Music stops randomly when zones are grouped [Solved - OSX Hardware Issue]

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46

For testing purposes, I have played some DSD256 music with the Grouping in place, and it plays fine. There was one skip, consistent with this issue, but nothing that is related to the DSD256 bandwidth.

47

Hello @Richard_Presser,

I just wanted to check in here with you and let you know that Iā€™ve been reviewing your case and I am seeing some very strange traces in the Macbook diagnostics, I have requested QA to provide an analysis for these traces. As soon as I have an update for this issue I will be sure to let you know and I appreciate your patience here until I hear back.

Thanks,
Noris

48

Thank you Noris. One more thing, which may or may not be connected. My DAC (Auralic Altair) has begun to fail when playing DSD256 material from Roon. DSD128 is fine. I have raised it with Auralic and they want the unit back to test it, but I want to complete this review before I do that. Maybe the two are associated. I looked at the Synology performance data. Itā€™s doing almost nothingā€¦ So, the issue is not Synology hardware nor network. Nor is the MBP stressed in normal use. I buy my hardware with grunt to spareā€¦

49

Hello @Richard_Presser,

Thanks for providing that info. I have spoken to QA again regarding your case and there appear to be quite a few networking related traces in the diagnostics, even when using your Macbook as a Core. Can you please try running this test?

  • Disconnect the Macbook from the network and disable the network adapter
  • Try to play back only local media files to System Output (not grouped)
  • See if that works as expected
  • Try to group the Alair and System Output again with the network turned off and try playing back local content
  • See if that works as expected

Please let me know your results for this test.

Thanks,
Noris

50

Hi Noris,
I apologise for the delay. I have been busy with other things. I will run these tests in the next day or so.

1 Like
51

I isolated the MBP (no wired or wifi connection) and played Roon through the the System Output. It payed fine for some time. I stopped it and restarted it after an hour or so and within a minute or so, at 17:34 on March 10, it stopped because it lost the System Output, which then recovered and I restarted it. I connected both the MBP and the Auralic Altair to wifi, with the MBP as the server, and grouped the outputs and it failed within a minute, agin losing the MBP system output, whilst Auralic ket playing for a second or two before also stopping. The music is classical cello as FLAC 96Hz 24bit. Not demanding.
I think you have an issue in your software, at the very least on the MBP but it could be also with the Synology version. I do NOT believe it is the network. And I think this issue has been around for some time. As I said at the beginning, I have avoided grouping two devices because it just wouldnā€™t work. This pre-dates the current Linksys Ethernet switch and I believe pre-dates the Synology server.

52

For testing, I ran the Auralic standalone over wifi to the MBP as the server, and itā€™s working fine, even with a DSD256 source. I have seen this recording play up even over a wired connection from the NAS, with the Auralic losing its network connection. All of the cabling is disconnected from the Linksys, so the NAS is completely out of the network at this point.

53

For clarity, the wifi service is through the Vodafone router, the Ethernet connection through the Linksys Ethernet switch. Having confirmed it is playing DSD256 happily via wifi on both MBP and Auralic, I have switched first the MBP and now the Auralic back to Ethernet connection and everything is continuing to run. After a few minutes of running, I will reconnect the NAS and switch the server back to that source. There is no grouping.
I am currently running a DSD128 stream through the System Output on the MBP whilst also the DSD256 stream through the Auralic, both served from the MBP. All running fine.
I hope this completes all you need.

54

Back on the NAS, tried grouping the two, same failureā€¦ 21:48 on March 10. Both outputs play fine by themselves, though we do have the issue where the MBP stops by iteslf at times.

55

Hello @Richard_Presser,

Thank you for running those tests. It is most intriguing that the System Output stops by itself, even when not connected to the network. Your results from this test would indicate that there is something strange with the Macbook itself, are you by any chance using any virtual sound cards or have applications running which could be interfering with Roonā€™s ability to play back to the System Output zone?

Are you running the newest version of OSX? Do you have any exotic firewall or audio processing software installed? If this was an issue due to the software we would have undoubtedly seen more reports for this behavior, but since this is an isolated case you reported here I am inclined to say that this is due to the Macbook itself and we should take a closer look in that direction.

To isolate this issue even further it would be interesting to see if the Macbookā€™s Built-in output displays the same issue. Would it be possible for you to give this method a try as well?

