Roon with wifi 6/6e/7

Roon Software Discussion Networking
1

Does anyone have any experience of using roon with wifi 6/6e/7?

I know the recommendation is to use fixed internet but for many years at this location wifi 5 was perfectly usable under certain limitations. For example, I used to tweak the windows process priority to high for the various roon components, connect roon exclusively at 5ghz compared with 2.4ghz for the rest of the household, and throttle audio analysis. That sort of thing. It’s also a small cottage location with with only a handful of devices, although roon is usually running in parallel with home working office apps including zoom.

However over the years and successive roon updates, wifi 5 is now unusable. First, roon play+editing became unstable/unusable. I could work around that by not editing whilst playing but now since the last release play+browsing is no longer stable or usable either. Devices will be lost whilst scrolling, performing a search or returning a discography etc., but then reappear. Play will then have to be manually restarted. The problem goes away with a fixed ethernet connection but it’s not very convenient domestically at this location.

My wifi 5 network is very old now (google nest) and long overdue for an upgrade. So my question is has anyone got experience with roon and wifi 6/6e/7 and can make recommendations from real world experience? Maybe wifi 6/6e/7 doesn’t work either and its wishful thinking but maybe it does despite roon recommendations to use fixed internet?

2

I have no problem with WiFi 6 though I am mindful of how the 5GHz/80MHz channels are allocated.

My Roon server is a wired NUC11 i3 (ROCK), but it’s reliant on WiFi 6 for both the incoming Internet connection (wireless bridge) and distribution to endpoints (mesh). I’ve rarely had any issues at all, and when I did it was pretty straightforward to determine the likely source of radio interference.

A 32bit/192kHz stream is ‘only’ 12-13Mbps, perhaps up to 15Mbps allowing for overheads. This is the sustained rate obviously, so it would burst at rather higher rates. Still a fraction of the hundreds of Mbps available on any of my WiFi connections.

If your Roon server is on Windows could that be a culprit?

3

Yes, its Windows not ROCK but I don’t even have requirement for 24/192 or DSD or anything like that. The speakers here are active Buchardt A500’s connected vis WiSA. That maxes out at 24/96 so I downsample everything above that. I don’t actually think its the streaming that is limiting in this scenario, even on wifi 5. It’s the interplay of doing something else at the same time. And that something else isn’t Office or even lengthy Zoom calls. That something else, used to be making a roon edit, whilst roon is playing, That, I could work around. But now it is browsing roon whilst trying to play something. That I cannot work around.

One thing I have noticed is that in the logs, regardless if I attach via wifi or ethernet there are a lot of “frame” warnings whilst playing:

Warn: frame took 23.34ms! 16.56ms preframe

Are these frames the waveform? Surely that is not causing wifi instability. I never noticed these warning messages in the logs before but then I don’t look at the logs very often either.

By way of context, I run roon on a Windows laptop just for convenience so I can have roon at multiple locations with minimum fuss. I could never get ARC working and gave up a long time go.

Maybe someone is able to confirm the stability or otherwise of roon under Windows 11 and wifi 6/6e/7? I can run a flat ethernet 5e under the skirting boards. I don’t need long runs. And that goes a long way to solving the problem non-invasively. But I would prefer to avoid lifting up 2 door thresholds en route. It’s a very old period cottage and our experience is that small jobs often turn into cans of worms and major projects.

4

Nothing beats / changes the recommendation for a wired network connection for your Roon Server. Newer WiFi standards mainly offer more bandwidth / throughput under optimal circumstances.

If you connect devices with older standards to your new WiFi cell, these possible gains are forfeit (or to put in other words, nothing to gain for clients stuck with old standards). If your old Access Point was the main bottleneck though, you may still see some overall improvement. For client devices that are stuck with built-in WiFi modules of old standards that also feature wire connectors, you can buy WiFi devices that support client mode (WiFi Bridge) and a current WiFi standard. Then wire those to the WiFi Bridge so these use the modern standard too. This also helps to reduce the total amount of individual WiFi clients which may also help to improve your WiFi experience.

I’m currently using MikroTik hAP ax² as WiFi bridges against a MikroTik hAP ax³. These are very flexible devices that allow the user to program how they work. If this is not what you’re looking for, then please buy devices that offer the needed modes and features of the shelf. Depending on your needs, this may require you to read product manuals and research stuff on the internet before you make a buying decision.

Note: It may be helpful if you could figure out the cause of your current issues with Roon first before you proceed with your proposed fixing measure. Different root causes may require different/additional measures to fix.

