank you for providing that exact timestamp! It made finding the event in your diagnostics incredibly easy.

I took a close look at the logs during your playback of Daft Punk’s “Lose Yourself to Dance” to your Bedroom LSX II LT speakers, and I can see exactly why the stream is faltering.

When the track started, Roon requested the high-resolution (24-bit/88.2kHz) FLAC file from TIDAL. Because this is a high-res file, it requires a fairly wide and consistent data pipeline (the file is roughly 91 Megabytes).

However, your Roon Server struggled to pull that data from TIDAL’s servers fast enough to keep up with the real-time playback. In the logs, Roon threw a continuous string of [prebuffer] sleeping in read errors right as the song started.

This error means Roon’s internal audio buffer completely starved. The system literally had to halt its audio processing threads to wait for the next packet of internet data to arrive. By the time the song was 4 seconds in, your buffer had crashed to just 1% capacity before finally catching its breath and filling back up to 100% a few seconds later.

Since this is a download-speed bottleneck between TIDAL’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) and your Roon Server—and perfectly healthy behavior from your KEF speakers—we need to optimize how your server talks to the outside world.

Please try the following steps:

  • Update Your DNS Servers: Often, your ISP’s default routing to TIDAL’s servers is highly congested. Changing your router’s DNS settings to a fast, public DNS like Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8) can force a much faster, more direct route to the music.
  • Check the Core Connection: Ensure the machine running your Roon Server is connected directly to your network router or switch via a hardwired Ethernet cable, rather than relying on Wi-Fi.
  • Temporarily Lower Streaming Quality: As an immediate test, you can go into Settings > Services > TIDAL within Roon and lower your streaming quality to 16-bit / 44.1 kHz (CD Quality). This significantly reduces the bandwidth requirement and usually stops the dropouts instantly.
  • VPN Try any available free VPN solution to eliminate possible issues with the provider’s CDN
6

Thanks for the detailed reply Vadim!

The Roon core and speakers are both already hard wired and connected to the same switch.

I tested moving from Cloudflare DNS to my default ISP DNS but had another drop almost straight away at 7:42 AM.

I’m now trying Google DNS.

7

The moment I hit reply I had another drop at 7:51 AM.

Both of these drops were with the same track as before, “Lose Yourself to Dance”.

Could you please check the logs?

8

One more occurrence at 8:53 AM playing “Touch” hi res from Tidal.

9

Also at 9:22 AM playing “Motherboard” hi res from Tidal.

10

Hi @Paul_Bellamy,

Thanks for the examples! We’re seeing the same errors pop up that @vadim mentioned earlier.

Do you see this behavior no matter the endpoint/zone you play audio to?

Are you able to temporarily bypass the switch? This would be a great next step in troubleshooting, even if it’s only bypassing the switch one device at a time.

Have you tested out temporarily lowering the streaming quality? Does the issue still reproduce?

Thank you! :folded_hands:

11

Hi @benjamin

Thanks for looking at the logs.

I’m not seeing the issue when playing to my Roon Ready speakers.

I was seeing the issue on the LSX speakers when they were on wifi. I moved them and the core to wired in an attempt to resolve the issue before contacting support. I also was not seeing this issue on my Roon Ready speakers when the core was on wifi and not now either.

I have not tried lowering the streaming quality as I would like to be able to stream at full resolution.

I tested playing the same hi res album via Tidal Connect to the same speakers and was able to play the entire album with no issues. Because of this, I am not convinced that it is a internet/network issue.

12

a dodgy ethernet cable maybe it would be enough !!

13

@Paul_Bellamy ,

Thanks for confirming this entry.

As @benjamin recommended, would it be possible for you to temporarily wire the speakers and Roon Server machine to the router in order to remove the Switch from equation ?

That would allow us to understand the role of switch in this problem.

Thanks.

14

Hi, the problem was occurring with the previous wifi only setup with the AP connected directly to the router and no switch involved.

Unfortunately the only way I can remove the switch would be to move either the Core or the speakers back to wifi.

Should Roon not cache the whole song? Stopping part way through a track seems weird.

Also why do I not have any issues with Tidal Connect?

This looks like a Roon issue to me.

15

All the cables are brand new, and the same issue was occurring when using wifi only.

16

No , its in the design of RAAT to maintain only a small buffer so as to allow zone aggregation

17

My Roon Ready speakers using RAAT dont suffer from this issue.

The issue is with my LSX II LT speakers which are not Roon Ready, Im using Chrome/Google cast with them.

18

Hi @alex_h Where to from here? Im currently stuck using the Tidal app which is not ideal…

19

Hey @Paul_Bellamy,

Thanks for the additional information!

Even though you are trying to play to the Bedroom (Chromecast), your Roon Server is constantly trying and failing to maintain a connection with your MacBook-Pro.

Because Chromecast relies heavily on steady mDNS (discovery) signals, this constant cycle of Roon “killing” and “retrying” a connection to your MacBook Pro every 10 seconds is likely causing the Roon transport service to refresh or stutter. When that service stutters, Chromecast endpoints (which are more “brittle” than Roon Ready RAAT endpoints) often disappear and drop the stream.

As a next step in testing - Turn off the Macbook Pro entirely or fully quit the Roon app on that machine.

With that, Chromecast is much more sensitive to network configuration than Roon Ready devices.

  • Log into your router and look for a setting called IGMP Snooping.
  • If it is ON, try turning it OFF (or vice versa). This setting dictates how "multicast" traffic (which Chromecast uses to stay "visible") is handled. Many users find that disabling IGMP Snooping stabilizes disappearing Chromecast nodes.
If you haven't already, assign Reserved IP addresses (DHCP Reservations) in your router settings for:
  1. The M1 Mac Mini (Core)
  2. The KEF LSXII LTs
  3. Pauls-MacBook-Pro
  • Why: This prevents the "heartbeat" of the connection from breaking if the router tries to reassign an IP during a handshake.

Let me know if any of the above helps, thank you! :folded_hands:

20

Hi, I tried not running Roon on the Macbook and streaming lasted less than 1 track.

Give Life Back to Music died at 12:05PM NZST with Roon not running on the Macbook.

Of the list of 3 devices you mention only the Macbook did not already have a static IP, I set that to static as well and retested with Roon not running on the laptop anyway and it died while I was away from the desk so I dont have a timestamp for that one.

I have an Edgerouter X which does not have any IGMP snooping settings. I have a very simple flat LAN with no VLANs.

Any other ideas which may resolve this?