I thought I reported this problem over 2 years ago but I can’t seem to find my thread. I found this one that is similar:
Basically what is happening is that for very short tracks (under 10 seconds) there is a significant pause between the tracks.
This was happening with the local files but I haven’t tested streaming (Tidal). I first noticed it on Radiohead’s MINIDISCS [HACKED] which I broke into tracks using .cue files. In this release there were quite a few tape blips that were separate tracks. The blips were under 1 second. There were other short tracks that also had issues. This is also happening on They Might Be Giants’ “Fingertips”.
It seems that the shorter the track, the longer the pause (i.e. it is inversely proportional) but not in all cases. So the under 4 second tape blips represent an infinite pause before the next track. Then the slightly longer tracks have a long gap but some finite length of time. At some point (tracks greater than 10 seconds), there is no more discernable pause between songs.
For example, here are the length of the pauses after certain track lengths:
1 Second Track Radiohead “Tape Blip” between "4-18 Motion Picture Soundtrack {MD114 take 2}"and 4-20 “Airbag I”: infinite pause (stopped testing after five minute pause)
3 Second Radiohead “5-13 Tape Blip: Rewinding…”: infinite pause (stopped testing after five minute pause)
I haven’t checked Tidal, mainly because both Fingertips and MINIDISCS HACKED are not separated into individual tracks. Also, I should note that I can manually start the next track and it will work (after some delay).
It would be really great if you could fix this bug.
I am getting similar behaviour on a classical album. Tracks vary in length and there seems to be pauses between tracks like Roons searching for something. You can see the signal path light go off when it happens and as some of the tracks playing are gapless it doesn’t play gapless. If I play any 3 the third one tends to suffer this issue.
This is what I was playing. It’s the same issue for my own files which are 96/24 flac or from Qobuz at any rate. Playback of other albums I have experienced an odd pause sometimes but put it down to something else. Perhaps it’s not if this is happening to you as well.
Thank you for the diligent work to pin this down. An infinite pause - or anything beyond a few manageable seconds at the longest - is not expected here and there’s possibly something misfiring in the normal queue transition due to short track time. We’ll certainly take a look and revisit this with development. First off, a copy of the local files affected would be tremendously helpful to our QA team. Please upload those here at your convenience: Media Uploader
Next, verify the following:
Are you playing to a networked endpoint when this occurs? Can you reproduce it with System Output on a Remote or a hardwired endpoint?
@CrystalGipsy, we’re initially unable to reproduce reliably with the example you provided, only intermittently, but the short track is certainly prompting a Roon Radio “nothing similar” popup synchronously with playback. Can you please share a screenshot of the Device Setup for the “lounge” Zone in your screenshot above?
There’s room for improvement here and once we’ve looked more closely, we can confirm expected behavior. But we also need to set expectations around perfect track transitions with tracks under ~15 seconds, as Roon’s ability to accommodate the intended behavior you describe might be limited by realities in the backend structure of the record industry’s distribution network.
Put simply, extremely short track durations are a thorn in the side of the music industry upstream of Roon. Historically, record labels, publishers, and distributors have reined in attempts by artists to release material under about 15-20 seconds long. This goes back to the days of radio and groups like ASCAP’s royalty enforcement; short tracks cause excessive pains when matching ISWC/ISRC codes to track performance and mechanical royalties. A more contemporary reason is that most current contentID models rely on a certain duration of playback to associate rights owners with proprietary audio.
In a sense, therefore, buffer/prebuffer times touch up against royalties and distribution through play count tracking, and there are real minimum durations Roon has to respect. Our hands might be tied in providing the desired fix.
Short track durations exist organically most often in the Classical music world, when they equate to Movements or variations of a piece (see @CrystalGipsy’s case above).
Radiohead’s example here is a unique case - since they were originally stolen, the Minidiscs are an unsanctioned release and don’t adhere to any industry taxonomy.
That said, we’ll investigate this behavior thoroughly once we have a copy of the local album.
Hi Connor, thanks for the insight. I think my zone might well be making this worse than it is. Its not using a supported method its using RHEOS extension and not RAAT so I would concentrate on the OP,s issue. I was just interesed to see someone at the same time having a similar issue. Having now tried the same album on all RAAT zones and even via Airplay to same Marantz Model 40n having issues it seems to play ok with no pauses. Odd how you still got some issues with it though so must be a trigger to something. I am happy for this to be looked at by the dev of the extension, but if you anyting else from me, let me know.
While not the reported symptom, we’ve ticketed one bug so far thanks to these reports: an incorrectly timed “Nothing Similar” popup that occurs under these same conditions for some tracks if a user engages Roon Radio.
In the meantime, we’ll attempt to reproduce the originally reported behavior once @J_B has a chance to share either the Radiohead or TMBG local albums.
Ok uploaded all items I originally discussed. Please let me know if you received them. Note that I only included part of each album due to the 100MB upload limit.
I’m not sure what you mean by a System Output. It is happening on all endpoints I have. A linux desktop machine with RoonBridge, a RoPieee device, and all my Bluesound devices. All are controlled through either my Android Remote or a Windows Desktop Remote.
Since this thread is dedicated to tracking the UI bug identified by @CrystalGipsy, please see the above thread for updates on the playback stopping/pausing issue. Thank you!
