Roon playback stops after 5 minutes post-update (ref#DNAGF9)

Support
21

Hi @Tamir_Dotan,

Our apologies that this thread inadvertently timed out without a conclusion.

Diagnostics from the last few days show that the Pulse 2i listed under the Zone name [ Zone: FLEX 2i- Rooms ] continues to be the problematic endpoint. That particular IP address is logging packet loss when Roon attempts to stream high-resolution audio via RAAT, which is uncompressed.

You mentioned this endpoint is hardwired. Packet loss like this can still occur even in an ethernet-only setup if there is instability around port assignment or the network is congested; since you have a managed network switch in this setup, these are possibilities here.

From here, please try the following:

1. Disable Sample Rate Conversion first. Go to each zone’s device setup and check the DSP/Muse settings. Your logs show Roon upsampling all the audio to 24/192 before sending. When zones are grouped, that multiplies the data load on your network exponentially, which might be causing sufficient congestion to break the Bluesound Pulse’s buffer. Set Sample Rate Conversion to “Disabled” for all zones, then group them and test. When you create the Group, add the Bluesound Pulse 2i units last.

2. Test the whole group with the Silent Angel switch bypassed. I know the Flex2i isn’t connected to the switch, but the units connected via the switch are still behaving differently here than the unit connected directly to the router. Temporarily connect the devices currently on the Bonn N8 directly to your router (or to a basic spare switch if the router doesn’t have enough ports), group the zones, and play. Let’s try to bypass the managed switch completely.

This should suffice for us to deduce the problem here. Thank you!

22

Hi @connor , Thanks.

I am trying first with option 1- see how this is effecting the issue.

Will keep you posted.

can you pls keep this open for the coming months so I can test as I am not always at home to test.

thnx

23

Thanks for the update @Tamir_Dotan we’ll continue to monitor for your reply and results! :+1:

24

Hi @connor I have removed the upsmling on the flex 2i device and I still get drop outs , can you pls check the cause of the drop out on Thur 11 june at 9:55 CET?

I did not ungroup them before, . I do have only 3 device and only one zone.

I did it now, for both blueshound devices, but kept the upslmpling to the Arcam Amp only as there I do want the quality

thnx

25

@connor I have made some more changes as requested and I still have those drop outs. can you pls cehck the reason for the drop out Friday 12 june at ±14:02 CET?

26

Hey @Tamir_Dotan,

Thanks for the fresh timestamp! Here’s what happened:

You were playing a synced group called “Arcam AVR11 + FLEX 2i- Rooms + Garden” (Erasure – Dead Of Night, TIDAL, upsampled to 24/192). Playback was healthy right up to the failure, the server-side buffer was full and the TIDAL source was fine, so this was not an internet or TIDAL problem.

Then two endpoints started reporting dropouts almost simultaneously:

  • Garden = Bluesound POWERNODE EDGE
  • FLEX 2i- Rooms = Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i
They each accumulated ~2 seconds of dropped audio repeatedly within a few seconds, then logged Too many dropouts (>3s dropped out in the last 30s). Killing stream, then stopped and restarted playback (it advanced into OMD – Veruschka).

The cause is the audio stream not reaching the two Bluesound devices fast enough, a local network/delivery problem to those endpoints, not the source.

The tell-tale signs: the server buffer was full while only the Bluesound units choked, and your wired Arcam AVR11 never dropped a single sample. Because they were grouped, one weak endpoint took the whole group down.

So the Garden POWERNODE EDGE is by far the worst offender. Practically, the things most likely to fix it:

  1. Get the POWERNODE EDGE (and ideally the FLEX 2i) onto a stronger/wired connection or improve Wi-Fi coverage to those locations
  2. Check for 2.4/5 GHz congestion, and consider whether streaming 24/192 to Wi-Fi endpoints in a synced group is worth the bandwidth, lowering the DSP/sample-rate ceiling for those zones would give a lot more headroom. If the Garden device is genuinely far away or outdoors, that distance is almost certainly the root of all the dropouts.
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Hi @Tamir_Dotan,

Have you tried bypassing the switch? We’ll learn a lot from the second test I shared in my previous post.

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Hi @connor @benjamin I am curently testing as advised. I disconnected the POWERNODE EDGE from the switch and its using wifi. the unit is not outside, its actually in the living room where wifi is very strong (its just connected to speakers in the garden - this is why its called garden, but its inside). Lets see how this works. Question, first the POWERNODE EDGE was only connected wired, do you know what happens if I connect both wifi and wired to the unit? does it pick a specific connection or the strongest one?

