Gentlemen, I can’t stream DSD over wifi it constantly drops the stream (even when all the processes such as indexing are finished). While in Audirvana everything works up to DSD256. Could you please optimize somehow the streaming process for slow wifi?
Current setup is Airport Extreme N + USB2.0 HDD over wifi to MacBook pro AC wifi. With such setup I can get only 7MB/s wireless. Although I plan to upgrade my network to something like Synology RT1900AC + USB 3.0 SSD but it would be awesome to have an optimized Roon still.
Are you in an apartment ? Sometimes it can help to change to a less congested channel. How to Geek did a good article about finding the best channel in your area.
Yes I’m in the apartment and the router in 3 meters behind me in the same room. Based on WiFi analysis I have 0 of 5GHz networks around so as far as I can see, there is no room for improvement in this situation.
Is your MacBook also your endpoint/zone – ie. does it have a DAC attached?
Latency and lack of sustained bandwidth are probably what’s causing the hiccups. Upgrading your Airport Express to an AC version will help a lot. Also: USB transfer / disk sharing is rather slow on AEX’s.
Roon differs from Audirvana in that it is a true streaming environment, which has obvious advantages, but most likely also has higher network demands. Audirvana just loads the files (probably with aggressive caching/buffering) and processes them locally.
Ok I get it thanks!
Yes MBP is an endpoint right now till I get the urendu which is around the corner. Will it be the same experience in terms of lack of streaming power or Roon/HQPlayer will just pass the stream over the wires to the urendu?
If anything, it will make things worse, as your MacBook not only has to retrieve the file over wifi, but needs to send it to the microrendu as well, constraining bandwidth even more.
Preferably, you’ll want to run Roon server on its own device on a wired connection, whether it is a NAS or a small server with local storage.
If you want to continue using your MacBook as core, you can use it wired using a Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter – or up the Wifi to AC (though this will most likely solve the bandwidth issues, but not all latency).
Ok so the best way to use urendu is with Roon on a NAS, correct? Can it be installed on this one for example? https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS116 Also, if it’s possible please point me towards some sort of manual on how to do it.
BTW, will it be possible to use an HQPlayer’s upsampling engine then? I presume it’s not, right?
You say that you are only 3m away from the Router in the same room…and I think you are saying that you are using the 5GHz band??
Assuming your abbreviation above is correct and that you are only achieving 7Mb/s or 56Mbps over Wifi, then IMHO, there is something wrong with the network setup
If you are only 3m away and using the 5Ghz band, then you should easily achieve 150Mbps
Until you fully investigate and understand where the issue is on your network, can I suggest that you try plugging your USB 2 HD into your Macbook??..assuming it’s a small USB powered drive, then this should be easy to do??
Yes, attached to MBP it gives only around 25MB/s which is okay for a USB2.0 drive. So the bottleneck is my old N-standard Airport Extreme. The current model (2013 AC standard) gives 25MB/s over 5GHz network in AC standard via attached USB3.0 storage (based on published tests). So I guess, I’m doing fine with and old router…
My attached USB2.0 drive directly to MacBook gives 25MB/s of reading speed and yes, it is enough for continious playback with roon. But what I’m looking for is to stream the music to my urendu over the wifi while the storage will be connected to the router. And as far as I’m getting it, it’s not possible without some latency.
So I didn’t figured what to do next yet(
Since installing Roon Core on a $1k NAS is a bit an overkill since I could spend these kind of money on a Roon Ready or not ready streamer which will play music without the latency issues…
So, to stream the music to urendu I have to keep the library and the Core as close as possible and stream it wired to avoid the latency issues. Which makes me confused… Roon will transfer the stream to the Core first, then to HQPlayer, then stream to the urendu which will make too much movement over wifi as far as I can see… Theoretically, I can keep the library directly connected to my Mac but I don’t want it to be hardwired to the local network for the best performance for urendu… don’t know what to do next because I want my MacBook to be portable.
Assuming you place the Micro-Rendu near your DAC / Music System, are you able to run a network cable from the existing Apple Router location to the uRendu location??
Of course, yes and I will do so. Also I plan to upgrade my router and the external storage to USB3.0 as per my original post. And I will get around 50MB/s over wifi no problem. But what bothers me is that movement over wifi (Roon will transfer the stream over wifi from the attached storage to the Core (MacBook) first, then to HQPlayer, then stream back thru wifi via router to urendu) it’s kinda a lot)