PS: I think WiFi 7 is still very much for early-adopters. You might be hard pressed to find any WiFi 7 supporting client devices currently and by the time WiFi 7 reaches main-stream, more and newer generation WiFi 7 network infrastructure devices (Access Points, WiFi Bridges, Range Extenders) may be available.

5

I have tested WiFi 6 with end point on Raspberri Pi 4 and RoPieee - no differences found with cable direct connection.

I’m just want to suggest to use DHCP and configure on Router constant IP’s for Roon Core / Server device and End Point device. The DHCP constant lease based on MAC address and could use IP’s also from DHCP pool.
In this case network has configured as DHCP but constant addresses are set for specific devices as static.

6

I know little of WiSA, but if the Buchardt A500s are fed by a dedicated transceiver on its own 5GHz channel there could be the possibility of conflict with the regular WiFi. And if the laptop hosting the Roon server is on WiFi itself that does sound like it’s asking for trouble.

7

This sounds a bit like general network issues to me, especially if you see the same warning no matter if wired or wireless. So the issue may be in your wired network, your router/modem or even your connection to the internet.

Note: I think you need Roon Labs to tell what the message actually means. Roon Labs, with a copy of your logs, may also be able to see if your current Roon issues are more likely Server machine or network bound. We other users are just guessing here.

8

Neither do I. The little I do know is that WiSA operates in a protected segment of 2.4 or 5 GHz used by medical devices so in normal use there should be no interference. It’s a Platin hub and normal use is considered 3 meters from your router and presumably 3 meters from your nearest CAT scan. TBH what I am experiencing looks more like roon interfering with itself. I have to play and perform some other roon operation concurrently to get dropouts on wifi 5.

I must say I am puzzled by the “frame” timeout warnings in the logs.

10/13 15:52:37 Warn: frame took 18.58ms! 16.57ms preframe, 0.00ms safe queue, 0.00ms timers, 0.00ms frame calls, 0.12ms update, 18.58ms render

They seem to indicate the “rendering” of something. The only thing I can think of whilst roon is playing is rendering the waveform. I have debug mode switched on and the frequency of the messages is the same, regardless of connection via wifi 5 or ethernet 5e. The difference is that these warnings proceed a disconnect with wifi 5 but have no effect with ethernet 5e.

I think these frame timeout warnings are new since the last release but I cannot be certain. Maybe roon can comment what these frame timeout warnings mean? I’ll raise a support ticket.

9

Now, this sounds indeed like your laptop is struggling hard to keep-up with the load for some reason. Maybe a cooling issue?

10

A quick search indicates it uses the same 5GHz unlicensed bands as regular WiFi, though it has specific techniques to try and avoid interference. But as others have suggested the laptop hosting Roon and/or its connection could be overstretched. A support ticket and an expert examination of the logs appears to be the best way forward.

11

There are no obvious signs of over-heating / fan noise etc. Often, there will be no drop-outs for long periods on WiFi 5 even when concurrently using Office apps / internet / email / Zoom / LLM chats / developing and executing Python code. But yes, the lap-top is old as well now and I am planning a replacement which may help as well.

What triggers the drop outs is a combination of playing something on roon and making a database query on roon of some sort. This is the only concurrent activity under wifi 5 that triggers this. And it doesn’t build up over a number of library accesses. It hapens o the first library access although it is not quite instantaneous. The jelly fish will swim for 5 seconds or so before the the devices drop off. This does not happen with ethernet 5e. It’s been playing now for several hours with no issue. I can browse the roon library, make roon edits and do my normal office stuff.

12

Yes. But the segment used is ringfenced from other domestic devices in the WiSA standard. They wouldn’t have a product that would work in a normal domestic environment unless they did this. Both the Platin hub and the Buchardt A500 are also roon ready so I assume typical use cases were tested prior to certification. But mainly I don’t think it is an interference issue with the WiSA speakers because exactly the same thing happens on the system out of the laptop speakers or a headset when connected via wifi 5.

From what you are saying you are using wifi 6 not wifi 5 and the difference in our experiences is probably as simple as that. My main concern is that we have the same use case. When playing in roon it is important to me to be able to concurrently play, edit and browse my library. I can play on wifi 5, no problem. I cannot play, edit and browse concurrently. That’s the problem.

I have a feeling what I am experiencing is something to do with these frame rendering timeout warnings as my dropouts are triggered when editing and browsing (i.e. rendering activities not streaming activities). Roon has switched on debug mode in my logs previously and not switched it back off. I don’t think everyone is seeing these frame rendering warnings in their logs.

