PA-220 firewall directly wired, uplink to cable modem
Connected Audio Devices
AES/EBU to Tambaqui DAC
Number of Tracks in Library
20k, majority local storage, rest Qobuz
Description of Issue
At not-so-often times, starting a track will result in the track + pops/cracks overlayed. To me it sounds similar to a problem I had before I had the MU1 and was playing MacminiM1 → Tambaqui (roon endpoint over Ethernet). Similar thing happened today again on the MU1/Tambaqui over AES (I believe the third time in total). Started playing track, pop, crack, pressed stop. Start again: all clean and no problems after for that song and consecutive. I checked the logs but can’t find anything directly relatable, did capture some time points so you can pinpoint where it happened. So I’d love for you to take a look on them and suggest how to further troubleshoot this.
Is there a good way to upload the file? Thank you in advance!
Ha, that’s a great question. In this case: 44.1/24/2 (Qobus) → 44.1/16/2 (local drive) though with a day inbetween. Data below
Thanks for thinking along here Martin!
Thank you for bringing this issue to the attention of the team and Roon Community. Sorry to hear you’ve been experiencing some intermittent digital distortion. In addition to the steps @Martin_Webster helpfully proposed, we have a few clarifying questions in case you encounter the issue again:
Are certain file types or streaming qualities affected more than others? From your report, the first case was a 44.1/24 stereo track from Qobuz, but your library has mostly local content. Have you experienced any issues with local files, too? We’ll want to pin down as many variables with the source content as possible.
Do you have additional endpoints you can try with? We’ll also want to pin down if the issue resides between the Core → Tambaqui or upstream of your Core.
Do you have any DSP applied? If so, try playing transparently without any signal processing.
Appreciate the thinking along here. All I can really confirm is: no DSP set. I’m in close monitoring mode and will fetch my roon logs as soon as this happens again. It’s sporadic, but rest assured I’ll be flipping through local and Qobus files a lot more the coming days Silent Angel Bonn n8 is still in the ethernet signal path.
And yes, I have a pair of Kef LS50W2’s I use during work, I don’t believe I had any ticks on that set just yet and I do use those quite often but I’ll do some switching between local/Qobus there too.
One important closing thing though: shall I keep the 50ms rsync delay? It’s set now, but it might make more sense to disable that to troubleshoot from initial state? I’ve set it for the Tambaqui set and also the Kef’s and will gladly change it back if you suggest so!
Very sorry for the slow response here. If you’ve experienced the cracks/pops in the last two weeks since your post, the tech support team is standing by to investigate logs thoroughly.
It’s up to you. If 50ms has solved the digital distortion issues, then that’s probably enough time for your DAC to lock on. Some users generally keep resync at half of a second (500ms resync delay setting) just to accommodate the signal lock for any DAC, but you likely won’t need it that high. You can go from 0ms up to 500ms in small increments to test out what feels best for you. If you’d like more context, I recommend flipping through this Help Center article.
Please let us know if we can provide any more information!
All good, I went back to 0ms and have experienced zero issues so far. I’ll be sure to capture all should this happen again. Plus, well, I have the work-around of setting the resync delay should this start happening again
