Not a big fan of being dumped into a support forum instead of communicating with a support person by phone or email. I have had issues with Roon for years with virtually no help.
Welcome to the forum - posting here is the means by which to directly contact technical support, we simply do it in a public space to ubiquitize posted solutions.
We’ve activated diagnostics from the Nucleus to have a closer look at playback failures. Here’s what we an conclude from the logs:
The dropouts are occurring in two places. First, Qobuz content fails to buffer as bandwidth allocation to the stream drops to near zero. These timeouts reparticularly vicious in logs when playing Qobuz content at 24 bits and sample rates above 44.1kHz.
Second, we can see failures associated with networked endpoints due to network disconnections and/or resets. The visibility of these Zones to the Nucleus flutters in and out sufficiently to kill the audio stream.
We can likely resolve both issues with some basic network troubleshooting.
First, please describe the relative arrangement of your Nucleus and endpoints and your network hardware. Do you have any managed switches, mesh nodes, or access points? Something is either heavily sanctioning or interfering with the Nucleus connection to the internet and to your Zones.
We wanted to check in since this post has been inactive for some time. Are you still encountering playback interruptions after reviewing the steps above? The more information you can provide, the faster we can pinpoint the problem. Thanks!
Does the issue happen with local library music, streaming service music, or both?
· *Both streaming and local* *library* music are affected.
Do you encounter any playback errors with the "System Output" Zone?
· The System Output has the same problem as my other Zone.
Do you have a complex network setup?
· Both the device and RoonServer are connecting to a *single router*
Please try rebooting your router.
· No, I'm still having trouble
What are the make and model of the affected audio device(s) and the connection type?
· Cambridge streamers, Roon Nucleus USB to HOLO AUDIO MAY.
Describe the issue
music stops in the middle of the songs. FOR 3 years now. Keeps saying having loading problems from Qobuz and or Tidal. Does it on my local library. Use Roon Nuc. Hardwired. Use wifi connected and direct connected DACS and they all do it. I can see that problems are bound to exist, however it would seem logical if you don't want to piss people off, that you would load the entire track prior to trying to play it.
Describe your network setup
Third top of the line router (AmpliFi), Roon Nucleus, Hardwired together.
Based on a recent diagnostic report from your Roon Server, this is exactly what Roon is trying to do. The issue is, the track still can’t load fast enough within it’s network environment. The bandwidth issue appears to be occurring entirely upstream of Roon. For example:
Trace: [CXNv2 (f3)BLACK] [Enhanced, 16/44 TIDAL FLAC => 32/44] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:08/3:30] Walk Away - ONI / lil aaron
Debug: FTMSI-B-OE ti/38EF3AA7 exit thread signalled
Debug: FTMSI-B ti/38EF3AA7 download status: AllBlocksDownloaded accessTimeout:True openFiles:1 prev:(FirstBlockRetrieved,True,1)
Info: FTMSI-B ti/38EF3AA7: allocated bw changed from 51200 to 0 kbps
Your allocated network bandwidth is severed here. Which then causes the stoppage and dropouts you’re hearing, for example:
Warn: [CXNv2 (f3)BLACK] [zoneplayer/raat] Too many dropouts (>3s dropped out in the last 30s). Killing stream
Trace: [CXNv2 (f3)BLACK] [zoneplayer/raat] too many dropouts. stopping stream
And slow media warnings:
Info: [audio/env] [zoneplayer] All streams were disposed
Warn: [zone CXNv2 (f3)BLACK] Track Stopped Due to Slow Media
Your best next steps would be to simplify your network setup as much as possible, and see where you may be able to increase your upstream bandwidth.
You missed my point completely. Don’t let Roon start a track until I knows it can play it to the end. How would it know? Download the entire track before playback begins.
Also, There are no issues with my network. I have run both Tidal and Qobuz amps without Roon and have zero issues. It’s Roon. Roon is overly complicated.
Why can’t I see the error logs, so I can solve my own problems? Why can’t I talk to a living person on the phone?
I started out loving Roon, and probably sold 150 accounts to my customers by recommendation. I regret it.
How can allocated bw change to 0? Where is bandwidth allocated?
Slow media… it’s a game. The media is not slow. That is the on screen error message Roon gives for all it’s problems, and it means nothing because it is not accurate.