13

Then what is the difference, the network hardware driver in use maybe (depends on the hardware of course)? Maybe there are newer drivers available (for older hardware you may have to go look yourself as you can’t rely on Lenovo’s or Microsoft’s update tools)? The massage, as it looks, is related to graphics rendering. So the system seems to get in a state where it locks up – over all/many processes for some reason. It seems funny that it doesn’t happen with wired network, but this would also rule out your WiFi network as such then (issue related to laptop).

14

I’m not convinced TBH. WiFi 5 ought to have more than enough bandwidth for a 5-6Mbps audio stream.
My initial response was simply to answer the question of whether Roon worked over WiFi 6, and in my experience it’s been fine.

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15

I am agreeing. And that is actually my experience. Roon plays fine on wifi 5. But I cannot edit or browse roon concurrently whilst it is playing. That causes a disconnect. This is also relatively recent behaviour. The issue is that is how I use roon. If I only wanted to play I can play the CD’s. It sounds like Wifi 6 may be an answer so thanks for that.

16

All the WiFi5/6/7 are fine with Roon under the right circumstances. The hard thing is to troubleshoot the issues the OP is facing and finding the root cause (it doesn’t have to be the network). If that’s done, then finding a (working) solution shouldn’t be too hard.

As it looks currently, avoiding the laptop’s built-in WiFi module (assuming that is what the OP currently uses) in favor of a wired connection (to, as assumed, also the built-in version) seems to help. But this feels more like a workaround than a real solution and doesn’t really reveal the root cause.

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17

No. Something is choking somewhere, and it’s sounding like it’s not the WiFi connection itself. Task Manager or Process Explorer might show if something’s stressing the laptop.

18

It is not the network that disconnects though, but the laptop that disconnects from the network. The evidence seems to point at your laptop. I don’t think that changing the WiFi Access Point will have an influence on the built-in WiFi module of your laptop. If it helps anyway, it would be completely by chance and luck for reasons unclear and may therefore return at any time.

Note: The lock-up in your laptop even influences the GPU frame rendering.

But let’s say that it may, for some reason, still be the WiFi network, then why? WiFi 6 uses the same 2,4 and 5 GHz frequency bands IIRC. So simply swapping the Access point, probably using the exact band as before with WiFi 5 may not help at all in case of frequency congestion. And changing the band used is free and can be done with the existing hardware. If the issue is with throughput in a heavily used WiFi cell, then the upgrade may also only bring marginal improvement (if at all) see my remarks above. Any gain may be eaten-up my higher demands after a short time (as the demand seems to grow always).

19

Yes. Sorry if that was not clear. Roon drops the connection.

What the logs show is that when I am attempting to edit, or even browse my library, whilst playing, roon drops the connection. This is proceeded by several “ui/slowness”, “waveform” and “frame rendering” warnings. Roon set debug on my logs previously so I am not sure if everyone sees these messages. This is only happening on wifi 5, not ethernet (5e). So the issue I am raising is not can roon stream on wifi 5. Of course it can. The issue is, on my laptop roon cannot stream on wifi 5 and simultaneously edit or browse my library (also other things like audio analysis which I have to throttle). So my question is will upgrading to wifi 6 (including the client) lead to a similar experience to wired ethernet? I know that wired ethernet solves the problem, I am playing roon that way at the moment, but a permanent solution of chasing all the cables at my present location will be challenging to say the least so I am trying to avoid that nuclear option.

