Roon Core buffering

As we can read in version 1.7 Release Notes:

Streaming Optimizations

For music playing from TIDAL and Qobuz, Roon now buffers data in a less disruptive way, and there are optimizations which reduce disk activity, CPU usage, and memory traffic. This means that streaming content starts faster and slower internet connections (or lower-powered cores) may also benefit when streaming high-resolution content.

I am speculating buffer management design was improved to lower / eliminate risk of audio drops in case buffer underflow can’t be recovered fast enough due to busy CPU + (temporary) slow internet connection. Maybe by DMA usage + buffering “enough ahead” to cope with disruption in DL stream.

I have been experiencing audio drops on HiRes streaming and was suspecting buffering scheme, but actually not on the Roon Core side but rather on Devialet side because AIR enabled you to select buffer size while RAAT was not, meaning there was no way on RAAT to size buffer big enough to cope with DL stream jitter.

I would love to read some details on this buffer improvement with version 1.7, and as a collateral some light on RAAT buffering on end-point (I imagine same in Devialet and others) sp. in terms of buffer size (fixed? Why not selectable as in AIR?).

@danny or another Roon folk? Hopefully no sensitive IP in answer…

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the most impactful thing we did was kill parallel buffering, which optimized for a case that probably doesn’t matter as much (when you hit next on a track you don’t want to hear) – the result was less network load, less activity on the CPUU and RAM, and dramatically kinder to all other things on your LAN, including your router.

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Got it, like a browser being slow on current page because loading potential next linked pages. Smart idea but defeating primary use case :slight_smile:

How is buffering on RAAT side? I was wondering the other day why there is no setting for buffer size on RAAT while there is one for AIR (which I was tuning to cope with in-stream uncertainty at cost of delay/reactivity)

Very happy with 1.7. All my connect wire, take 30 minutes for everything update and run even better.

Is it possible that this upgrade caused buffering or music drop? I have been using the same set up for years and just suddenly I am experiencing my first music drop or buffering issues where the music cuts out and then picks back up.

Other than the Roon Core upgrade, the only other change was to move to Catalina Mac OS that the core is running on.

Help?