Troublesome Roon stop button in the Android app notification panel
When using the Roon stop button in the pull-down notification panel on an Android phone, my grouped zones are not all stopped properly.
I have a group of four zones, two of which are DACs and the other two provide optical signals (one converted from a USB port on my Roon Nucleus, the other directly from a HifiBerry Digi+ HAT on a Ropieee endpoint) to relay switches that power off mains for my subwoofers and amplifiers when not in use. This helps me save a considerably amount of useless standby power consumption.
This setup works fine when the four grouped zones are stopped via the Roon Android app or via the Roon app for Windows. It does, however, not work similarly when I stop the four grouped zones by using the Android notification bar stop button. In that case, the music (that is the two DACs) and the USB-to-optical stop, but the direct optical signal via the HifiBerry HAT does not stop. As a consequence, one amp and one subwoofer stay turned on with quite high standby consumption.
The Hifiberry HAT behaves similarly, i.e. it stays turned on, when a streaming signal is disrupted in transmission.
It seems as if the behavior of the Roon stop button in the Android notification bar does not truly replicate the behavior of the stop button in the Android app itself.
I tried to regroup the zones to make the Hifiberry HAT the primary zone, which the three other zones follow, but this did not change anything.
This is a special use case, but it may be relevant to the quality of programming of future versions of the Roon Android app. For now, my workaround is to not use the notification bar buttons on Android, even though they are the easiest ones to bring forth on the phone screen.
Describe your network setup
Router: Icotera i4850. Switch: Zyxel GS 1100-16. Roon Nucleus + external soundcard with USB to optical conversion. Roon endpoint on Raspberry Pi 4 with Hifiberry Digi+ Standard HAT with optical out. All equipment is cabled. Internet via 1000 Mbit fiber connection.
Just another (ex)user here, with some additional input.
Having experience with setting up loopback devices on RPi’s with Roon bridge, and monitoring playback status when either clicking to stop replay in the UI or entering ctrl-t to terminate replay with the keyboard, I saw the latter always instantly releasing the device and the former usually keeping it in running state, which seems to be more of a pause command.
I‘m deliberately writing usually, because sometimes it would eventually terminate and release the device, a quirky situation I could never untangle and understand.
Hi @connor , thank you for following up. Android is version 12, kernel version 4.14.113-25257816 on a Samsung Galaxy S10e. My current Roon Android app is version 2.0 (build 1470) production.
While our team continues to investigate your issue, could you also please perform a fresh reproduction of the issue, and share the specific date, time, and name of the track playing when the issue occurs?
With this, we can enable diagnostics from your Roon Server to better pinpoint the error. Thanks for your patience in the meantime!
Hi @noris - I reproduced the error at 12:38 Danish local time, using what has turned out for now to be only a “pause”-button on the pull down menu of the Android app. In my log, you should be able to see, that one DAC stops (it is controlled by audiosensing-to-12v-triggered-mains-switch) whereas the other does not (it is controlled by roon-endpoint-to-optical-triggered-mains-switch). For comparison, at 12:40, I used the proper stop button inside the Android app, and you will see that stops both DACs. Hope this makes sense for you, once you look into the log and confer with my initial description of the issue.
Thank you for the additional information and timestamp!
A quick side note - we’re seeing frequent errors in playback due to corrupt media:
Warn: [zoneplayer] Corrupt Media Detected
I’d take a closer look at your library (you can also head to Roon Settings>Library and review both your skipped files and ‘clean up library’ to review any issues with your local library. Please note that performing a library clean up will permanently remove any files, clicking ‘clean up library’ will allow you to review stats before committing to any changes.
Apologies if this has been glazed over, but if you swap switches, do you see the same issue occur with the other DAC that typically doesn’t have issues?