29

Hey @Tamir_Dotan,

On Bluesound devices, it doesn’t pick the strongest, it prefers wired. BluOS treats Ethernet as the priority interface: whenever a live wired connection is present, the device uses it and the Wi-Fi radio effectively stands down for streaming. It does not load-balance or dynamically switch to whichever is faster moment to moment. So plugging in both doesn’t get you a “best of both” connection, it just gets you the wired one, with Wi-Fi sitting idle as a fallback. For clean testing, it’s better to use one interface at a time, not both.

Moving the POWERNODE EDGE to Wi-Fi is a reasonable way to take the Silent Angel switch out of the path for that device, but be aware you’ve changed two variables at once relative to @connors request. Connor’s second test was specifically to bypass the switch (e.g. by wiring the affected devices straight to the Bonn N8 router instead). Putting the Edge on Wi-Fi does bypass the switch, but it also introduces Wi-Fi, which has been the suspected weak link all along. So:

  • If dropouts stop on Wi-Fi, that's actually strong evidence the problem was the switch or its port/cable for that device, because Wi-Fi (normally worse) is now outperforming the wired path through the switch.
  • If dropouts continue on Wi-Fi, it points back at the POWERNODE EDGE endpoint itself (or the grouped-sync load), regardless of how it connects.
Either way it's useful, just know which conclusion each outcome supports. The cleaner version of Connor's test, if you can manage the cabling, is to wire the Edge directly to the router rather than through the switch, that isolates the switch without bringing Wi-Fi into the picture. 👍
30

thank you both @connor @benjamin - I will try to connect the bluesound edge to another router, but the wifi currently its connected to wifi only (its very strong) seems better than the wired option .

I did get the following message multiple times when dropouts occure - see below - maybe that hints of something. In addition, while connected to wifi - i did not have droptouts but Roon was skipping a track - I belive that is what the message says, any ideas?

IMG_1995
IMG_19951206×824 62.3 KB

31

Hi @Tamir_Dotan,

We’d need to take another look at a Roon Server diagnostic report to see any additional information around your Tidal related playback errors, if you could please bring your server back online, we’ll enable diagnostic mode. Thank you!

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Hi @benjamin not sure what you mean bring the core back online? its always online.

Anything I need to do?

thnx

34

Hello @Tamir_Dotan ,

Thanks for letting us know, it looks like the diagnostic report came through. Looking over the log, it looks like the last failures were associated with Dropouts on the Pulse Flex 2i (Rooms) endpoint, while the rest of the group played as expected:

06/21 15:17:55 Trace: [Bluesound N230 @ 192.168.178.206:35587] [raatclient] GOT [48546] {"status":"Playing"}
06/21 15:17:55 Trace: [Bluesound N230 @ 192.168.178.206:35587] [raatclient] GOT [48547] {"time":2431855019216,"status":"Success"}
06/21 15:17:57 Trace: [Arcam AVR11 + FLEX 2i- Rooms + Garden] [zoneplayer/raat] sync Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i -> ARCAM AVR11 result: Success
06/21 15:17:57 Trace: [Arcam AVR11 + FLEX 2i- Rooms + Garden] [zoneplayer/raat] sync Bluesound POWERNODE EDGE -> ARCAM AVR11 result: Success
06/21 15:17:58 Trace: [Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i @ 192.168.178.218:45789] [raatclient] GOT [47413] {"status":"Dropout","samples":41022}
06/21 15:17:59 Trace: [Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i @ 192.168.178.218:45789] [raatclient] GOT [47413] {"status":"Dropout","samples":96074}
06/21 15:17:59 Trace: [Arcam AVR11 + FLEX 2i- Rooms + Garden] [zoneplayer/raat] sync Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i -> ARCAM AVR11 result: Success
06/21 15:17:59 Trace: [Arcam AVR11 + FLEX 2i- Rooms + Garden] [zoneplayer/raat] sync Bluesound POWERNODE EDGE -> ARCAM AVR11 result: Success
06/21 15:17:59 Info: [library stats] tracks: 3154 (hidden: 20), albums: 319 (hidden: 2), artists: 220, works: 1633, performances: 1926, playlists: 83, tags: 1
06/21 15:17:59 Trace: [Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i @ 192.168.178.218:45789] [raatclient] GOT [47413] {"status":"Dropout","samples":96074}
06/21 15:17:59 Trace: [Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i @ 192.168.178.218:45789] [raatclient] GOT [47413] {"status":"Dropout","samples":96074}
06/21 15:18:00 Trace: [Arcam AVR11] [Enhanced 39,6x, 24/44 TIDAL FLAC => 32/192] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:04/2:59] Haunted - Mees Salomé
06/21 15:18:00 Trace: [FLEX 2i- Rooms] [Enhanced 46,1x, 24/44 TIDAL FLAC => 24/192] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:04/2:59] Haunted - Mees Salomé
06/21 15:18:00 Trace: [Garden] [Enhanced 76,2x, 24/44 TIDAL FLAC => 24/192] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 0:04/2:59] Haunted - Mees Salomé
06/21 15:18:00 Trace: [Bluesound PULSE FLEX 2i @ 192.168.178.218:45789] [raatclient] GOT [47413] {"status":"Dropout","samples":96316}

