Hello, I just recently finished up the trial for Roon and am now a full-fledged, paying customer . It figures, however, that now that Iām through the trial which went very smoothly, Iāve had several hiccups the last few nights where Iāll skip to the next song in Radio mode and playback stops completely. When this occurs, I have to remote into the Audio PC and reboot it, since I canāt close/launch Roon through RDP. I have Roon set to start when Windows starts, so thatās the quickest way around this issue. The two PCs sit next to each other and are on the same GBit LAN.
Two PCs, āAudio PCā and a āMain PCā
Roon runs on the Audio PC, Server 2012R2. Yes, I know this isnāt supported but Iāve always figured that was more from a GUI standpoint, it just doesnāt work well. Since Iām running the GUI on a separate box (Win 10) and just controlling the playback in a Zone on the Audio PC, this seemed like it should work ok and for the most part, it really does work great. Back to the Audio PC, Roon outputs to JPlay 6.2 via ASIO. JPlay outputs via Kernel Streaming to a Pink Faun i2S bridge which is then attached to my DAC.
From what Iāve observed, this only seems to happen in Radio mode. If I have a queue with songs in it or am playing from a Playlist, I havenāt yet been able to reproduce this but thatās more rare a use case for me at this point than using Radio.
I do not have TIDAL linked to Roon at this time.
All files are stored as local storage relative to the Audio PC - some on a 500G internal SSD, others on a 1TB USB external drive.
The wildcard in all this is JPlay, IMO. Iāve had some issues with it in the past through JRiver, so if there have been similar issues reported with Roon + JPlay, just let me know and I can focus my attention there. Any guidance is appreciated, thank you!
When this occurs, I have to remote into the Audio PC and reboot it, since I canāt close/launch Roon through RDP. I have Roon set to start when Windows starts, so thatās the quickest way around this issue.
I suggest switching to RoonServer for this PC. It will make this problem go away. It also knows how to start itself when Windows starts, and how to re-start itself after any crashes that might happen.
From what Iāve observed, this only seems to happen in Radio mode.
Radio playback and ānormalā playback are not different in terms of how we talk to audio hardware. Meaning, if you set up a playlist with the exact tracks that radio would have chosen, then the communication between Roon and the audio device will be the same.
One difference is: since Radio is picking music randomly and never playing a whole album at a time, it may cause the output sample rate to change more often. You might be able to provoke the issue more readily by queueing up tracks of different sample rates manually.
The next build has a fix for a bug with similar symptoms to yours, but that happens when playback fails due to errors in the file. Itās possible that radio is picking a file with errors, but it seems unlikely that it would happen multiple times like that, so Iām not totally convinced that this is your issue.
The wildcard in all this is JPlay, IMO
Weāve had some people conclude that JPlay+Roon is rock solid, and others have problems. Here, it seems pretty good, but Iād definitely try taking it out of the chain to see if the problems go away.
@vova or @mike will be around shortly to grab logs. It would be best to get a log from right after this happens, before youāve done anything else.
Thank you Brian! Iāll look into Roon Server, that is news to me but good news indeed, especially considering my setup.
I can grab logs whenever, and Iāll figure out how to do so and grab one after it fails again. Of course, now that Iām anticipating it, it wonāt happen for a good long while, per usual
An additional data point. Donāt know why I hadnāt tried this beforeā¦ so if I try to skip to the next song, it doesnāt play. Iāve tried skipping 5 songs, no dice. However, I just figured out that if I advance into the song a little? It works fine.
I also installed RoonServer on my āaudio PCā and it works a treat, thanks for that tip, again!
I made a small change to JPlay to reduce the amount of buffering time needed per song, thinking Roon might be expecting playback to start quickly, but my previous settings would buffer for about a second or a little longer. Even with āinstantaneousā playback, it still does it.
For kicks I created some logs after it did its thing (twice tonight, and I didnāt try to skip a song, it was just the next song on the radio) and I was able to unzip the support package and look at the most recent log file in Notepad. I didnāt see anything that jumped out at me, certainly no errors, just a message that it was āGoing to x.xxxā which I figure is just an index for the songās āidentityā to Roon. For whatever thatās worth
. It figures, however, that now that Iām through the trial which went very smoothly, Iāve had several hiccups the last few nights where Iāll skip to the next song in Radio mode and playback stops completely. When this occurs, I have to remote into the Audio PC and reboot it, since I canāt close/launch Roon through RDP. I have Roon set to start when Windows starts, so thatās the quickest way around this issue. The two PCs sit next to each other and are on the same GBit LAN.