Radio stops after each track and shows wrong "similar to" text

Support
1

@support

I have selected Radio from a focused album view ("-classical, -radio series, +released >=2000").
First problem: the Queue says “Playing music similar to: Classical, Radio Series”. This is plainly not true.

Second, more major problem: Playback stops after each track. It says “Radio will continue in…0:00” (or sometimes sticks on 0:01), shows the next track it will play, but then doesn’t play it. The time-bar is stuck at the end of the last track. My device display (a Linn DSM) shows the pause symbol, with no artist information, implying the queue is empty.

Running Roon 1.5 on QNAP HS-251+, Roon control on Windows 10.

EDIT: Shuffle displays the wrong criteria as well, but it plays continuously. Seems to be only Radio that stops.

3

Additional information.
The Shuffle also stops. It seems intermittent for both.
It played for 6 tracks, then stopped. I had to hit Next for the next three, then it played the next one automatically, then it stopped again.
I did notice when this happens, my Linn DSM display very briefly starts scrolling the title of the next track, then it disappears.
Hope that helps.

4

Hey @Timster — Thanks for sharing your observations. The report is greatly appreciated!

First problem: the Queue says “Playing music similar to: Classical, Radio Series”. This is plainly not true.

Can you expand on this first part a bit? Is it that it’s not playing music similar to those tags? Or that there is no music being queued up at all?

For the second part of your report, can you please verify the following:

  • Is this happening with local files, TIDAL files, or both?
  • You mentioned that Shuffle is also experiencing this behavior. Is it always certain files that are causing this behavior?
  • Can you think of any patterns in behavior (procedurally speaking) that you may be noticing that could be influencing this experience?
  • Is this behavior happening for all Zones, or only one?

May I kindly ask that you please provide a brief description of your current setup using this link as a guide. Make sure to describe your network configuration/topology, including any networking hardware currently in use, so we can have a clear understanding of how your devices are communicating.

Regards,
Dylan

5

Hi Dylan

First part - It loads an appropriate track to play next for my focus (not classical, not radio series) but at the bottom where it says “playing tracks similar to” it lists Classical and Radio Series. ie. It’s missing the negative.

Second part:

  1. I don’t have Tidal (Qobuz - any plans on integrating them?) so it’s only local files.
  2. It’s not certain files that I can tell. Neither is there anything obviously the same for those that do auto-play against those that don’t.
  3. The same behaviour occurs when selecting either Shuffle or Radio in the albums browser. It seems to be only when it is attempting to load a new track into the queue - there is no problem when playing items already in the queue. It also happens to both FLACs and MP3s and regardless of bit depth/sample rates.
  4. I only have the one zone.

My setup is:
Router is a Netgear DGN2200 connected to a Netgear GS108 Gb switch by Ethernet
QNAP HS-251+ connected to the switch by Ethernet
Linn Akurate (Exakt) DSM connected to the same switch by Ethernet, and set as the sole network output device
No WiFi involved except to the control point,
I have Volume Levelling enabled, but this doesn’t affect playback performance or changes of track within existing queue entries.

6

Hey @Timster — I appreciate the additional details here, thank you.

I’ll pass along the first reported behavior to our technical team for review. I’ll follow up on that when I hear back from them.

For the playback behavior you’ve reported, I did a little research into your setup and I found that your Core machine is pretty far below what we recommend for running a Roon Core, so performance problems would not be surprising here. We can still take a deeper look at what’s happening here, but if the problem ends up being performance, we may have to recommend you get a machine that’s closer to the recommended specs.

What are the specs on your Windows 10 device? Would it be possible to try to use the Windows 10 device as your Roon Core to verify what the experience is like there? This test would help narrow down what is contributing to the behavior you’ve been experiencing.