Thanks,
Noris

56

Noris, the same error is occurring whether standalone or on the NASā€¦
I had the hardware checked by Apple about 3 months ago for other reasons. Not a wrinkle. I have the latest macOS installed - 10.14.3. The playback was through the System output. I have other audio capable devices attached but they are not in use for this. I have an Andrea headset that I use for Dragon voice to text but itā€™s never used for output. The Elgato USB-C port extender has audio capability but I never use it. I had a trivial output switch on the output side that I just now now removed as I no longer needed it; however, this was just a switch to enable headphones and it has shown no sign of interfering with anything and itā€™s way downstream from the action. Firewall is standard Apple. The sound output is via the headphone jack from the System Output setting and is driving a set of Logitech speakers. I run VMWare Fusion to run a Windows guest but that was inactive during the testing. No virtual sound cards. So, it was driving the System Output and then the Altair DAC via wifi for the testing. The grouped setting failed very quickly.
I suggest you look at why the grouped arrangement fails on both platforms, Noris - both as the MBP and the NAS as the server. Perhaps the rest will fall into place.

57

Hello @Richard_Presser,

Thank you for providing those additional details.

I spoke to the team about your case today and we feel that we should really narrow down further why System Output is not performing as expected here. In an attempt to do this, we have outline a few tests:

  1. Instead of using System Output, please give Built-in output a try and see how it performs. Are there any issues when using the built-in output with exclusive mode enabled in the deviceā€™s settings? You can access the device settings in Roon Settings -> Audio -> Cogwheel icon next to zone -> Device Setup.

  2. Are you experiencing any issues when grouping other zones except for the System Output? For example, if you group the Auralic Altair and the Andrea headphones on your Macbook, does the same issue still occur?

  3. I am seeing traces in your logs that reference ā€œWinnerWave - EZSoundā€. Would you by any chance know what this device is? I did some research and have found that this driver can sometimes cause similar behavior as mentioned in this Apple forum. I would try uninstalling this driver if it is not in use.

  4. With the Elgato extender out of the equation and temporarily disconnected from your OSX, are you still able to reproduce this issue?

  5. Are you making use of any firewall on your router which could be blocking RAATServer from operating properly? Our systems have not received any new diagnostics packages from your NAS in the last 4 days, although your OSX shows that it is connecting to your NAS as expected but something is blocking the communication with our diagnostics servers so this may be related to the issue here.

Please let me know your thoughts on my above suggestions and if you run through these tests and can report any timestamps while performing them, it would be very helpful.

Thanks,
Noris

58

Thank you, Noris.
Responses:

  1. Already set to Built in Output
    2, 3, 4. With the Elgato disconnected, The Ezsound software installed then uninstalled (no idea where that could be showing up from; I also deleted other apps I donā€™t use) and running through either the Built In output or the Andrea headset, whilst grouped with the Altair DAC, it stopped playing, beginning with the Mac output stopping first, then the Altair. With the Andrea headset it restarted, but I put no distinction in that. For this testing, the Roon server was the Synology NAS, with everything connected via Ethernet through the Linksys switch.
  2. Firstly, the router is NOT in the circuit for the Roon server. Everything is cable connected through a standalone Linksys Ethernet switch, as I have described. I only connected through the Vodafone wifi router for testing via wifi. Secondly, there is a firewall on the router, which I have not changed and which is on with its default settings. I have not reconfigured anything. This firewall cannot be turned off, only reconfigured, which I have not done. There is no active firewall on the Synology box. I have no clue why you are no longer seeing data. I have restarted all of the network pieces and will restart the Synology server shortly to see if that clears it.
    I forgot the timestamp. Sorry. Maybe 21:45 or so, maybe a bit earlier. Itā€™s currently 21:59 on March 14.
59

This might help. At 23:00, with it just connected to the Altair DAC, I was sitting reading some notes on Roon on my iPad, and both the iPad and the DAC lost their connection for a brief moment, stopping the music, which I could restart. So, no MBP in the mix. Roon was still on the MBP screen but the screen was turned off and no output. Maybe this will show something in the trace. All the hardware is idling. The music is 24bit 88.2 kHz. Nothing else playing or anything else being usedā€¦
Thanks,
Richard

60

Finally rebooted the server and logged in. You should now be able to access it.

