Roon skips songs halfway during playback (ref#NXDTUV)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· None of the above quite fits

None of the above quite fits

· None of these quite match

Tell us what's going on

· Roon skips songs halfway through playing them.

Tell us about your home network

· Plusnet Hub Two (GRV9517UWAC34-A
BT Home Hub Model BT Whole Home WiFi

2

When exactly? If it only happens with tracks from streaming services, after 30 seconds, then you might have to login again or upgrade your account.

3

It generally happens about 2/3rds of a way through a song. Much further through than 30 seconds. I’m on a full Tidal account, had both that and Roon for years and never had the problem before. Its been happening for a few weeks now.

4

Additionally, I’m using KEF LS50 Wireless II, when I play the same songs on Tidal through the KEF app it doesn’t happen. So my assumptions is the issue is with Roon, not the streaming service.

5

I had the same issue for the last month or so Matt. There is a support article on this forum somewhere that helped me and I don’t have the issue anymore. Any easy fix. I manually set the DNS servers on my router to 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 I think. No problems after doing that.

6

Hello @Matt_Hunt,

Welcome back to the community, and thank you for the detailed information. I understand how annoying it is to have your listening session interrupted right in the middle of a song!

Your test with the KEF app was a great troubleshooting step. Since the KEF app streams perfectly, we know your Tidal account and the speakers are working fine. The difference lies in how Roon handles the stream: Roon aggressively downloads the high-resolution files into its audio buffer in chunks. If the connection to Tidal’s servers is too slow to keep that buffer full, Roon eventually runs out of data partway through the track and skips to the next one.

I want to echo @Jason_McHugh1’s excellent advice here. Even on fast home networks, ISP default DNS servers can sometimes route Roon’s traffic to a suboptimal or congested Tidal server node, causing exactly this type of buffer starvation.

Next Steps: Update Your DNS Please log into your Plusnet/BT router’s administration settings and change your DNS servers to reliable public options:

  • Primary DNS: 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare)
  • Secondary DNS: 8.8.8.8 (Google)

After saving the changes, give your Roon Server and router a quick reboot to ensure the new routing takes effect. This simple change usually provides Roon with the fastest possible path to Tidal’s servers and stops the mid-song skipping completely.

Please apply these settings and let us know if the playback stabilizes.

7

Unfortunately BT doesn’t permit changes to the DNS on its routers. I have changed the settings on the Plusnet router, are there any alternative options? Its stopped skipping songs, but now the audio is clipped when playing Tidal.

8

You only need to setup alternative DNS servers on the Plusnet router, i.e., your ISP router. This is possible with the Hub Two.

The BT mesh system will use the settings from the router, as will devices connected directly to the router of via Wi-FI.

9

Thank you. It’s resolved the original issue (cutting songs short), but it’s now dropping radio (on separate speakers, Audio Pro speakers) and the KEF’s audio quality is clipped and sounds terrible. Are there additional settings I can change?

10

Glad to hear your original issue is resolved Matt. :slight_smile: Your new issue is something I’m not familiar with though. Hopefully you can get some good help on here though.

11

Hi @Matt_Hunt,

Thanks for the update. Since the new issues cropped up, we’d like to get diagnostics enabled on your Roon Server if this happens again. Please let us know the exact local time, date, and track when the issue next occurs.

12

19:04 Weds 20/05 ‘You Shadow - Josienne Clarke’, the playlist will only play one song - then it stops. The audio for this song was clipped and jumping. Using KEF speakers named Kitchen.

13

Slow hand - Pointer sisters, 25/05 14:49. I’m struggling with Roon to now play any of my music, having to use native apps on KEF and Audio Pro (quality and response is much better.) any assistance with resolving this would be appreciated.

14

all times are BST (London) .

15

Hey @Matt_Hunt,

Thanks for the update and specific timestamps!

The logs show exactly what happened. “You Shadow” was playing fine on Kitchen Airplay (KEF LS50 via AirPlay protocol at the time). When the track ended, Roon advanced to the next track (“Come Be with Me Love - Laura Cole”). However, the KEF LS50 sent a suspend transport control to Roon, i.e., the speaker itself told Roon to stop. This caused the zone to halt and the playlist to stop after one song.

With that, the audio clipping you heard was consistent with the GC pressure at the time GC pauses of ~210ms were occurring constantly during that session. Roon was spending over a quarter of its CPU just on garbage collection, with GC pauses up to 1.6 seconds at peak. This directly caused your audio glitches, a 500ms+ GC pause mid-stream is enough to cause clicks, clipping, and buffer starvation. The update to v2.67 on 28 May fixed this, the current logs show a clean, healthy system.

Why did the KEF send suspend? The LS50 Wireless II has an auto-source-switching behaviour. When it detects activity on another input (e.g. its native app, or a source switch), it sends a suspend signal to AirPlay. This was likely the KEF switching sources or briefly losing the AirPlay session.