Regards,
Dylan

7

I know it’s not top spec, but I only have 1000 albums so I am evaluating Roon to see how it copes with my NAS. It has been working very well except for this one issue - if it plays queue entries flawlessly, it seems peculiar it’s only the automatic addition that Radio/Shuffle performs that should fail on occasion. Does the fact my Linn DSM briefly scrolls the next track title before it stops indicate anything else?
I am not in a position to buy a higher spec NAS (the one I have is also quite new), nor can it’s memory be enlarged unfortunately. I have monitored it’s resources while running Roon and it seems capable (as Brian Luczkiewicz’s hardware recommendations says, with my small library it should be OK). The only thing I can possibly do is buy an external SSD drive, attached by USB3.0, and reinstall Roon Core on that - would that help?

My Windows 10 control device is a Linx tablet, not capable of running the core. I also have a Windows 7 laptop though - it’s 5 years old but has 6GB RAM. How would I install core on it and point it to my music library on the NAS? Wouldn’t that introduce a network bottleneck? And can I have two cores running during the trial period?

EDIT: Although my laptop has an Intel Core i3 2.4GHz with 6GB RAM, within recommended specs, I only want Roon if it works on my NAS.

8

I have tried again this morning, recording what roon control does and the QNAP resource monitor. There is no difference in the resources used between tracks, there is no spike when a track changes, neither does it matter whether I manually add the next track into the queue (by using the thumbs up). The track sometimes gets to the end (0:00 remaining) and stops, sometimes it stops 1 second before the end.
As this doesn;t happen with albums, I wonder if maybe it’s something to do with gapless playback and/or the communication with my Linn DSM?

Is it possible to upload a screen capture video of the above? It may show what I mean better!

9

FYI, I have tried some of my m3u playlists, so Shuffle/Radio isn’t involved, and I get the same symptoms. Have since played albums, again without any issues.

10

Hey @Timster — Thank you for your detailed response, I appreciate the additional insight here.

To start, I’d like to enable some diagnostics on your account so our technical staff can get some more insight into what’s going on here. However, before I enable this feature, I’d like to ask for your help ensuring we gather the right information.

First, can you please reproduce the issue once more and note the time at which the error occurs. Then respond here with that time, and I’ll make sure we review the diagnostics related to that timestamp.

While the technical team is reviewing, there are a couple of tests that I’d like for you to run to help further isolate the behavior. May I kindly ask that you attempt the following and report back your findings:

  1. Please reboot your Core machine, Linn DSM enpoint, and any relevant networking hardware. After you do so, try again and see if the experience changes at all.

  2. Try one of the following steps listed below:

    • I understand that the Linn DSM is you only audio zone but I would like to propose the following so we can see how another endpoint behaves. If you play directly out of the Win10 control device (i.e the “Linx tablet”) via “system output” do you experience the same issue(s) as you do with the DSM?
    • You can use the Windows 7 laptop as a Core and compare the experience there compared to the NAS. You can simply disconnect the current Core (Settings > General > Disconnect) and then activate the Windows 7 Core. You can connect to your NAS by using these instructions.

By taking the steps listed above I am confident we will be able to move closer to isolating the root cause of this behavior. Thank you for your continued patience and assistance as we troubleshoot this, it’s genuinely appreciated!

Regards,
Dylan

11

Thanks Dylan, I will give them a go later today. In the meantime, I have also asked for any similar behaviour from Linn users, and it has been reported from someone with the following:

I am seeing the behaviour above as well in same scenarios in that the music pauses/stops on the DS, although Roon appears it is stuck playing the previous track/s. Doesn’t clear until you click next track to get you to the current track…

Tell Roon it’s not a performance issue. I’ve got a dedicated Mac mini i5 with SSD and more than enough RAM and I get same issue as yourself, it’s a comms issue between Roon and the DS I think

I will get back to you on the tests you mentioned later.

12

Reproduced at 08:12AM BST precisely.

13

OK, this morning there was an update to the core (Build 323), so either that or the reboot seems to have fixed it for now. Have been playing non-stop since just after the last stop at 8:12.
Will keep you posted if/when it happens again.

