Roon is skipping MQA tracks

Describe Your Setup
Roon Version 1.5 (build 334) stable 64-Bit
On Windows10
Home built PC - Gigabyte M/B Core i5-3570 intel
8GB RAM
Samsung SSD for OS and Programs
Music is stored on an 8TB seagate drive inside the PC
Using Tidal combined with local music - 9894 files
Connected to a hIfIbERRY dIGI+ V1.3, RAAT 1.1.8
The house network is wired ethernet 100MB/s
Broadband is around 4.5Mbps DSL.

Describe The Issue
When running Roon playing tidal MQA tracks it gets a fair way through the track and then skips to the next track. Looking at the logs I can see some of these messages - see below.

Please tell me where the problem lies. Is it the HiFiBerry, The roon Core or the Internet speed.

08/05 09:00:37 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good

Then there are many of those, then a sequence a bit like this as it skips and plays a message on the player.

08/05 09:00:59 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:00:59 Trace: [HiFiBerry] [Lossless 3.1x, 24/48 MQA TIDAL FLAC => 24/96] [PLAYING @ 2:05/5:20] The Girl from Ipanema - Stan Getz / Antônio Carlos Jobim / João Gilberto
08/05 09:00:59 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:00 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:00 Trace: [HiFiBerry Digi+ @ 192.168.1.203:34062] [raatclient] GOT [266] {"status":"Dropout","samples":28764}
08/05 09:01:00 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:00 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:00 Trace: [HiFiBerry Digi+ @ 192.168.1.203:34062] [raatclient] GOT [266] {"status":"Dropout","samples":40924}
08/05 09:01:00 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:01 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:01 Trace: [HiFiBerry Digi+ @ 192.168.1.203:34062] [raatclient] GOT [266] {"status":"Dropout","samples":48000}
08/05 09:01:01 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:01 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:01 Trace: [HiFiBerry Digi+ @ 192.168.1.203:34062] [raatclient] GOT [266] {"status":"Dropout","samples":48000}
08/05 09:01:01 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:02 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:02 Trace: [HiFiBerry Digi+ @ 192.168.1.203:34062] [raatclient] GOT [266] {"status":"Dropout","samples":48000}
08/05 09:01:02 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:02 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:02 Trace: [HiFiBerry Digi+ @ 192.168.1.203:34062] [raatclient] GOT [266] {"status":"Dropout","samples":48000}
08/05 09:01:02 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:03 Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
08/05 09:01:03 Trace: [HiFiBerry Digi+ @ 192.168.1.203:34062] [raatclient] GOT [266] {"status":"Dropout","samples":48000}
08/05 09:01:03 Warn: [HiFiBerry] [zoneplayer/raat] Too many dropouts (>3s dropped out in the last 30s). Killing stream
08/05 09:01:03 Trace: [HiFiBerry] [zoneplayer/raat] too many dropouts. stopping stream
08/05 09:01:03 Warn: Track Stopped Due to Slow Media
08/05 09:01:03 Info: Alert: TIDAL: tidal_media_slow
08/05 09:01:03 Info: Alert: TIDAL: tidal_media_slow
08/05 09:01:03 Info: [zone HiFiBerry] OnPlayFeedback StoppedEndOfMediaUnnatural
08/05 09:01:03 Debug: [zone HiFiBerry] _Advance

That’s really quite slow, and given that Tidal MQA tracks demand more bandwidth … I say it was the prime suspect.

Do you have any options in getting a faster broadband connection?

2 Likes

Hey @Peter_Campbell – Thank you for sharing your report with us.

As Carl mentions above, your internet speeds may be to blame here. So we can verify if this is the case, please see the following:

  • If you play this same content outside of Roon do you experience the same behavior?
  • Does this behavior happen when playing to all endpoints? If you play to System Output of the Core machine does the skipping still occur?
  • Just to verify, non-MQA TIDAL content and local content works without issue?

Thanks!
Dylan

Thanks for the quick feedback guys. OK have done some more troubleshooting using the System Output on the ROON server. When I shut down all other devices I got enough bandwidth to run MQA on both the tidal desktop app and the ROON app. I have uploaded some screenshots from the PC and the Router because you may find them interesting. It seems that Tidal and ROON buffer differently. Both hammer it at the beginning to get a buffer but it seems Tidal has a smaller buffer and then dips in to refresh it regularly. This hammers the link less over the time of the song I guess. ROON smashes it constantly until it gets the whole file then stops. Not saying one is right or wrong, but it was interesting. My broadband can’t be upgraded until we get the new NBN fast link installed which isn’t due until november so I will just have to wait :frowning: thanks for your quick help.

1 Like

Roon has always done this and it has been noted on the forum; not recently though. It is one of the reasons I think that some people have Tidal playback issues.

Hi Peter

My old man’s had skipping issues with Tidal tracks too on an ADSL2 connection of ~5Mbps.

His NBN50 connection just went live today, so it’ll be interesting to hear if this solves it for him, especially during peak hour evening usage. If not, then there’s some other network or sonicTransporter (his Roon Core) issue in his setup.

2 posts were split to a new topic: ISP Connection 47Mbps and the 1st track on most Tidal albums is being skipped after a couple of seconds