Random stops about 5 seconds into tracks

Support
1

Roon Core Machine

Roon Rock Version 2.0 (build 1182) production – Server Software re-installed a few days ago, restarted approx. 0830 on this day.
Storage on USB 3 External HDD, 1110 albums.

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Huawei 4G CPE B625-261 router, excellent signal strength (mast end of road). Router Wi-fi turned off . Wi-fi handled by BT Whole Home MESH 6 disc system.

Connected Audio Devices

Three endpoints running:

Spare Room – RoPieee 2022.11.2 (0663), Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5, USB into Cambridge Audio DacMagic plus. MESH Ethernet backhaul, signal strength -65 dBM “Good connection”.

Dining Room - RoPieee 2022.11.2 (0661), Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3, IQaudIO Pi-DAC(+/PRO/Zero) HAT. MESH Ethernet backhaul, signal strength -52 dBM “Excellent connection”.

Kitchen - RoPieee 2022.11.2 (0661), Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3, Justboom Digi HAT, signal strength -49 dBM “Excellent connection”.

Number of Tracks in Library

9070 tracks

Description of Issue

Random stops about 5 seconds into tracks.

2

Hi @Nick_Walker,

My apologies for the slow response. However, I’ve got your back and have assigned the case to me.

Is the issue ongoing?

Can you give me some date/time/track played information for the issue when you reproduce it? I can look at diagnostics and see what’s happening when the issue occurs.

Thanks,
Wes

4

Can you give me some date/time/track played information for the issue when you reproduce it?

I can, I have a spreadsheet of tests in the hope that a pattern will emerge!

December 19th:

0850 stopped after 2 hours
1020 stopped after 1.5 hours
1153 stopped after 4 hours
2055 stopped after 2.5 hours with different endpoints

Cheers

Nick

5

What if you cut out the WiFi and temporary connect one of your endpoints by Ethernet?

6

Hey @Nick_Walker
It’s not just about signal strength.
Cellular is a shared medium. This means that even if the cell tower is right in front of you, performance can drop if there are lots of other people sucking data besides you and the tower only has limited capacity.

If changing your network parameters doesn’t bring any improvement, you can try this to find out if your tower’s limited capacity at peak times is the cause of the problem:

  1. Connect to a different tower and see if it gets better. A suitable tower you can find here:
  1. There is an app I also use myself, that allows you to set your bands and fix the selected tower,
    huaCtrl - ‘manage Huawei router by thecoder’, on play store or as APK.

Screenshot_20230114_140259_Gallery
Screenshot_20230114_140259_Gallery1069×1690 228 KB

You can also use it to check speeds when performance drops and check whether the same tower stays connected to your Huawei.
There are mobile providers who force the existing connection to be cut off when the tower gets overloaded.

  1. Contact your provider, give your tower details and ask about the available capacity. Here in Germany there are help forums from various providers, where you have a better chance than on the phone of getting hold of a competent person who can give you information.
7

Hi and thank you for engaging.

Nutshell:

I’ve been chasing Roon random stops for more than three years now. Trust me I definitely know absolutely everything that ‘might’ be causing the issue, as I have been through these pages at great length many times. The setup quoted in this post represents my end game, it represents a huge amount of time, changing components, trouble-shooting, tweaking, effort, emotion (mostly frustration) and money - and it does conform to Roon recommendations. I cannot hard wire my house with ethernet.

I think I can save us all a lot of time with one simple question:

Given access to Roon diagnostics and my logs, is it possible for Roon support to ascertain specifically what was responsible for the stops, rather than what might have been?

Again thank you for engaging, I love Roon because I love my music and my tether has always been very very long, but I think I can see the end of it approaching.

8

Just a fellow user here. Roon can remotely access your core and see failures in your network and looking at previous post they needed and you give them a Timestamp. I guess they will be back with you after the weekend. Hope you find a solution.

9

Hi @Nick_Walker,

Is your ROCK instance connected to a mesh node or hard-wired from box to router?

I checked and I can’t get any further back than 1/3 in your diagnostics logging. Can you please provide a more recent instance?

Thanks,
Wes

10

Hi Wes

<<Is your ROCK instance connected to a mesh node or hard-wired from box to router?

It’s hard-wired from box to router.

I saved the logs from the day in question, I’ve sent ‘Dec_19_22_RoonServer_log_see_10_21_37.zip’ via zohoexternal. The clue is in the title :slight_smile:
Cheers
Nick

11

Hi @Nick_Walker,

I wish the logs were more telling. All that I can see is that there are timeouts and as a result; dropouts when streaming media.