61

Hello @Richard_Presser,

Thanks for running those tests, I can confirm that the server just showed up in our diagnostics servers and I was able to successfully open up the logs contained. I am reviewing them and I believe there are a few possible scenarios that are occurring here:

  1. There is network instability somewhere along the chain.

You mentioned that your iPad randomly disconnects from the Core and your NAS failing to communicate with our diagnostics servers further lend evidence to this theory.

Since you are using the network much more when devices are trying to stay in sync rather than a straight output to the Altair, I believe that either the router or the switch is having some issues with maintaining a stable communication.

If things are stable on WiFi, this leads me to say that the Linksys switch could be a possible culprit here. Are you using the same Ethernet ports each time you connect to the switch? Maybe one of the Ethernet ports or the switch itself is defective. I would also try another switch if you have one around the house.

I took another deeper look at your Macbook Pro diagnostics and Iā€™ve uncovered something deeper here as well. I am seeing a whole lot of NameResolutionFailures on your Macbook Core. This can indicate that the Macbook does not have proper communication to the router or that the DNS servers on your Macbook or router are experiencing issues. To resolve this aspect, I would try to change your routerā€™s DNS to Google DNS or Cloudflare.

You previously mention that you have disconnected the network and performed a test with no wired or WiFi connection active on the Macbook and it still occurred:

I checked the Macbook Pro logs at that timestamp and could not find this attempt. Are you certain that without the network involved in the mix, this behavior occurred? If you are sure, I would like to see this behavior in the Logs and if it is consistent it would also bring me to my next point:

  1. There is still something causing disconnects in your Macbook communication.

If there is a rouge driver still taking control of the sound card while Roon is playing media, this could cause the behavior youā€™re seeing, but it would not explain the random disconnects from iPad.

Since you are experiencing this issue on System Output, Built-In Output and the USB headset when connected to the Macbook, I do believe there is something generally affecting your Macbookā€™s outputs here.

Uninstalling the Ezsound driver is a good step that you have taken already, but if something is still unexpectedly taking control of Macbook audio outputs and causing playback to fail, tracking down where exactly this is will be beneficial in moving forward. Just to get everything in a clean state, I suggest trying to temporarily remove the Elgato driver and disconnect the dock.

  1. The NAS is under-powered to run Roon.

From the diagnostics we received, I gather that the NAS has a Celeron Core. This could further cause issues here since a Celeron Core is not up to our Roon Recommended specs.

It would not necessarily cause issues when the Core is not under a heavy load, but syncing two zones together requires more processing power than just having one zone playing at a time.

Getting the under-powered NAS out of the equation will benefit you in the future and help prevent any other performance issues that may arise. I would look into a ROCK based setup if youā€™re interested in having an ā€œalways-onā€ Core setup that is also affordable. We have an recommended ROCK hardware page that can be found here.

I canā€™t say with confidence where exactly the issues you are experiencing stem from, it can be a combination of any of the above factors and while we have done some troubleshooting here to eliminate variables from the equation, this warrants a closer look at each of my above points.

Please let me know your thoughts on my feedback when you have a chance.

Thanks,
Noris

62

Firstly, Noris, thank you for persistence with this. I appreciate the time and effort you are putting in.
So, to your list. To me, the list, in part reflects the nature of what I have demonstrated to you. The problems occurred both when using the MBP and the NAS as the server, over the wired and wireless networks. So, this does not sustain network finger pointing. The wifi is on the router, the wired network is through the Linksys box. Also, these issues have been around since I believe I first tried to run these devices grouped, when the MBP WAS the server. So, there have been many pieces that have changed but the problem has persisted across all of it. And there is virtually NO load on anything. The networking and CPU loads are tiny. Depending on the source material, the NAS CPU shows 1-5% usage, and playing DSD256, where I guess it is processing down the data stream for the MBP, it gets up to about 25% and it ran perfectly. And the issue is, I find each of the outputs in general work fine by themselves. There has been an occasional piece of weirdness, but in general I can play to the Mac or the DAC individually, but not together. Yes, there have been exceptions, as I have indicated.
So to the specifics of your response.

