Qobuz playback issues on Nucleus

Roon:
RoonNucleus Plus
Operating System
Reinstall
OK

Version 1.0 (build 183) stable

Roon Labs Software
OK

Version 1.0 (build 12) stable.

Roon Server Software

RestartToggle Dropdown

OK

Version 1.7 (build 511) stable

Roon Database & Settings

Reset

OK

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet);
MODEM Arris Surfboard SB6183
Araknis Networks AN 310 RT 4L2W
Araknis switch AN 210 sw r 16 PoE
Using Ethernet connection.

TEXT GOES HERE

dCS vivaldi One via Network ethernet.

Issue:
First, my dealer Hanson AV at Cincinnati is having the same issue since I first contacted them almost a month ago, and they emailed Roon as they had determined it was not a network or equipment problem at their store… As of last week when I checked back, they had not received a reply from Roon.
This issue is also described with a screenshot on Nov 19, 2019, by someone using an Antipodes instead of Roon Nucleus Plus. The Antipodes name shows in the screenshot, along with the problem this person, Hanson AV, and myself are having. I didn’t want to spend more time finding more examples.
The problem is that when streaming Qobuz, when going to the next track, there is no playback and the moving sound bar to the left of the track is flat. Usually there is some notification (just as per screenshot of the person above) such as Qobuz file not available/too many attempts, cancelling.
When is Roon releasing a patch for this long-standing, disappointing issue?

Hi @charau,

Do you know where they reached out to us and the name of the person who sent the email? The best place to get support would be on this community website as you have done with this thread, emailing our contact @ roonlabs.com address is mostly for account-related inquiries and all technical support happens here on community.

Do you have a link to this report?

Does this behavior occur for all Qobuz tracks or just some Qobuz tracks? Does it occur for multiple endpoints?

Thank you for your prompt response.

  1. Josh at Hanson told me he had emailed.
  2. Link to the report: Qobuz problems after 1.7 update
  3. Occurs just some Qobuz tracks.
  4. Only endpoint Roon-ethernet-streaming is the Vivaldi.

Here’s another link to a page with others with similar problem
:

To clarify, I have no other endpoints besides that mentioned above.

Hi @charau,

I checked for any messages from Josh, but I haven’t seen any here on Community nor on our general Roon contact email, if you speak to him again please ask him that he makes a post on our Community website and tag @support as that’s definitely the best way to reach us.

As for the issue impacting you, can you please let me know the following?

  1. What is your network download/upload speed as reported by speedtest.net?

  2. If you try to play the same track that skipped before, are you able to successfully start it the second time?

  3. Where are you starting the playback of these tracks, is it from a playlist or by searching for the track manually?

  4. If you are starting from a playlist, are you able to manually search and play the track which was problematic?

Speed 117.7 download/11.7 upload.
Cannot successfully start the second time.
As far as the tracks playing, sometimes it is just an album that is sequentially playing its tracks when this behavior occurs, and I cannot successfully start the track and I go on to any of the following. Other times, I am listening to a track and then select another one on the same album and the behavior occurs. I do not have playlists.

Clarification : when this behavior occurs, in any scenario, the play arrow freezes with the flat blue line to the left of it for each or any track.

I have also:

  1. Copy-pasted your request for Josh and emailed it to him.
  2. Contacted Qobuz support online yesterday evening, and sent them the info about the issue as well as the hyperlink to this page so they can get the information.
1 Like

Hi @charau,

Thank you for the additional information.

Can I please request that you let me know the exact local time + date + track when this behavior next occurs? This will be useful in case we need to gather a diagnostics report from your Core and take a closer look.

So just to make sure I understand you properly here - if you try starting playback a second time from the track which does not work, you are still unable to play this track but others from the same album work?

Does the problematic track play to any of your other zones properly? The Nucleus has an HDMI port and even if you don’t use it/have anything connected to it, it’s useful for debugging issues.

Can you try playing one of the non-working tracks to the Nucleus HDMI zone and see if you get any error messages? This test will help separate if the issue is endpoint-specific or elsewhere.

Usually all freezes and cannot play anything. Again this is only in Qobuz . Very rarely however when I try to play another track after the frozen one, the other track plays but usually not.
I have activated the nucleus HDMI output just for these diagnostic purposes and will check as you instruct and also note specific time and date when the behavior recurs.

