Roon Nuc PS Audio Directstream dropped USB connection

Please see Link to PS Audio forum question. There appears to be an integration problem with my Roon Core Kit running on an Intel Nuc i7 connected via USB to the PS Audio Directstream. By coincidence, when I selected my WQXR stream, the USB connection got dropped on the Directstream. I have the latest Roon server and Bios v 71 that I downloaded and set up yesterday.

What resolution is WQXR?

Is there a way I can see that from Roon? Once I add the stream, I don’t know how to view the stream link within Roon. It was http://stream.wqxr.org/stream I think. No notion of bit rate.

Hi @Peter_Cullen,

Does this only occur when playing the WQXR stream?

If you are playing to a different endpoint besides the Directstream does the same thing occur?

I can’t tell yet. It is intermittent. I’ve played the station with no problems since then. As far as I can tell, other Roon selections like Tidal or my library aren’t causing problems.

Thanks for the update, @Peter_Cullen. If you find any specific patterns that seem to lead to this behavior occurring definitely let us know! Knowing if it occurs with only specific content or endpoints will help us to better understand where this behavior may be stemming from.

I have no other USB endpoint. But network bridge on the DS or Bluesound and iphone endpoints over the past month since I got Roon never did this. Also, I just set up my Nuc yesterday. Prior to that, my Core was running on a networked Windows 10 desktop.

It happened again. I was playing Tidal for a while, then I switched to my Wqxr stream, I heard a little ffft sound, then the USB connection dropped, forcing me to hard restart my PS Audio Directstream. Strangely enough, music started playing in a different zone. After switching back to my Directstream zone, I was able to play the radio. I tried to get it to error again by repeatedly switching between Tidal and the radio, and to a different radio stream but I couldn’t reproduce it again.

I can send you log files if you can tell me how to get them. But the fact that I could see the radio playing according to my Roon iPhone app leads me to believe that the Roon software is somehow tripping up the USB side on the Directstream. Can you contact PS Audio about this? I have a support ticket open describing the problem to them.

This evening, the USB connection got dropped when selecting a Tidal track when the radio had been playing - the reverse of what I had described.

Shown in the pic is the radio Signal Path info, including bit rate, which was asked about.

Thanks for the update, @Peter_Cullen.

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.

I can certainly try to reproduce it again. But I can say the last incident was around 9:00 pm EST last night. If I zip up the Logs folder and share a link from my Dropbox, will that be sufficient?

Hi @Peter_Cullen,

Sure, can you please use the directions found here and send us over a set of logs using a shared Dropbox link.

Thanks!

Here are the logs: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8e4oibzu7tuk6e9/Logs.zip?dl=0

It appears that the Xmos chip in the PS Audio DAC is at fault: https://forum.psaudio.com/t/snowmass-directstream-junior/7766/125

Hi @Peter_Cullen,

Yes, it appears that the behavior you are experiencing here the XMOS chip. We have a thread with more information about this here:

Jeremy B at PS Audio was kind enough to suggest that I set upsampling in the DSP settings in the Windows Roon app, which I didn’t know about because they’re not available in the IPhone app, otherwise I may have discovered this earlier. I set 44.1 to upsample to 48, which also changes the bit depth to 24. Now the problem has been resolved.

It would be good to provide this advice in the Roon release notes, if not already provided.

Peter

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