It’s clear the issue is tied to the Android panel itself, so it may be best to also review a set of Android logs as well. Steps to share those may be found below:
Connect your PC to Android phone and install ADB (instructions are here (all platforms)). Then:
Sorry, it is too complicated (time consuming) for me to provide the Android logs, I tried to follow the instructions but did not succeed. If of use, I can at a later time (I don’t have time now) test if I can reproduce the issue via the Windows Roon app.
As for swapping DACs that will not show anything. The reason one of them stops is that I control mains for that device via an analog audiosensing device (https://www.bobwireaudio.com/dat1), which does not care if “no analog music” is the result of a Roon pause or a Roon stop action.
Thanks for the additional information and your patience so far!
Based on a recent diagnostic report, we aren’t seeing any inconsistencies in regard to playback stopping - it appears that all zones paused/stopped properly. Are you able to describe in more detail specifically what the issue is, and what the expected behavior is?
Hi @Benjamin. The problem can be seen in the behaviour of the optical out on the Hifiberry module of the Ropieee Raspberry 4 end point.
When I use the stop button in the Android Roon app’s pull-down menu, the optical output does not stop but apparently only pauses, i.e. there is still a signal.
When I use the same Android Roon app’s stop button inside the app, the optical output does indeed stop.
I am able to differentiate the two situations, as I use the optical out to trigger a switch that turns mains on/off for my amp and subwoofer. In this way I avoid excessive standby power usage (we have some of EU’s highest electricity prices in Denmark).
Hi @kassoe,
Thant’s the picture we needed thanks. We verified in our diagnostics that the pause command is being sent to your endpoints correctly. So the question now is why the Digi+ isn’t handling it the way you are expecting. You should bring that question to Hifiberry or the Tinkering section on community.
Hi @Daniel. I realize now that this is probably more a “it’s a feature, not a bug” issue. I assumed wrongly I was pressing a stop button in the drop down window, and - as you write - it is not, it is a pause button. In that sense, the behavior of the Digi+ is probably what can be expected. But why do you, in the Roon app’s drop down window, provide a pause button instead of a stop button? And which difference in functionality is there between the Roon stop and Roon pause buttons? And where else is the pause button to be found? I do not see it inside the app’s UX.
… there really is none. Only mechanical players have different mechanisms for stop and pause. In a tape player, stop lifts the head from the tape, pause doesn’t. In a CD player, stop returns the laser mechanism to the parking position, pause doesn’t.
In a digital player, there is no practical difference.
The Tidal and Qobuz apps, as well as other players I have on my phone, all have pause and no stop buttons.
I don’t see a stop button anywhere in Roon, only pause buttons when a track is playing. E.g., in the play bar:
@Suedkiez, thanks - while tempting to say that “pause” and “stop” is the same these digital days, I’m not sure that corresponds to what actually happens in the Roon app. And I do have a “stop” button inside the Roon app when the source is a streamed radio station. Below I show for screen shots, only one of which has a “stop” button (the DR P8 Jazz inside the app), the three others have “pause” buttons. This does, however, not explain the difference in behavior of my optical output.
@Daniel, testing again I think I now pinpointed the difference in behavior:
When the source playing is a local file or an album from Qobuz, the app’s pull-down pause button does indeed stop the optical output properly.
When the source is an internet radio station (I have tested with DR P8 Jazz and BBC 3), the pause in the app’s pull-down menu does not properly stop my optical output (it stays alive instead of letting my amp go to sleep as described initially).
That’s possible and I’m not sure what you experience with your device, either.
I only meant to comment on the larger „philosophical“ points of stop vs pause in digital players being similar, trying to avoid confusion about this.
Ok, this one is a special case that makes sense because a live radio stream can’t be paused, as pausing implies that one can continue from the same spot at a later time. Live radio can’t do that as it would have be recorded/cached locally on your Roon Server.
Live radio is probably the only place, though, as all other streams in Roon can be paused and then continued at will.
lifts the head from the tape, pause 
doesn’t. In a CD player, stop returns the laser mechanism to the parking position, pause doesn’t.
