Roon Frustrations

@support

**LENOVO i7 8th gen Windows , latest Roon version

BT Smart hub*

Devialet 200 , connected Via Ethernet IPad used as Roon remote

I mainly use Tidal now

I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Roon, first year hardly any issues at all.
Lately I am having too many issues . It started a few months ago with the IPad not connecting to the Core . I used to solve this by deleting the Roon app and then reinstalling it. This worked every time…but surely I should not have to do this

A few days ago I updated my Core machine to a new Lenovo i7 8th gen lap top…since then I have had problems.

My TV is also through my Devialet and when i chose to listen to music I just hit the play now in the album screen. With the old lap top this immediately switched to the Ethernet input and the music played.
Since introduction of the new Core this does not happen. A blue line moves around where the music playing screen is. I have to keep hitting play now to get the music to play.

The messages I get are either

Roon lost control of the audio device as the input was switched

or

Audio device in use

I have rebooted the Core a couple of times but this has not helped.
Can anyone help me with this ? Or is anyone having similar issues?

Hi @Womaz,

Apologies for the trouble here!

Is there any difference in how the current Core machine is connected to the network compared to the previous Core?

Does this behavior occur when playing to all endpoints or just to the Devialet? If you play to System Output do you see the same errors?

Hi
Everything is connected the same as it was.
I only output to the Devialet , nowhere else
Sorry not sure what you mean by system endpoint

Steve

They mean using the system audio output of the laptop on the Roon core. You can activate the laptop itself as an endpoint.

I take it your laptop is wired to and not wireless?

Thanks for the clarification. I have just tried this and the same problem occurs using the system output.
The lap top is wireless to my router.

Steve

Just to add. The problems with the Ipad Roon app have been happening for a few months. Like I say above I solve this by deleting the app and reinstalling it.
The other issue has ONLY started now since I changed my Core lap top. This also happens when trying to play my own Music files, so it is not just with Tidal the problem occures

Steve

If you core is wireless then that is likely to be the root of your problems. Unless you have a very stable wifi network then it’s susceptible to drop outs and bandwidth issues and discovery. f your streaming from Tidal it will take double the wireless bandwidth as it’s pulling from the internet wirelessly then pushing out wirelessly. Wireless is not duplex and is shared for every device on your network. Your new laptops wireless adaptor might not be as good as your last one hence why your getting more dropouts.

I would try and connect with a wired connection if you can to see if things work better. Roon don’t recommend having the core wirelessly. Some users do but have better results using the mesh systems as they give more stability over all.

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Simon thank you for the replies. This makes sense. However how frustrating is this. So my five your old lap top worked better as my Roon Core .
I can’t have it connected by cables as it’s in a different room
I don’t know what to do now to be honest …there has to be something I can do. I do find it hard to believe this new lap top has a worse WiFi card than a five year old lap top
I have now connected the lap top which is my core player via usb into my Devialet and the problem is still there

I have been considering a nucleus or one of the innuos products to act as my core . This maybe the push I need. Frustrating though …

Is there nothing I can do ?
The old lap top could be reintroduced just to act as the Roon Core I guess but this is not ideal

Are support still looking at this thread ?

I would first get your self a long LAN cable and try your laptop nearer to your router and plug in a cable to it. Run it for while and see if this makes things smoother. This will then at least rule out of it’s your wireless network. Also perhaps look at the bt whole home WiFi solution or other mesh options as they might give the stability you need. Not all wireless adaptors are the same and some do under perform. Can I ask what band are.you using for WiFi 2hz or 5ghz? If you can on your router see if you can set it up to have a separate 2ghz ssid and 5ghz ssid and try 5ghz it’s less crowded and offers higher bandwidth but can be hindered by walls.

Why cant you run a switch near the devialet as that has ethernet connection and run off cable to your laptop from there, just disconnect it when not using Roon.

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Again Simon thank you. Your help is much appreciated.
I am not very technical I am afraid. It’s an age thing :joy:

I don’t want to add anything switches or anything else as it worked before .

For some time I have been wanting to get the lap top out of the music chain for this very reason, too much can go wrong.
I have got a much faster modern lap top and the wireless adapter could be worse than the old lap top I have ? This is just crazy really .

One way I can find out for sure I gues is to move the core back on the old lap top. I may do this if I get time to experiment .

I really can’t hard wire my lap top to my router as it’s just totally unpractical in my set up.

I think this may be the push I need to finally get a nucleus or INNUOS product to get the lap top out of the music chain altogether .

Once again thanks for taking time to help me .

Serious question and not a criticism of support as I genuinely don’t know how they work…but will they still be looking at this thread . Or do we just get one reply . I have been lucky enough that I have not really needed them before

I think connecting the core to the network via WiFi is fraught with problems. There is a lot of data that needs to be pushed through the network for Roon to work properly IMO. Wired is the way to go IMO.