14

@support

Afraid this has recurred, although oddly it doesn’t happen when playing albums, only randomised tracks (shuffle, radio, playlists).
I have logged it through Linn’s diagnostics, which showed that:

This report shows that
Playing a 44.1kHz / 24-bit track from Roon
At 147s into playback, Roon sent message saying it was stopping sending data
Immediately after this message, Roon disconnected from the DS
You submitted the report approx 6 minutes later

So it appears that Roon initiated the disconnection.

I subsequently tried again and captured the roon server logs.

This is a cut and paste from the Live Log of roon server:

05/17 16:18:25 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1232mb Physical, 1118mb Managed, 0 Handles, 65 Threads
05/17 16:18:28 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [65% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:29/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:18:33 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [14% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:34/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:18:35 Trace: [scd] [Linn Akurate Exakt DSM] Transition Connected => WaitForEnd
05/17 16:18:36 Info: [scd] [Linn Akurate Exakt DSM] [client:192.168.0.6:51107] OnRead(off=0, count=0)
05/17 16:18:39 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:40/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:18:40 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 64 Threads
05/17 16:18:55 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 60 Threads
05/17 16:19:09 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:42/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:19:10 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 64 Threads
05/17 16:19:25 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 60 Threads
05/17 16:19:39 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:42/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:19:40 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 64 Threads
05/17 16:19:55 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 59 Threads
05/17 16:20:09 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:42/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:20:10 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 62 Threads
05/17 16:20:25 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 59 Threads
05/17 16:20:39 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:42/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:20:40 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 63 Threads
05/17 16:20:55 Info: [stats] 3526mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 59 Threads
05/17 16:21:09 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:42/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:21:10 Info: [stats] 3527mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 63 Threads
05/17 16:21:20 Trace: [Lounge] [Enhanced, 24/96 FLAC => 24/96] [1% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:42/3:42] Hope (Album Version) - Jack Johnson
05/17 16:21:25 Info: [stats] 3527mb Virtual, 1233mb Physical, 1119mb Managed, 0 Handles, 62 Threads

As you can see, at the end it was stuck on the last second of the Jack Johnson track “Hope”. At 16:18:39 it was playing at 3:40/3:42, 14% buffered. After that it was stuck playing at 1% buffered on 3:42/3:42 for ever and a day.

In the downloaded logs, I’ve extracted the relevant file from the zip file which shows the same thing but there may be more in there. But I can’t upload txt files and there’s too much to quote here?

15

@support

The Linn folk have spotted from the logs above that the WaitForEnd is never logged as being received. They also report when testing they see in their logs “OnPlayFeedback OnToNext”, without the WaitForEnd message.
They tell me it would be best “to get Roon to decode their own logs and we can then work out whose issue this is”.

Many thanks!

16

Hi @Timster — Thanks for the detailed report!

I have enabled diagnostics on your account so our technical staff can get some more insight into what’s going on here. The next time your Core is active a diagnostics report will automatically be generated and uploaded directly to our servers

Once that’s been received, I’ll be sure to update this thread and pass the diagnostics over to the team for further analysis.

Regards,
Dylan

17

Thanks Dylan. I will fire it up now.

18

And it has immediately stopped - at the end of the first shuffled track @ approx 13:23 BST

19

Roon server was using 460MB memory and there was 47% available when the above happened. So after leaving it for a while, I tried a playlist (an .m3u) and that was working for a few tracks, so I stopped that. Then I tried Radio - and it stopped at the end of the first track (before the next track had been loaded into the queue). Hit Next, and it stopped again after the next track.
Then I tried an album, and it’s playing perfectly so far.

20

Thanks, @Timster.

I just wanted to confirm that the diagnostics report has been received and that I have sent them to the technical team for analysis. Once they’ve reviewed I’ll be back to update you here on their findings.

-Dylan

1 Like
22

Hi,

I encounter the same behaviour with a Linn DSM, it happens frequently

My setup : Roon Core (DSP disabled) running on a headless Mac mini server (late 2009 core 2 duo, with SSD’s and 8GB RAM), the library is located on the Mac mini, wired ethernet connexion

Monitor activity shows around 90% processor free and 50% memory free (running roon, minimserver and jriver)