  1. Firstly, the router and the external network have nothing to do with my internal setup. All software is less ideal than we like to believe and misbehaves. A restart of the NAS box (and maybe other things and my logging back into the NAS box cleared your access to the data.
    The fault on the MBP standalone is exactly as I reported it. Noris, I have a PhD in Engineering and Iā€™m very thorough if fallible with these things.
  2. I have no idea what might be causing issues in the MBP. I have stripped out every app I do not use. I did correct a low level issue on this system last weekend where the internal disk was not showing logically as mounted, but that was not apparently impacting performance of the system and has not removed these issues. It only impacted my ability to run disk checking as far as I can tell. As I have said, these issues with grouping have occurred across a range of networking devices and two different servers.
  3. I do not believe the NAS box its underpowered. Yes, it is a Celeron, but it is a recent Celeron and as I show above, it is simply not under load. And, again, these problems cross over platforms andā€¦
    So, I ask you, has anyone tried replicating my issues running two grouped systems in an extended listening test with stopping and starting to see if you can reproduce it? I am far from convinced this is not an issue with Roon itself.
    By way of my background, I used to run an IT business of a quite technical sort, though I was not one of the serious techies.
    Latest failures: 21:13 tonight March 16 my time, 23:02 I restarted the system playing and it failed in about 10-20 seconds. 23:29 Failed again.
    Thanks,
    Richard
63

You mentioned that you can play to the two endpoints individually and it works and when grouped they stop. Have you tried playing to them individually, at the same time? Does this work or fail?

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I have done this to a limited extent, Daniel, but I can run more extensive testing. When I have done this, they have both worked. I have the the two devices I am focussed on and I can add an iPhone and an iPad for more extensive testing. Probably not with DSD256, as rendering to the 3 non-DSD devices might tax the NAS CPU. But I might play a bit and get back to you.

65

Hi @Richard_Presser ā€“ thanks for working with us to resolve this issue. Noris and I discussed this issue earlier today and I read over the thread and took a look at the logs.

Iā€™m guessing part of why this has been so tricky to troubleshoot is that there may be multiple issues at play, which is why Roon isnā€™t performing in your environment like it is elsewhere.

First, Iā€™d like to start by eliminating the NAS Core from the troubleshooting completely. Using it as storage is fine, but that NAS is a bit below spec for what we recommend for Roon, and as you can see here, playback stoppages are a possible side effect when running an under-spec NAS.

This is not to say that I think the NAS is definitely the problem ā€“ just that for the purposes of troubleshooting this issue and getting you stable, Iā€™d prefer we focus on getting things right with the i7 Core. Once thatā€™s stable, if the issues only occur with the NAS weā€™ll be much further along than we are now.

Now, the number one thing jumping out at me about the logs is that we are repeatedly seeing your Core losing its connection to the Altair, and I am seeing trace like this in logs from both Cores:

03/14 21:34:43 Trace: [raat_ll/client] [AURALiC ALTAIR @ 192.168.1.171:57867] no data received for >10000ms. Killing connection.
03/14 21:34:43 Trace: [raat] [AURALiC ALTAIR @ 192.168.1.171:57867] => Disconnected
03/14 21:34:43 Trace: [raat] [AURALiC ALTAIR @ 192.168.1.171:57867] lost client connection. Retrying
03/14 21:34:43 Trace: [raat] [AURALiC ALTAIR @ 192.168.1.171:57867] connecting (attempt 1)
03/14 21:34:43 Info: [transport] destroyed zone Living Room Altair + Andrea Headset was playing? True
03/14 21:34:43 Trace: [zone Living Room Altair + Andrea Headset] Suspend

So, this points in one of two directions - an issue with the Altair, or an issue with the network.

Since you said the Altair plays fine when itā€™s not grouped, Iā€™m inclined to point the finger at the network. If you have another zone (even another laptop) we could try localizing the issue to the Altair by linking two other zones, without the Altair in the mix.

Thatā€™s a good test, but the failure mode here strongly points to a networking issue, and as Noris mentioned, weā€™re also seeing DNS related errors in your logs. I think you mentioned that your network runs off a router provided by your ISP, which is something we generally recommend against. Our team has been troubleshooting networked audio for well over a decade, and I canā€™t tell you how many issues like this weā€™ve seen disappear once the network is running off a standard, consumer router.

If I was in your position, the first test Iā€™d run would be trying to link two zones with neither of them being the Altair. If that fails, Iā€™d probably buy a router like those mentioned in the article I linked above, or you could start by swapping cables, removing the switch, etc.

These kinds of issues are frustrating, but I hope the details above are helpful ā€“ Iā€™m sure you can think of lots of tests you can run here to localize the problem, and Noris and the support team can help with that, but ultimately, I suspect nothing is going to change until we can figure out what in your environment is causing the communication failures in the log snippet above.

Again, thanks for your patience @Richard_Presser.