12/19 10:21:37 Warn: [Kitchen + Dining Room + Spare Room] [zoneplayer/raat] Too many dropouts (>3s dropped out in the last 30s). Killing stream
12/19 10:21:37 Trace: [Kitchen + Dining Room + Spare Room] [zoneplayer/raat] too many dropouts. stopping stream

12/19 10:21:33 Trace: [Spare Room] [Enhanced, 24/88 FLAC => 32/88] [5% buf] [PLAYING @ 3:07/3:08] Tree Among Shrubs - Men I Trust
12/19 10:21:34 Trace: [IQaudIODAC] [raatclient] GOT [2953] {"status":"Dropout","samples":1903}
12/19 10:21:34 Trace: [Cambridge Audio USB Audio 2.0] [raatclient] GOT [2503] {"status":"Dropout","samples":3444}
12/19 10:21:34 Trace: [IQaudIODAC] [raatclient] GOT [2953] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:34 Trace: [Cambridge Audio USB Audio 2.0] [raatclient] GOT [2503] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:34 Trace: [snd_rpi_justboom_digi] [raatclient] GOT [472] {"status":"Dropout","samples":43634}
12/19 10:21:35 Trace: [IQaudIODAC] [raatclient] GOT [2953] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:35 Trace: [Cambridge Audio USB Audio 2.0] [raatclient] GOT [2503] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:35 Trace: [snd_rpi_justboom_digi] [raatclient] GOT [472] {"status":"Dropout","samples":45864}
12/19 10:21:35 Info: [stats] 23311mb Virtual, 1121mb Physical, 425mb Managed, 375 Handles, 93 Threads
12/19 10:21:35 Trace: [IQaudIODAC] [raatclient] GOT [2953] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:35 Trace: [Cambridge Audio USB Audio 2.0] [raatclient] GOT [2503] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:35 Trace: [snd_rpi_justboom_digi] [raatclient] GOT [472] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:36 Trace: [IQaudIODAC] [raatclient] GOT [2953] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:36 Trace: [Cambridge Audio USB Audio 2.0] [raatclient] GOT [2503] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:36 Trace: [snd_rpi_justboom_digi] [raatclient] GOT [472] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:36 Trace: [IQaudIODAC] [raatclient] GOT [2953] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:36 Trace: [Cambridge Audio USB Audio 2.0] [raatclient] GOT [2503] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44101}
12/19 10:21:36 Trace: [snd_rpi_justboom_digi] [raatclient] GOT [472] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:37 Trace: [IQaudIODAC] [raatclient] GOT [2953] {"status":"Dropout","samples":44100}
12/19 10:21:37 Warn: [Kitchen + Dining Room + Spare Room] [zoneplayer/raat] Too many dropouts (>3s dropped out in the last 30s). Killing stream
12/19 10:21:37 Trace: [Kitchen + Dining Room + Spare Room] [zoneplayer/raat] too many dropouts. stopping stream

Normally, this indicates a network issue. While it’s possible that something with the Roon application is causing this, it’s not likely in my mind. However, I’m going to list the steps to rebuild Roon and RAAT. Please note, this will wipe your DSP settings and force you to re-enable audio sources. I see you reinstalled before but I’m hoping the extra steps of renaming RAAT will help.

  • Create a Backup of your current Roon database
  • Exit out of Roon
  • Navigate to your Roon’s Database Location
  • Find the folder that says “Roon” and “RAATServer”
  • Rename “Roon” to “Roon_old” and “RAATServer” to “RAATServer_old”
  • Reinstall Roon from our Downloads Page

I’m leaning more toward networking-related issues though. Ideally, the endpoints would be hard-wired but if that’s not an option, 5ghz network>2.4ghz network and when using 5ghz 40 MHz is the best channel.

Wes

1 Like
12

Hi Nick,

It seems you are playing to a group, have you tried to separate the group and play to the endpoints individually? And, do you get the same stops on each of them individually?

Cheers,
Daniel

2 Likes
13

Hi Wes

Thanks for this.

I agree, I’ve had the core on three different devices chasing dropouts thus far, however I shall do as instructed just in case.

In the meantime may I ask a few question please?

These words are very, very familiar to me. Are you able to drill down any further than ‘network issue’? i.e. is one of the three endpoints more suspicious than the others? Did one endpoint dropout first or do they all dropout simultaneously?

Why does Roon kill the stream rather than wait and reconnect?

It would seem to me that three working simultaneous endpoints is not too much to expect, so should I assume that the mystery network issue is fairly major?

The only item I have not changed, (because I can’t under the contract) is the router connecting to the mobile network, could this be the culprit? Unfortunately admin access is very limited, but any guidance would be welcome.

I suspect I’m asking too much of the logs, and I appreciate that you are not a network trouble-shooter, but I’ve changed every aspect of my network over the years to more conform to Roons needs, it’s as good as it can be now.

Having said I’ve changed everything:

My MESH is 36, I’ll change it to 40. Wouldn’t it be funny if after all this it was one click on one button!!:slight_smile:

1 Like
14

Hi Daniel

Yes not surprisingly ethernet all works fine, all the time. I’m chasing the (Roon quote) ‘Robust network’

And failing :slight_smile:

15

Hi Nick

You’ve mentioned using Rock but which Intel Nuc are you using and how much RAM does it have?

16

Hi Daniel

It’s a 5i5RYK with 16GB of RAM, but I’ve had the core on other devices chasing the dropouts. Pretty sure I’ve eliminated the ROCK as the culprit.

Never 100% sure of anything though, Roon multiroom is so fussy I may well have been chasing multiple causes. You should see my ‘Tests’ spreadsheet!!

Thanks

Nick

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