Dear community,
I’m experiencing constant, brief dropouts when playing some German radio stations in Roon’s Live Radio function over the Sonos system, such as my favorite station, “Antenne Bayern.” This isn’t the case with other stations (e.g., SWR3). Can anyone confirm this or have the same problem? The issue affects both the Nucleus One and a Core I previously installed on a PVE. Thanks in advance, and best regards, Oliver
Wired or wireless connections?
I’ve been testing “Antenne Bayern” for several minutes with no dropouts.
Is there a particular channel/version/genre of the station that is giving you issues or all the various channels?
Hmm…that’s strange. I always listen to the mainstream, and my Sonos system is connected hybridly: Sonos Boost and Play:3 via LAN, the other rooms have Play:1 via Wi-Fi. But in my opinion, that can’t be the cause, because other stations don’t have these outages.
Play the troublesome radio station and post a screenshot of the signal path before the dropout and during the dropout.
And also a screenshot of the signal path of a station that doesn’t dropout.
A screenshot is difficult because the dropout only lasts a fraction of a second, so there’s not much to see in the signal path. However, I’ve noticed that the problem occurs with multiple stations with variable bitrates in the MP3 stream; stations with fixed bitrates are stable. Whenever the bitrate changes, there are brief dropouts. Perhaps there’s a connection here? This phenomenon also occurs when I don’t have a Sonos group and only play through a single player connected to the LAN. I can’t judge this, as I’m not an IT streaming expert. Perhaps you can reproduce this, or someone has a solution.
This seems to be an issue specific to you, and as such, I think it’s best in the Support section where Roon support can contribute and check your logs.
I’ll move it there. Please supply as much information about your setup as possible in order to help the support team.
Hello @Olanja.
Thank you for reaching Roon support.
Based on the description, the issue might be related to how the traffic comes through the ISP connection or related to the bitrate changes.
I think the next step here is to enable some diagnostics on your account so our technical staff can get some more insight into what’s going on here.
However, before I enable this feature, I’d like to ask for your help ensuring we gather the right information.
First, can you please reproduce the issue once more and note the time at which the error occurs. Then respond here with that time, and I’ll make sure we review the diagnostics related to that timestamp.
Hi vadim,
thank you very much for the feedback and the offer of help. The dropouts always occur with this radio station, regardless of the time of day. I’ve attached a screenshot of the signal path from the last incident. As I said: If I select Bayern 3 as the station, for example, this error doesn’t occur, and the stream runs uninterrupted, even when grouping multiple Sonos speakers. If I stream the station Antenne Bayern directly via the Sonos app, the transmission also runs without dropouts. So, it’s probably not the ISP’s fault; in that case, I would have the error permanently, regardless of the connected system. I suspect the cause lies in the signal processing within the Roon system. When streaming from other sources from Roon (e.g., Quobus), there are no problems either, regardless of which audio device is selected as the destination.
Best regards
Oliver
Hi @Olanja,
Sorry for any confusion here! We’re not seeing any recent dropouts from the diagnostic report we reviewed - could you please reproduce the issue specifically and share the track name when the dropouts occur?
This would be helpful - thank you!
Good morning,
I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding here: the problem doesn’t affect individual tracks, but occurs consistently and consistently with various radio stations, regardless of the content being played. You obviously have a problem with the live radio function in Roon in conjunction with Sonos. I’ve now switched back to the original Sonos app for streaming radio. The problem doesn’t exist there, and all radio stations work perfectly. The problem clearly lies in the Roon environment; the live radio function is unfortunately unusable for me. Best regards
Hi @Olanja,
Thanks for following up. Just to clarify — we’re not asking for the song title because we suspect the track itself is causing the issue. We’re asking because it helps us pinpoint the exact time of the dropout in your logs. That gives us a much better shot at identifying what’s going wrong and how to resolve it.
Hello again,
I’ve reproduced this again. The short dropouts appeared repeatedly today between 2:10 PM and 2:25 PM (German Summer Time) in the “Antenne Bayern” livestream, but other stations, such as “Antenne Bayern Relax,” are also affected. Starting at 2:25 PM, I switched to the Bayern3 livestream, and the dropouts are no longer present there. The dropouts appear on all devices, regardless of whether they are Roon-ready or Roon-tested. As an alternative to the Sonos system, I also have a Streambox Ultra from ProJect, the SACD30n, and the Cinema 40 from Marantz. The same problem occurs everywhere, regardless of whether the devices are grouped or not.
As soon as I stream via Quobus or from a local source, these dropouts disappear. Therefore, in my opinion, the cause is definitely Roon’s Live Radio function. I hope you find the cause soon and can offer a solution.
Best regards,
Oliver
Hi @Olanja,
Thank you for your patience. Diagnostic logging shows Roon requests to the live station URLs returning with failures intermittently.
You mentioned several stations that are affected, and at least one that is not affected. If you navigate to the station website for Antenne Bayern, do the dropouts occur playing either the AAC or mp3 streams in a browser?
https://www.antenne.de/programm/empfang/webradio
If Roon either 1) can’t resolve the URL for the stream or 2) the URL is intermittently unreachable via the available network path, then you should experience problems with the webstream itself.
Let us know if you have a chance to test this - we have additional troubleshooting steps we can share from there.
Thanks!
Hi support,
I’ve now tested it. As I expected, there are no problems streaming “Antenne Bayern” via the web browser (Firefox). I would have been surprised, too, because the stream via the Sonos app using the “RadioPlayer” plugin also runs smoothly. The cause must therefore be in the Roon environment. Good luck, dear support team.
P.S.: Could you please change my username to “Olanja”. Thank’s for support!
Hi @Olanja,
Thanks for letting us know; we’ll continue investigating the issue on our end. I’ve also gone ahead and updated your username as requested. Let us know if anything else comes up or if you notice any changes in behavior.