'Roon lost control of the audio device' After 2h or so of 'shuffle' play (albums), Roon loses control of KEF LS50 wireless. I have to restart my Mac and it works again. I have asked for help on this three times, and no solution has been found. There have been several updates for MacOS and Roon in the interim. Only happens with KEF not with my other endpoints (Linn Kiko, Sonos One, MacBook itself, or iPhone as Roon endpoint).
Describe your network setup
MacBook Pro M2Pro 2023 (Roon Core); Linn Kiko DSM; KEF LS50 Wireless; Sonos One; Hyperoptic Router
I think the next step here is to enable some diagnostics on your account so our technical staff can get some more insight into what’s going on here.
However, before I enable this feature, I’d like to ask for your help ensuring we gather the right information.
First, can you please reproduce the issue once more and note the time at which the error occurs. Then respond here with that time, and I’ll make sure we review the diagnostics related to that timestamp.
Thanks for your patience. Diagnostics show a few trends with Sonos and KEF device polling and playback that might illuminate what’s causing these dropouts.
You mentioned that the issue occurs after two hours - how precise is that estimation? That duration of time is about the extent of a UPnP/GeEA subscription - this is the open-source network protocol upon which both KEF and Sonos partially rely to communicate with Roon.
If the subscription expires, Roon stops receiving expected updates when it polls the devices over the network. The KEF will appear disconnected or stuck in WaitForStatus, even if the device is still playing the track for a few seconds. You’ll likely see a warning in the GUI, like the “lost control of audio device” you’ve described.
Unfortunately, this timeout is built directly into UPnP, so both KEF and Roon are limited in their ability to extend the timer without user intervention. You’ll likely need to press pause, play, or otherwise engage with the audio transport controls within the two hours to fully prevent this from occurring (if you are relying on ethernet/WiFi for the speaker input).
If this dropout is happening after a shorter duration - like after thirty minutes or less - please let us know, as we’ll require different troubleshooting steps.
It’s not clear from the previous thread with @benjamin, but does this ever occur if you use USB to connect to the KEF speaker directly from the Mac?
I wanted to reach out to ask you had any further questions after the post above.
To summarize, two hours is the expected duration of the endpoint subscription for the network protocol in use by the KEF. This might be an expected dropout. To be sure, we need to clarify how precisely the dropoff occurs after two hours. Has Roon lost sight of the speaker sooner, like within 30 minutes?
Thank you. Makes sense. It is always 2 hours. I lost control this morning around 11.30am (UK time), so you could check the logs for that. I quite often put the shift all albums on when I’m listening at home, so useful to know that I need to pause/stop or interact in some way. Let me know if you find any other solutions. It is pretty much the only problem I have with Roon. Occasionally my Linn system will disconnect unexpectedly and I need to restart that device, but that’s pretty rare.
This means Roon’s zone player lost its streaming session with the KEF LS50 Wireless. It’s equivalent to the speaker saying “I’m not connected anymore.”
Roon then tries to renew UPnP/AVTransport subscriptions:
Info: [client/kef] try renew after renew: ... failed: True, code: PreconditionFailed
Warn: [upnp] Subscription failed ... status code: ServiceUnavailable
These UPnP renewals failing means that Roon’s control channel to the speaker got broken, usually a network or firmware-level issue on the KEF side.
If your model KEF LS50 Wireless allows for USB playback, could you test out using USB?
When you use USB, you should be able to access the device settings to enable Exclusive Mode - when enabled as your zone, click the volume icon>cogwheel>device setup and it should be available.
Let me know if you still experience the issue under these conditions, thank you!