NAD Music Stops Playing

[Terrence_McFall]

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

Roon server 1.7 build 537 is installed on a NUC 7i5BNH w/16Gb RAM. Windows 10 64b installed on 1Tb hard drive that has 400Gb free space. Music library also installed on this machine, approx 8100 files.

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

Network is from Comcast modem using LAN cable to a TP-Link AV2000 gigabit Powerline ethernet adapter, to 2nd Power line adapter thru AC circuit, LAN cable to Netgear gigabit ethernet switch, LAN cable to NUC.

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

Audio device is NAD C-368 using BluOS module as a source. The NAD is connected to the Netgear switch using a LAN cable. Most of the time I control Roon thru my Android phone, sometimes a PC.

Description Of Issue

Music stops playing. Most of the time I’m connected w/Android phone and just need to press play again to restart the music, but sometimes that doesn’t work and I have to start cycling software and hardware.

Earlier this year everything was great, I would shuffle my music uninterrupted for at least a couple of days 24/7 without interruption.

About 2 months ago I started having the problem of music stopping. Sometimes once every couple of hours, lately more frequently.

Today I’ve moved the core from a multipurpose laptop to a dedicated machine with little else installed but Roon server. For what it’s worth, I do have Microsoft OneDrive installed and will rely on this to update my library, but I’ve even disabled that to eliminate as a factor. Still have the problem though.

I was able to confirm it specifically stopped playing at these times:

5:12p
5:15p
5:24p
5:29p <-- locked up completely

[noris]

Hi @Terrence_McFall,

Thanks for reaching out and we appreciate you providing all the info along with timestamps!

We can certainly use those timestamps down the road, but first I’d like to go over one point of your post:

@Terrence_McFall

LAN cable to a TP-Link AV2000 gigabit Powerline ethernet adapter, to 2nd Power line adapter thru AC circuit

We have often seen issues surrounding powerline adapters and as such, we generally suggest staying away from these kinds of adapters (as mentioned in our Networking Best Practices Guide).

Can I please ask you, as a test, what happens if you by pass the powerline adapter and the switch and have the NAD and Core connected directly to your router instead? Do you still experience the same behavior that way?

If we can narrow down the issue to the network setup, we would be in a much better position to address the issue head-on.

Also, you haven’t mentioned this in your post yet, but I would be interested to know if just the NAD is the one impacted by this behavior or if other zones (such as System Output) also display similar behavior, that way we can troubleshoot the issue more generally rather than focusing on one endpoint.

[Terrence_McFall]

Hi Noris - thanks for the quick response. I won’t have time to test a direct connection bypassing the powerline adapter until this weekend… it will involve a very long LAN cable running down the hallway.

[Terrence_McFall]

Okay, so I had some time to play with things and think there’s a definite network issue.

First I connected the core and the NAD directly to my router using 40’ LAN cables. Surprisingly this didn’t entirely resolve the issue. Most of the time Roon played uninterrupted, but there were enough times (4 in a day) when the music stopped that I decided to try your next suggestion of connecting the core to the NAD using System Output. I made this connection with a standard RCA (?) cable going straight from the headphone jack to the NAD inputs. That solved everything - it’s been a couple of days now with uninterrupted playing.

Regarding network issues, I love Roon’s ability to stream over WiFi so will keep poking at routers. I have an Orbi that slowly died, so now trying to resurrect an older R7000 Nighthawk.

From Roon’s standpoint, I think this has been resolved. But if you could suggest a network troubleshooting procedure/software/website I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
-Ter

[noris]

Hi @Terrence_McFall,

Glad to hear that the System Output suggestion is working as expected! This at least provides us context that the issue is limited to the NAD network input zone, but the Core itself does not have issues with performing the playback.

System Output has a significantly lower bit-rate and sample-rate, so my suggestion to get the NAD working on the network input would be to keep investigating the network aspect further, you mentioned having the different router and I would give the other router a try, and also ensure that you have up-to-date firmware installed on both router and NAD.

@Terrence_McFall

But if you could suggest a network troubleshooting procedure/software/website I would appreciate it.

Our Networking Best Practices Guide definitely provides some useful suggestions, so I would give that a read if you haven’t yet and you can also search around the forum, perhaps there are other users with similar setups that have further suggestions.