Have you been able to connect the Flex 2i zone via a direct Ethernet connection to the router as well? If not, please give this a try and let us know how this goes.

35

Hi @noris Flex 2i is conncted directly to the router, cabled, always was. This is whole set up was working for years without any issues, each time the logs are analysed, I am being told, once its the flex 2i, once its the edge, but we are not getting any closer to a solution. I have removed the upsampling of the flex 2i today, but again I had drop outs, can you pls check on Sunday June 28th, at 9:48 CET. In addition, I want to add something that I am not sure is related. Before these drop outs all started I have been experiencing (annoying) sync issues between the Arcam and both bluesound devices, I have been playing around with the delay setting and found out setting 100ms delays on “zone grouping delay” (see attached pic) solves it. I did it for both bluesound devices and that solved my sync/delays I had for years. could this have to do with the dropouts?

roon device delay
roon device delay1196×1422 101 KB

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also I had multiple dropout on wed july 1st around 14:00 to 15:00 CET -maybe you can check that too pls?

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Hi @Tamir_Dotan,

Unfortunately, we’re unable to enable diagnostic mode on your Server, if you could please either bring it back online, or you can share a set of manual Roon Server logs for our team to review.

Please use the directions found here and send over a set of logs to our File Uploader. Once logs have been uploaded, please let us know so that we can check the server for your files, thanks!

No, resync delay shouldn’t have any overlap with the dropouts you’ve been experiencing.

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let me try to restart

39

Hi @benjamin I have restarted the core. It was playing quiet some time without any dropt outs, and then, saturday 11 july, 13:51 CET, it happened, could pls check?

thx

40

Hey @Tamir_Dotan,

Thanks for the timestamp on the 11th, and for your patience, we went back through the full log history you sent, about 3.5 weeks (June 19 through July 12), and pulled every dropout-triggered stream kill, not just the ones you flagged individually. This gives us a clearer picture than any single incident could.

Your July 11, 13:51 CET report: confirmed, the group killed itself at 13:50:58 local time because both the Powernode Edge and the Pulse Flex 2i logged packet loss within the same second, right as “Careless Whisper” was finishing. The track file was already fully downloaded on the Roon Server side, so this wasn’t a TIDAL or internet issue, it was packet loss on the LAN to those two endpoints. The zone recovered on its own within about 2 seconds; no reboot was needed.

The bigger pattern, across all 47 dropout events in the logs: every single one hit the same zone, Arcam AVR11 + FLEX 2i-Rooms + Garden. Your Arcam has never once triggered a dropout in this entire history. The Powernode Edge was first-to-drop in 30 of 47 events, the Pulse Flex 2i in 17, but in most incidents, both drop within 1-3 seconds of each other. That’s worth calling out because in this thread we’ve pointed at the Powernode Edge at one point and the Pulse Flex 2i at another, the full data shows it’s not really an either/or; both are consistently involved.

That also gives us an answer to the switch-bypass test from a few weeks back. You moved the Powernode Edge onto Wi-Fi on June 18th specifically to rule the managed switch out. Every dropout event since then still shows the Powernode Edge (and usually the Flex 2i alongside it) dropping. Per the logic we laid out at the time: since moving to Wi-Fi didn’t fix it, that points at the endpoints themselves (or a network segment they share) rather than the Silent Angel switch.

Two days stand out from the rest: June 28 (13 incidents) and July 1 (11 incidents), far more than any other day in the logs. If anything was different on your network those two days specifically (guests’ devices connecting, a BluOS update landing, a router restart), that would be worth pinning down.

Given the switch is very likely cleared at this point, could you check and confirm the current BluOS firmware version on both the Powernode Edge and the Pulse Flex 2i? That’s the one variable we haven’t directly verified yet, and it’s the natural next thing to rule in or out given both units are implicated together so consistently. :+1:

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Hi @benjamin thanks for the thorow check. both device are on blueOS 4.16.6