The issue occurred at 5:22 PM. The track Froze as previously described when trying to play to dCS unit. As I had enabled the nucleus HDMI output, I opened the Vivaldi icon and the track was playing to the HDMI output as the blue line was moving up and down whereas the one by the Vivaldi was flat.
I then selected another track which was flat/frozen for 10 to 12 seconds and then began to play spontaneously to the dCS… This has also happened before.

There were no error messages when I tried the above, whether the rune line was moving on the HDMI or not. The error messages do not always appear.

Problem recurred again at 8:12 PM today 2/1120.
I found this workaround (!) in Roon Support, from one of the Roon Techs. It works for me also, as it did for the person (among many) who submitted the same problem I’m having:
“In one case, a user was able to get the unplayable tracks to work by clicking the “Play From Here” button on the first track of the album, and then using the “Skip Track” button to move through the queue’d album.”
I strongly continue to suspect the problem is at your end, Software-related. It’s nice to have a workaround, but there shouldn’t be a need for any!

Again, the problem was with a Qobuz album, this one Hi-Res.

Again, as I’ve written above, here are the pages documenting others who are having this same problem:


Please be sure to click on my previous post’s hyperlinks to open up the full pages for each hyperlink.

Cant say Ive had this problem on Roon but I have had the same issue using the native Qobuz app. I end up having to close the app. Sometimes it will take a few goes and the track will play.

More information:

  1. Have not encountered problem streaming Qobuz from dCS Mosaic App for a total of several hours.
  2. Re-installed the Roon OS but problem recurred.
  3. When problem recurred last 2 times, no orange-colored error message came up. I had enabled the Roon Nucleus+ HDMI for diagnostic purposes, per Roon tech’s suggestion. The blue line that moves when there’s music was flat (no music) on the dCS, but moving on the enabled HDMI output.
  4. This suggests to me that the likely glitch exists with Roon’s streaming Qobuz to the network which includes dCS, as the HDMI was putting out signal as described.

Hi @charau,

Noris brought your issue to my attention during our meeting today and I wanted to reach out to you about this. First, I wanted to recap what has been discussed so far:

  • When switching tracks in Qobuz you receive an error and playback stops
  • This only occurs for some Qobuz tracks, not all
  • The same tracks always skip
  • You reinstalled RoonOS with no change
  • This issue doesn’t occur when playing to the HDMI output of the Nucleus

You’ve also shared a few links to other, similar threads. To be clear, this is not something we are seeing a widespread report of. Some of these reports are a little older, from when Roon 1.7 was just released. Around that time there was a brief issue that customers were receiving, but this is not something that has continued to occur. Thousands of Roon users are playing Qobuz content without any issues, so we need to understand what about your setup makes things different.

We’ve reviewed the diagnostics report from your installation and we are seeing that there are some networking errors in the report. Often times these types of issues are networking related, and the report further strengthens this theory.

Moving forward, there are a few things I’d like to suggest that will help us better pinpoint the root of the issue.

  1. We know that playing to the HDMI port works, which narrows things down to Roon communicating with the dCS over the network. To better understand this, I’d like to suggest playing to a remote over the network. On whatever remote device you’re using, enable System Output and start playback of Qobuz content. Does this experience the same issue? Depending on the outcome we will know if it’s specifically the connection between Roon and the dCS or all networked zones.
  2. In the past, we’ve found that changing DNS settings can help improve the performance of streaming content in Roon. If you switch to Cloudflare DNS (or any other similar DNS) is there any change?
  3. I’d like to focus in on your networking setup. As we note in our Networking Guide, managed switches often require some advanced setup in order for Roon’s traffic to properly flow. Can you elaborate on the exact network chain? What device is the Nucleus connected to? Which device is the dCS connected to?

Ultimately, we need to understand where things are failing for you so we can better assist in getting things resolved. I understand that some have reported similar issues, but currently, the number of open issues related to Qobuz is quite small compared to the number of users with Qobuz in Roon.

I don’t say this to discount your report, or to say that there isn’t an issue with Roon, but it is clear that something about your setup is different than the vast majority of users and we need to understand what this is in order to understand the underlying issue. The tests outlined above are definitely where we recommend you start, but if you have any other suggestions about what might make your setup different I’d be happy to present it to our team.