I did some further testing and although clock priority helps the hanging issue occurs even without any DSP at all now. I would really like to see this investigated further by your team. I have done tests for almost a month just to certify that I cannot use RAAT reliably at my house, while other devices such as Chromecast Audios have been working flawlessly. Please help with this nightmare.
What best describes your playback issue?
· Music stops playing unexpectedly
What type of Zone is affected by this problem?
· *All of my Zones* are affected.
Does the issue affect all file formats?
· The issue affects *multiple/all* file formats.
Does the issue happen with local library music, streaming service music, or both?
· *Both streaming and local* *library* music are affected.
Do you encounter any playback errors with the "System Output" Zone?
· The System Output has the same problem as my other Zone.
Do you have a complex network setup?
· I have a *mesh network* with devices connected to multiples points
Your local network might need some re-arranging to support Roon.
· None of the suggestions have helped me. I'd like to submit a support request.
Do you have an approximate timestamp of when the issue last occurred?
· Every day, as per original support request
What are the make and model of the affected audio device(s) and the connection type?
· As described before, 2 raspberry pi zero 2w running ropieee connected through USB with zorloo ztella DAC (wifi 5ghz with usb dongle); 1 Raspberry pi 2 (ethernet) connected to usb meridian explorer 2; same raspberry pi 2 connected through headphones out
Describe the issue
Roon Skips and Stops With Mixed RAAT Zone Playback (ref#W2DVOP)
Describe your network setup
Mesh network with Deco M5 as main router, with a non-managed switch from Linksys. Only two Decos of 5 are not connected through ethernet
Modifying the priorities helped sync as far as I could test it. However, during these tests the song skipping and stopping playback happened twice even without any DSP applied, which modifies the current diagnostic quite a bit.
Zone tests done again (although we already did that thoroughly before), and as per number 1 above, the problem happens all the time. The difference is how much time it takes for it to happen. The more DSP I have on the quicker (or surer) the problem will happen. With convolution, volume leveling, crossfade and upsampling together it happens all the time. If I only use, for example, volume levelling it occurs, but not all the time, it becomes hit or miss. And now even without any DSP the problem happens, but after longer intervals of time.
Does not hurt to say that it happens with Qobuz, Tidal and local media, but it is much more intense and frequent with Tidal songs.
By the way, this describes the exact same problem on a post from 2021…:
Here’s what we can see from diagnostics associated with your RoonServer account.
Concerning Tidal track playback failures, Tidal’s servers return 401 responses to certain track requests. In rare cases, this means their distribution deals have changed behind the curtain and the requested object is no longer authorized for playback in your region. In other cases, their servers are responding that the track cannot be streamed at that time.
This accounts for only one or two failures we’ve noticed in logs. Here are the other observed failures with playback events:
Sample dropouts when serving content to Zones behind both Wifi and hard-wired mesh nodes. Uncompressed samples sent by the RAAT stack on the Mac are not reaching the Ropieees in any combination. These dropouts occur in clusters and are generally the same length; they don’t line up with any obvious resource consumption or memory spike on the RoonServer machine.
Network discovery failures with RAAT. RAATServer loses its expected path to endpoints.
Failures with upstream requests to Tidal content (this only affects Tidal in the logged period). This is separate from the aforementioned request denial, and generally indicates that the CDN serving this content for Tidal’s API can’t deliver it at pace with the buffer.
RAATServer crashes. When you encounter these dropouts with the Mac Mini, do you notice any local endpoints disappearing in Settings → Audio?
The most prominent issues in logs are number 1 and 2 above, and both commonly relate to multicast forwarding irregularities in the mesh setup, which can arise fully independently of hardwiring/WiFi. The Deco M5 series does not expose multicast and IGMP settings, but I would ensure that “Fast Roaming,” if available, is disabled, which can cause rapid channel switching mid-listening.
We’d like to test playback to a locally-connected device controlled by RAAT via coreaudio on this server machine. If you have a chance to test either System Output or a USB DAC directly outputted from your server, please let us know. We’ll activate logging in the meantime.
Hi @connor , thanks for taking the time to review my setup directly! It helps learning the technical nature of the problem. Concerning your comments:
During my tests I moved a Deco X60 as main router but it does not have those settings for multicast and IGMP as well. Disabling Fast Roaming did nothing to help, and would it affect even fully ethernet connected endpoints when grouped? Because that happens as well as with mixed and wi-fi only groups.
We can surely do that, both with the system output and USB DAC as well. Let me know if you want me to set them both up and how should I play it (in groups? same tests as before?)
Thank you kindly for the help. I really want to be able to use the far superior controls for RAAT zones. Going back to the chromecasts would be a huge defeat (and loss of quality as well).
In order to help your review with the logs, I took the sunday to test the system in different ways.
Enabled System Output on my Mac Mini through the headphone out and played music for some hours. No problems
Started playing on each different zone I have here (including System Output), with all DSP for each enabled (or almost all), without grouping and from different sources for each zone (Qobuz, Tidal and local files) - no problems.
Started pairing zones, only two at a time, some ethernet only, some wifi only, some mixed, one group playing tidal, other group qobuz, and the other two local files. Played for more than 6 hours straight without any problem with all DSP enabled.
Merged each pair of groups, leaving me with two groups with all DSP enabled, one playing tidal and the other playing Qobuz. That’s when it stopped playing, first on the Tidal zone after roughly one our (last song played named “Aejlies (sanctus)”, seems to have skipped “Thought I Was a Spaceman” and hanged on “The Heinrich Maneuver”), and around three hours later the Qobuz zone stopped (last song played “Janie’s Got a Gun”, but there was no skipping to the next song like the Tidal zone apparently. It simply stopped playing mid-song on the track “Mordin” after one minute).
What I gather from this is that my network and server cope very well with simultaneous streaming to multiple endpoints at all times. The problem starts only when I group them and Tidal is worse for some reason.
Thanks for the additional testing you’ve done and timestamp provided. Looking over your diagnostics, it looks like the issue stemmed during that time from a dropout on your Zorloo Ztella USB Audio zone, while the others appeared to work as expected. Are you able to test again without this zone involved in the group? The way that Roon works is that if one zone in a group has an issue, the entire group stops playing.
Just tested right now without the three zorloo endpoints with the “crashy” playlist I have created from my first thread.
Tested two different group configurations, all showing the same crash.
Again, when playing alone there are no dropouts, skips or pauses. Why the endpoint would then struggle when grouped? Is there additional effort needed? In my limited understanding the endpoint just “receives” the data. Let me know how I can further help.
Thanks for giving that a try @Marcelo_Bulgueroni - our development team will need to take a closer look into things as a next step.
Once they’ve had time to review your ticket, we’ll follow up with additional information and next steps, thank you for your patience in the meantime!
No problem at all - I’m sorry you’re still running into issues in the first place!
A follow-up question from our development team - when grouped playback breaks up for you, do any of the devices disappear from Settings > Audio in Roon?
If a device disappears temporarily, the issue may be related to how macOS or iOS is handling the connection—this is especially common with Apple devices on the latest Sequoia build.
No, no devices disappear. If I press play after the song is skipped and the following one stops at 2-3 seconds all zones resume playing normally without any further intervention. Until this cycle starts again.