I’ve been using a Roon Nucleus as my core, wired to the network via Cat5e cable for the last month or so, and it’s worked faultlessly.
BTW, the Roon Nucleus will only connect to the network via cable. No WiFi connection.

If you getting a Nucleus or Innnuos you will need them wired they don’t work wirelessly. What I dont understand is if your devialet it connected via ethernet why cant you connect you laptop if you listening in the same room? even if Its only to test things and see if this is the root of your problems. If you dont try to eliminate things that could be the problem then you wont get to a decent fix. Plugging a switch in is the simplest thing. Plug it in plug cable from router in it and then run cables from it to your devialet and laptop or whatever you decide on for the core.

With regards to a newer laptop being worse, yes its possible the network performance could be significantly less on a newer model. It depends on how good a unit it is, where the antennas are. My laptop for one does not get as good wireless as my phone in the same spot. Just because its new does not mean all the components are better.

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Think of it as the low water pressure in your house due to a small pipe as the WiFi.
Changing the taps ( changing to a nucleus server) won’t make any difference. You need to increase the pipe which in this case either means a cable or a better wireless system.

An acceptable switch is 20 USD or less, cable 4 USD. Cheap enough to do as just a test.

Wireless is dependent upon environmental issues as well. Other wireless equipment, microwave interference, neighbors new WiFi setups, all can degrade what was once an acceptable WiFi signal.

Also, computers are dependent upon the parts used. Laptops are one of the areas where the race to cheap has caused many manufacturers to use the cheapest parts they can source to make margin.

Not really. The one way you can find out for sure, is to temporarily move the laptop and get it connected via wire. That way you will know for sure if wireless is the cause of your issues. Again this is just an temporary information troubleshooting step.

If you are set on keeping wireless, which I absolutely do not recommend for the core, then you might look into strengthening your wireless networking. Others have found success with the Euro and other mesh networks. Once again, they do come with their own potential issues. Really, nothing is as simple as just plugging in a wire, though.

I note that Steve says this has been going on “lately”, “started a few months ago”. Could this be coincident with the release of 1.6? On my network, without other changes, 1.6 has dramatically increased the instability of the product. An environment which worked flawlessly with 1.5 is now subject to dropouts (mainly on my Chromecast Audio endpoint) and crashes of the remote app (on my Android Fire TV tablet) which never happened in the previous release. What he relates is different, but may be related to the same changes.

Clearly one thing to try is to move the Core back to the older laptop that worked, and see if that fixes it. If so, it’s probably a networking problem, but if not, it’s likely a 1.6 Roon software problem.

On a related note: @Martin_Kelly, @CrystalGipsy, @ged_hickman1, it seems to me that all this advice about moving away from WiFi is probably ultimately in the wrong direction. Yes, wired often does work better, but clearly wireless with lots of IoT endpoints confusing things is the way the future is going to be. That is to say, Roon had better figure out, quickly, how to work well on typical wireless networks. No other system I know of seems to have the same level of issues with connectivity, and Roon is doing nothing all that nifty which justifies them. Time for us, the poor users, to stop enabling this lossage by urging other users to work around it.

Exactly what I was thinking, I’ve had instability issues with 1.6 as well, mostly music stops playing and it hangs/blue line moving back and forth on the slider. Very frustrating. Rebooting my core works but eventually it hangs again at some point.

Nothing wrong with wireless endpoints I have loads but having the brain wireless not so in a lot of circumstances especially if your connections are up and down and make sure you not using overlapping channels and have too much cross channel interference from neighbours, . Wireless is fine for one way traffic, but in Roon its not one way you pushing and pulling at the same time eating into your limited wireless bandwidth which varies from one minute to next in any system. The the lack of duplex becomes problematic here. Even systems like Sonos are not immune to this. Not saying you cant use wireless as others do but most that it works on tend to be Mesh systems that has wide coverage. But you look on any music streaming forums, wireless causes more issues than it solves. I cant see how you can compare IoT to roon though they hardly do much or send much data.

I disagree with your stance on ‘wired vs WiFi’.
It’s a simple fact of life that wired connections are quicker, more reliable and more stable and less prone to interference.
Manufacturers of quality network audio players such as Linn and Lumin eschew WiFi for these very reasons. Yes, WiFi ‘works’, but it’s prone to many problems that a wired connection is just immune to.
I think Roon maybe the same. You just can’t rely on consistency with a wireless connection. I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon, and I don’t personally expect Roon, and other companies to necessarily plough additional resources into a ‘problem’ that is fixed with a simple cable.

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