I discovered an unexpected cause (I assume) to a dropout problem on my Nucleus One. I never saw it in any Help articles or Community chat, so thought I’d share.
I was having dropout problems with my new Nucleus One that was hardwired to my network and connected via network (Wi-Fi) to my Pre Amp.
The problem did not happen with my old Roon core on a Mac Book Air (Wi-Fi connected).
I ran some trials and he data indicated a few things:
It had something to do with sampling and bit rate:
192kHz/24 bit always dropped
96 kHz/24 bit often dropped
48 kHz/24 bit sometimes dropped
44.1 kHz/16 bit never dropped
It also seemed to happen more frequently later in the day and in the evening
Since the problem did not happen on the old Roon core, I ruled out a network performance issue.
I looked for issues related to time of day and did some speed tests to see if network speed could be a factor. Speed was generally slower later in the day but was more than enough (350-570 Mbps) to stream big files.
On a whim, I did two speed tests: one with the phone sitting on the Pre Amp, and another with the phone sitting on the Nucleus One which was inside a cabinet directly under the Pre Amp that sat on top of the cabinet.
The Pre Amp network speed was about 125 Mbps faster than the Nucleus speed. I moved the Nucleus on top of the cabinet next to the Pre Amp to equalize network speed.
The fix seemed to work. Been playing for about 3 days - and evenings - no problem.
I am guessing that the cabinet slowed the Wi-Fi signal enough that the two components, because of different network speeds, weren’t synced up enough for the higher data tracks? I’m not an IT or network guy, so I could have it all wrong. I’d appreciate any thoughts on root cause based on this write-up.
Thanks!
