Previously, I was able to run Roon whether or not the TV was on. Now it only plays if the TV is powered on. That’s annoying because (a) electricity cost (b) risk of burn-in, and (c) because ROCK runs headless, all that shows on the TV is a few lines of plain text in white on a black background.
I would suspect that the problem lies in the AVR, except that it wasn’t an issue until recently, and I haven’t updated the receiver, but have updated Roon several times.
Are you using the Audio Return Channel?
Ie. Roon>AVR
AVR>TV via ARC or eARC
I suspect something is going on with CEC between the TV and the AVR.
I sometimes have similar issues where starting to play music will turn the TV on and/or the music will randomly switch between the TV speakers and the external speakers.
In which case I need to clear the HDMI cache (or whatever it’s called).
How to do this varies but in my case:
Shut everything off and unplug all the HDMI cables at both ends. Wait a minute or so.
Unplug the power cables and wait a few minutes.
Switch everything on without the HDMI cables.
Switch it all off again.
Connect HDMI cables.
Switch it all back on.
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
4
How is the TV involved? Is it connected to the output of the ROCK machine? Is that why the lines of white text on a black background? Is it connected to the NAD? What do the lines of text say?
Thanks for asking. the TV is connected to the AVR, not directly to the ROCK. When the AVR is switched to my ROCK as source, I assume it picks up everything on the HDMI cable – audio and video. What i see on the screen is very small type status data – ROCK version, IP address, etc.
Sorry that didn’t work.
I’m by no means an expert but I still wonder if it has something to do with CEC. (Which is not quite the same as ARC. ARC is the audio signal path. CEC is the control signal path).
Hopefully someone else will have a solution but support will chime in soon. It usually takes them a few days.
My handle is a dig at myself for spending 1000s of dollars on tweaks for nowhere near the results spending that money on upgrading components would have given.
I’m definitely a less is more guy now.
John, how long was that “previously”, i.e. how long was it working before it stopped?
Practically, I never had a problem free HDMI, and I will share my experience. My system consists of:
Mac mini - 2018 Intel
NAD T778
Samsung QN900B TV
The Mac mini is connected to NAD T778 on HDMI 1.
TV is connected to NAD T778 HDMI out.
I have eARC enabled, but not automatic, it is mapped to HDMI 5.
Most of the time, Mac mini and NAD T778 connection works fine, but very often it stops working, meaning it is as if HDMI cables are unplugged all together. This happens in 2 scenarios while listening to music from Mac mini via HDMI:
I had the TV on, and I just turned it off.
I had the TV off, and I just turned it on.
When this happens, the only way I found to restore the connection is this:
Turn off everything, including the Mac mini.
Power on the NAD T778
Power on the Mac mini
Then it all works, until it stops again.
In the end, I have given up using HDMI, and now I am playing directly to the NAD T778 via network.
I had a maybe similar problem, but not with ROCK, rather with a headless mac-mini, running Roon core, connected via HDMI to a Marantz AVR.
The problem was that after some inactivity time, the max-mini will put the display into sleep (no matter what settings I tried to prevent that). When it does so, the HDMI connection is also disconnected and lost forever - no sound output on the AVR - until I turn on the TV again or connect to the mac-mini via VNC.
So the solution I found was to run a program called caffeinate with an option to prevent the display from going into sleep (-d switch). That program would run in the background all the time.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have a NAD T758v3. As long as the TV stays on, the stream does not seem to cut out.
I had better luck in many ways when I used an old MacBook Pro via Ethernet as well (well, other than frequent crashes). But I couldn’t get multichannel playback to work that way, and it does work (except for stuttering on DSD files) via HDMI – I just have to leave the TV on.
Another possibility is your TV had a firmware upgrade, and something changed…
Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
14
I don’t think ARC has anything to do with this. It’s just a mechanism to send sound from your TV to the AVR, not the other way around. If you have it turned on, and the TV’s HDMI cable is plugged into the ARC output of the TV, it might be a factor, but you’ve turned it off.
The culprit is probably HDMI-CEC. In your AVR, this is also called HDMI Control. See page 18 of the manual for the AVR. I think if you turn this off, things will work.
What happens if you unplug the HDMI cable between your AVR and your TV? Does Roon play audio normally through the AVR?
I say this because my ROCK/NUC worked faultlessly with my Denon AVR when the latter was connected to a Panasonic TV. When we replaced this with a Samsung TV, the HDMI handshaking across the NUC → Denon → TV broke on a regular basis. I had to invest in a Doctor HDMI device between the NUC and the Denon to fix the handshaking problems.
@Vladislav_Dobrev asked if your TV had recently had a firmware update. It’s a good question…
Yes Jim, but that’s comparing apples with oranges.
The OP’s setup is simply a ROCK/NUC → HDMI → AVR → HDMI → TV, and in this setup, you definitely want the TV to be OFF when playing music from Roon to the AVR…
2nd the suggestions to try something between the AVR and the TV.
I have an inexpensive powered HDMI switch that solved these sort of issues on an older TV with poor CEC implementation.
But I had to go through a few of them to get one that worked or didn’t degrade the picture.
This one does the job
