Problems with Tidal over Roon

Support
1

Core Machine

ROCK, Roon v1.8.795, running on Intel NUC8i7BEH1

Remote: iPad ios 14.6, Roon 1.8.795

Network Details

Netgear Orbi router; NUC connected via Cat6 ethernet through Cisco 24 port switch

Audio Devices

Multiple zones via Meridian 218s

Library Size

Local NAS storage, ~10k tracks, but issue (I believe) is with Tidal or Roon information retrieval

Description of Issue

I’m having problems with Tidal (I think) over Roon. When Roon looks to pull information, usually Artist or Album information, ~50% of the time I see the Roon animated logo for 10-20 seconds. Frequently, it times out and I’m left with a blank white screen. Rinse, repeat. Most often, I eventually get the data, but this has grown tiresome. I saw the same problem with Tidal over Sooloos before I moved over to Roon 1+ years back, so this is an unpleasant flashback.

I also occasionally see the purple-on-black error message “Track not available on Tidal” (I think that’s what it says), but sometimes, the track does load and play, sometimes it skips to next track on the same album.

This also occurs on my MacBookPro (2018, Big Sur) Roon Remote (v 1.8.795) app. When it occurs, reboots of the NUC, and Roon Remote apps on iPad and Mac, don’t improve the situation. All software on devices is up to date.

This has been happening for several months, and not consistently. I didn’t have this problem before then.

2

When you are having problems connecting to tidal can you run traceroute? Your Macbook should let you from the networking tool. www.tidal.com it isn’t exact but will let you know where any lag may occur in the route.

Also, check the DNS servers you use. a reverse lookup can take a while to timeout yet may still work eventually. 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are public DNS servers from google. see if those help.

Good luck.

1 Like
3

For grins, I logged out of Tidal. I didn’t encounter any delays in accessing and playing local data stored in my networked (Ethernet, again) SAN.

I then logged back in to Tidal, and began running into the delays again. A few screenshots below—first an example than displayed for about 15 seconds before finally bringing up the selected album (from Tidal), the second illustrating an artist query where information stalled partway, and the third where that retrieval failed after timing out.

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4

would you please paste the output of traceroute to tidal?
also at a terminal prompt would you please run ‘ping -c 5 www.tidal.com’, and paste those results?
Thank you.

5

Hello @John_S,

Thanks for sharing the details of the issue you’re encountering. We’d love to help :nerd_face:

@MamaTried’s suggestion, to change your DNS tto Cloudflare DNS, Quad9 or Google DNS is great! Thank you @MamaTried. Does that help?

If you haven’t tried it yet, would you please give a shot clearing your cache?

  • Stop Roon Server from running in the Web UI
  • Find and open your RoonServer database
  • Navigate to RoonServer/Cache
  • Move the contents of the /Cache folder elsewhere, like your desktop
  • Try restarting Roon Server via the WebUI and verify if the issue still occurs

Thanks a lot :pray:

6

Please give me specific instructions, or point to some, on how to accomplish these tasks. These are not tasks that I consider part of a normal user’s skill set.

Also, as I use the Roon Remote principally on my iPad, some of these tasks don’t make much sense to me.

Is the issue I’m seeing one that Roon has seen with other users? Are these “fixes” discussed elsewhere on your site?

7

Fair question. To change the DNS servers on your iPad, the following seems correct.

I hope this just works and the rest isn’t necessary. knocks on wood

If the DNS entries are already populated, please write them down for later retrieval. No easy way to get them, but the google ones should work for everything going forward.

https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-change-your-ipads-dns-servers/

8

Maybe an explanation why?
Apologies.
When you look up a website you type in www.google.com
the computer (network) has no clue where that is. so it looks it up using a Domain Name System. it’s a fancy phone book where you know larrys butcher shop (google) is down the road, but what’s the phone number (IP address)?
If the DNS servers you use are poorly configured, addresses don’t get updated and things time out.
What use to work now sort of works, some of the content is in the same place others not. It sorta works. Like your second image.
It then stops trying so is says nope I know nothing other than the base cache’d information and you have screenshot #3.

I hope to have not been patronizing, that isn’t my intent at all.

9

Irrespective of whether I spend time trying to jump through these hoops to develop more data, I resent having to do so. This is not the behavior of properly configured software, and I wouldn’t feel as much as I do absent Roon’s admission in its prior update that it has been having problems:

"We’ve heard from some users about skipped tracks while playing TIDAL content. We’ve determined that this happens when the remote server at TIDAL, or some network infrastructure in between Roon and TIDAL, causes a connection to drop before the full track has been delivered.

We have modified Roon to retry more aggressively when these failures happen, and we believe that this will resolve the most issues of this kind."

So, the problems continue; the issues are not resolved.

10

I believe I’m unable to help you further.

11

@beka, I first tried clearing the cache.

No change. Problems continue.

I then changed DNS servers.

No change. Problems continue.

Is this an issue that Roon is continuing to see, and is working on to fix?

12

Hey @John_S,

I appreciate your effort in trying out the solutions we’ve mentioned.

The quote you’ve shared seems to be from our release notes of build 795 and it announces the fix of previous issues encountered with TIDAL. While your symptoms might be similar, the cause might be different. To determine that alongside a solution, I’ve gotten in touch with our technical team so they can help with the next steps.

Please, bear with us just a little longer :pray:

13

Any update?

14

Hi @John_S

Are you still seeing issues here?

If so, please note the exact local time + date when this issue next occurs and the name of the track that was playing and upload your Roon Logs by using these instructions. The best way to get them over to me would be via Dropbox / Google Drive, but if you don’t have either service please let me know and I can provide alternate upload instructions.

15

I’ve been away and will not return to my setup until after Sept. 4. I’ll reply after that.

1 Like
16

Dylan, I’ve been using since Sept 4. During the next few months, I noted improvement, but still encountered time-outs of the type I had earlier noted. I’d say their frequency was 50% or less of my previous experience. However, over time, this has improved further. Over the last month, I’d say that I’ve encountered them perhaps twice.

I’m pleased with the direction–thanks for your attention. (Note: nothing has otherwise changed in my network or system configurations, other than Roon software updates.)