The same KEF suspend pattern repeated: playback of “Cola” by Arlo Parks ended normally at 14:38:42, Roon started loading the next track, then at 14:38:48 the KEF again sent suspend, stopping playback. At 14:39:14 playback resumed when you manually pressed play.

The critical difference now is that as of 28/05, the “Kitchen” zone has been migrated from AirPlay to RAAT (the native Roon protocol). The latest log shows the KEF using [zoneplayer/raat] instead of [airplay/clientV2]. RAAT gives Roon much tighter control and eliminates the source-switching interference from AirPlay.

Recommended next steps for you:

  1. Verify the Kitchen zone stays on RAAT. In Roon Settings > Audio, confirm the Kitchen KEF shows as "KEF LS50 Wireless II" via RAAT (not "Kitchen Airplay"). The latest log shows it's already on RAAT, which is good.
  2. Disable KEF auto-sleep on the speaker itself. In the KEF Control app, go to Settings and set the auto-standby/sleep timer to its maximum or disable it. The speaker sending suspend is the direct trigger for playlist stopping.
  3. Check KEF firmware. Ensure the LS50 Wireless II is on the latest firmware; KEF has released fixes for AirPlay/RAAT source-switching interference.
Our team is actively working on memory-related optimizations, and so in the meantime, rebooting Roon Server on a weekly basis would also likely help performance.

Thank you! :folded_hands:

16

Hi Benjamin, I have made changes to the KEF set up and it’s working well in the kitchen now, thank you. I have a similar issue with other speakers in the house, these are Audio Pro’s, today the Office speaker (3rd June 11:05 playing Rush - YYZ), the track was skipping again, are there similar changes I can make to these speakers to remove the track skipping on these devices? Thanks Matt

17

Hello @Matt_Hunt

For some reason, your logs are empty for that specific timeframe.

Please reproduce the issue again and provide us with the timestamp

18

I don’t know how to gather the time stamp in Roon, would you explain how please. The issue is recurring. Today it happened at 16:00 (BST) on the KEF kitchen speakers, Tom Petty Love is a long Road, the connection dropped. It is also taking a long time to find the server everytime I return to the app to pick a song.

19

Hi @Matt_Hunt,

Thanks for the fresh logs and the new timestamps. Just to clarify how timestamps work: Roon doesn’t have a built-in timestamp button, but whenever an issue occurs, simply note the time on your phone/clock and the track that was playing, exactly as you’ve been doing, that’s all we need.

On the slow “finding the server” issue: The logs show that when the Roon app wakes up after being in the background, it has to re-sync a large queue of updates from Roon Server (in some cases over 6,000 messages). This is what causes the delay, the app isn’t actually lost, it’s catching up. A couple of things that can reduce this:

  • Keep the Roon app open in the foreground on your phone where possible, rather than switching away and back.
  • If your phone has aggressive battery/background app management (common on Android), whitelisting Roon from battery optimisation will help keep the connection alive.
On the June 6 Kitchen drop (Tom Petty): The logs don't capture June 6, but the Kitchen zone is confirmed on RAAT, which is the right setup. The most likely cause of mid-track drops on RAAT with the KEF LS50 Wireless II is the speaker's auto-standby timer activating during playback.

My previous recommended disabling this in a previous post, can you confirm whether you were able to do that in the KEF Control app? If auto-standby is still active, the speaker can cut the RAAT session even while music is playing.

On the Audio Pro Office speakers: One thing worth knowing: your Audio Pro C10 MKII WiiM Edition is connecting via Chromecast, not RAAT. Chromecast has less precise buffer control and can be more susceptible to network interference and source-switching interruptions. Unfortunately, the WiiM platform on these speakers doesn’t currently support RAAT, so Chromecast is the best available option. To improve stability:

  • In your router settings, consider assigning a static/reserved IP to the Audio Pro speaker (use its MAC address). This prevents it from dropping off the network during DHCP lease renewals.
  • Check for a firmware update in the WiiM Home app, WiiM has been actively improving Chromecast stability.
  • Make sure the speaker isn't set to auto-sleep; check the WiiM app under device settings.
Please let us know if the Kitchen drops continue after confirming the KEF auto-standby is disabled, and we'll dig deeper. Thanks, Matt!
20

Hi Benjamin,

Standby mode on the KEF’s was disabled when initially prompted to do so.

I’m now getting a lot of songs playing incomprehensibly, Up all night - The War on Drugs 19:55 12/06

Love my way, the Psychedelic Furs 14/06 17:25 are both examples of this.

Struggling to use Roon now as it’s so hit and miss, I find it more stable and better quality to use the native apps for the devices I have in the house.

Regards

Matt