10/13 09:24:01 Warn: frame took 39.34ms! 13.55ms preframe, 0.00ms safe queue, 2.57ms timers, 0.00ms frame calls, 0.11ms update, 39.34ms render
10/13 09:24:02 Debug: GMS: saving nav stack
10/13 09:24:02 Trace: waveformshader(1549) texture loaded: 83
10/13 09:24:02 Debug: GMS: done saving nav stack
10/13 09:24:03 Warn: frame took 20.39ms! 16.53ms preframe, 0.00ms safe queue, 0.01ms timers, 0.00ms frame calls, 11.31ms update, 20.38ms render
10/13 09:24:07 Debug: GMS: saving nav stack
10/13 09:24:07 Debug: GMS: done saving nav stack
10/13 09:24:16 Info: [stats] 2105349mb Virtual, 1178mb Physical, 835mb Managed, 343mb estimated Unmanaged, 1682 Handles, 50 Threads
10/13 09:24:24 Debug: [easyhttp] [2242] GET to http://127.0.0.1:9330/image/xnagaaaa.1by1_512.jpg returned after 372 ms, status code: 200, request body size: 0 B
10/13 09:24:24 Info: ==> 200
10/13 09:24:24 Trace: [broo/images] caching http://127.0.0.1:9330/image/xnagaaaa.1by1_512.jpg etag=fd4543c958df9856c7a7e3fcb5e0f16626aafe49 expiration=15/10/2025 07:24:24
10/13 09:24:31 Info: [stats] 2105349mb Virtual, 1178mb Physical, 840mb Managed, 338mb estimated Unmanaged, 1686 Handles, 50 Threads
10/13 09:24:42 Debug: GMS: saving nav stack
10/13 09:24:46 Info: [stats] 2105605mb Virtual, 1250mb Physical, 911mb Managed, 339mb estimated Unmanaged, 1691 Handles, 50 Threads
10/13 09:24:59 Trace: [roondns] flushed 5 last-known-good entries
10/13 09:25:01 Info: [stats] 2105637mb Virtual, 1251mb Physical, 785mb Managed, 466mb estimated Unmanaged, 1704 Handles, 71 Threads
10/13 09:25:09 Warn: [ui/slowness] widget popup_tag_picker(32619) > vpanel(32620) > stackpanel(32621) > vpanel(32622) > scrollpanel(32633) > vpanel(32634) > vpanel(32635) > vpanel(32644) took 201ms to _PreUpdate
10/13 09:25:16 Info: [stats] 2105629mb Virtual, 1256mb Physical, 857mb Managed, 399mb estimated Unmanaged, 1689 Handles, 66 Threads
10/13 09:25:31 Info: [stats] 2105601mb Virtual, 1255mb Physical, 859mb Managed, 396mb estimated Unmanaged, 1690 Handles, 47 Threads
10/13 09:25:46 Info: [stats] 2105599mb Virtual, 1253mb Physical, 870mb Managed, 383mb estimated Unmanaged, 1693 Handles, 46 Threads
10/13 09:26:01 Info: [stats] 2105625mb Virtual, 1254mb Physical, 870mb Managed, 384mb estimated Unmanaged, 1755 Handles, 63 Threads
10/13 09:26:16 Info: [stats] 2105611mb Virtual, 1252mb Physical, 881mb Managed, 371mb estimated Unmanaged, 1726 Handles, 54 Threads
10/13 09:26:31 Info: [stats] 2105589mb Virtual, 1252mb Physical, 884mb Managed, 368mb estimated Unmanaged, 1728 Handles, 39 Threads
10/13 09:26:46 Info: [stats] 2105589mb Virtual, 1260mb Physical, 897mb Managed, 363mb estimated Unmanaged, 1730 Handles, 39 Threads
10/13 09:27:01 Info: [stats] 2105590mb Virtual, 1217mb Physical, 786mb Managed, 431mb estimated Unmanaged, 1600 Handles, 40 Threads
10/13 09:27:16 Info: [stats] 2105611mb Virtual, 1218mb Physical, 794mb Managed, 424mb estimated Unmanaged, 1652 Handles, 54 Threads
10/13 09:27:31 Info: [stats] 2105593mb Virtual, 1163mb Physical, 783mb Managed, 380mb estimated Unmanaged, 1581 Handles, 42 Threads
10/13 09:27:43 Warn: [remoting/remotingprotocolv2] timed out
10/13 09:27:43 Trace: [remoting/remotebrokerv2] [TONY-LAPTOP] Connection dropped: Id: f630fffe-cb13-4e86-bfc3-d7cdd2d03929 Name: TONY-LAPTOP: 127.0.0.1 tcp=9331 tcpv2=9332, http=9330, inet=False, timestamp=12/10/2025 01:00:30
10/13 09:27:43 Trace: [remoting/remotebrokerv2] [TONY-LAPTOP] disconnect(hard=False)
10/13 09:27:43 Trace: [remoting/remotebrokerv2] [TONY-LAPTOP] Connected => Connecting

20

But you don’t know why, that’s the problem. Is it the different driver, less temperature load (and/or temperature better spread out in the tiny device), network bandwidth/throughput, …
So without knowing the root cause, it is not possible to tell you how to solve the issue. You keep bringing up the network but to my and others knowledge, there is no reason why Roon should not work on a good WiFi 5 connection. If yours isn’t good, you can probably optimize it without investing in new hardware. If you want to upgrade your WiFi network anyway, no matter if it helps with your Roon issue or not, go ahead – same goes for your elderly laptop. Please share your findings afterwards.

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