Also, looking at the last couple hours of my log is no help. Look at the log going back for the past several years. Perhaps you’ll discover what it wrong.
I am not the only person with this issue, and so far no one to my knowledge is having the issue solved. Updating Roon every few weeks is also not helpful. Even if I get it to work, then after an update if there is an issue it is impossible to know why. I really wish software companies would stop using the market for gama testing. Write simple stuff that works.
I paid 800.00 for software that does not work. That’s the bottom line. I give sound demos at our business using Roon, and have had to quit because the damn tracks stop at complete random once or twice at a minimum every single time. It’s usless for professional use.
Before you flip it back over and tell me to solve my network issues, let me remind you as in my original message that QoBuz and Tidal work perfectly using their own aps. I have been using them since they began. We have zero network issues in this business except for Roon.
If you would re-write Roon to simply load the entire damn track before it plays it (or at least optionally) then I wouldn’t have to stand here and constantly apologize to our clients during demos for the music stopping mid track.
Most of us don’t have this problem. It has to be a network issue. I have three Roon servers and three lifetime subscriptions and none exhibit this problem in 4 1/2 years. It’s the network.
Secondly, I think most of us would not want Roon to wait for a track to completely download to start play. We prefer instant response when we click play on a new track or album. If your network is adequate, the download speed will exceed the playback speed and not be a problem.
And yes, Roon requires a very robust network, more so than just Tidal or Qobuz. There is a lot of data moving back and forth across the network.
I’m not sure that is the issue. My Roon worked perfectly when my AT&T U-Verse internet was only 50/12. It still works perfectly now that I have 300/300 fiber that tests closer to 400/400.
This is Noris here, another member of the Roon support team (in addition to @benjamin & @connor who responded to you above). I was looking over your case and I have a few remarks and answers to share based on your last post.
You can certainly investigate the logs yourself if you wish, we provide instructions on how to access logs in the below guide:
With a small support team, we are unable to provide phone support at this time and cannot comment on if this will change. We have found we are able to solve the vast majority of issues customers have right here on the forum.
It is plausible that you are not seeing the issues on your end in other apps because they have different buffering strategies. Roon’s current buffering strategy works just fine for the vast majority of our customers, and in fact we even made it more robust in previous builds. But the bottom line here is that if you have a bad network, Roon will perform badly.
If you wish, you can submit this as a Feature Suggestion in the feature suggestions of our website, I have linked it below:
The logs I am looking at from your Nucleus say otherwise. It looks like multiple times per hour you experience a large drop in speed and Roon is not able to buffer the track due to this. So you can get an idea of what your network is supplying Roon in terns of spend and what is needed to stream the specific track, you can search for poor connection in logs. Here are just a few instances of what I saw in your latest log set regarding the speed and why playback stops:
How long have you had this AmpliFi router for? Is it using the latest firmware? Have you tried to set up custom DNS servers such as Cloudflare DNS, Quad9 or Google DNS yet? If not, I would give this a try to see if it helps. Additionally, we had a very similar case to yours recently with a client on AmpliFi, and the issue was the router itself. Once the router was replaced, Roon worked without issue, here is the thread in case you would like to take a look:
Yes, this can be expected behavior. The TIDAL and Qobuz apps use a very different architecture and download the tracks directly from the TIDAL/Qobuz servers to your device. Roon’s architecture requires that the tracks be downloaded to your Roon Server before being sent to the device for playback. If the network is failing either on downloading the track download or sending the stream to the endpoints, playback will fail.
The bottom line here is that Roon works just fine for the vast majority of our users without issues, across many different types of setups. I know this isn’t the answer you are hoping for, but all signs point to an unstable network connection on your end. To solve this issue, I would suggest:
Ensure that the router firmware is up-to-date and non-ISP DNS servers are being used
Try to temporarily use a different router to see if it triggers any change in behavior (you can connect it to your modem, connect the Nucleus there and then use a remote via new router’s WiFi connection)
Try to use Roon on a different physical location, or provide it another source of network access (such as your phone’s hotspot via another PC Roon Server) or you can use a WISP client to convert the hotspot to Ethernet output.
Once these aspects are verified, we’ll be in a much better place to diagnose & fully resolve this issue.