No sound with Sony NW-ZX300 in exclusive mode

Support
1

@support

I have a new Sony NW-ZX300 attached to my Mac as a USB DAC.

Playing back locally from Roon doesn’t work when I put the ZX300 audio device into exclusive mode - Roon shows as playing, but there’s no sound. When I switch the device back to the OS mixer, it works normally.

Other apps on the same Mac (Tidal and Vox) work as expected with exclusive mode.

I’ve tested on another Mac with the same result.

Details:
Roon 1.3 build 276
MacOS 10.13.1
Sony NW-ZX300 firmware 1.10

Thanks

2

Hi @matt ----- Thank you for the report and sharing your feedback with us. The insight is very appreciated!

Moving forward, I would like to enable some diagnostics on your account so we can try to get a better sense as to what is causing this behavior with the ZX300 when exclusive mode is being used but first, may I very kindly ask you to please provide me with the following:

  • Please provide the exact model of the MAC computer mentioned in your report.

  • When the ZX300 is mounted to the computer and is listed as an available audio zone under “connected to this MAC” (in the “audio” tab), my understanding is that the zone will not produce sound when “exclusive mode” is enabled. If you leave this zone selected, but with “exclusive mode” disabled, are you able to play content back or is the same behavior observed?

  • When you encounter this issue, are there any other applications or processes running in the background that could be trying to take hold of the device?

-Eric

3

Thanks Eric

  • I tested on two Macs, same problem with both. One is an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015), the other is a MacBook Pro 15", I’m not sure of the year but pre-touchbar.

  • That’s right, it works when “exclusive mode” is disabled. The issue only happens when “exclusive mode” is enabled.

  • No, I checked for that. Also, Roon is able to take exclusive control of the device - I verified that when Roon had it the OS couldn’t output to it. Everything looked normal in Roon, including the track time advancing while playing, but there was no sound output.

4

@matt ---- Thank you for the follow up and taking the time to answer my questions. Appreciated!

Moving forward, as mentioned in my previous, I would like to go ahead and enable diagnostics on your account so we can try to understand what could be causing this issue issue with the ZX300. With this in mind, may I kindly ask you to please perform the following:

  1. Please reproduce the issue and note the time when “exclusive” mode is enabled but the device produces no sound.
  1. Please disable “exclusive” mode and note the time when the device is able to produce sound.

Once I have the above times I will go ahead and enable diagnostics on your account as this action will automatically generate/upload a diagnostics report containing a set of your Roon logs directly to our servers.

-Eric

5

Hi Eric

Playing successfully, not exclusive mode:
Wed 29 Nov 2017 14:44:12 AEDT

Playing without sound, exclusive mode
Wed 29 Nov 2017 14:45:13 AEDT

I’ve given the times in AEDT, my local zone.

Thanks

6

This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you @matt!

Once the mentioned diagnostics report reaches our servers, I will confirm that it has been received and then will be passing over to our tech team for analysis.

Many thanks!
-Eric

7

This still isn’t working for me, but now that playback is enabled on iOS devices I won’t be using my Mac for playback any more.

8

Hi @matt ---- Thank you for you for touching base with me and my sincerest apologies for the slow response here.

Moving forward, I touched base with our tech team early to get a status update on your ticket and expect to have some feedback hopefully soon. If you would like to continue troubleshooting I will be glad to help. Let me know.

All the best to you and your family in the New Year!
-Eric