Sound interruptions and noises

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

My ROCK device uses Roon 1.6 (built 416; already had the problem since build 401 or so) 64 bits, with OS 1.0 (build 174; already had the problem since build 159 or so). The ROCK-server is a powerful device (NUC7i5DNHE i5 7th Gen, 8GB of RAM with 2x Crucial 4GB DDR4 dimm 2400Mhz, the OS is on a Samsung 960 Evo NVMe M.2 250GB SSD; the music is on another internal SSD: Samsung 860 2TB SATA MZ-76E2T0B/EU)… Lossless signal path (all DSP disabled for many months.)

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

The ROCK and my Devialet are both connected to the network with ethernet cables. Ethernet switch by Sitecom, my internet router is the one provided by Vodafone (I get internet, phone and TV from the cable, Vodafone, former “Kabel Deutschland”).

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

I use a Devialet Expert 400 (and B&W Nautilus 802), via Ethernet (with Roon’s integrated Devialet AIR).

Description Of Issue
For now more than 3 months, I noticed that the sound quality with my Roon ROCK deteriorated, with the following issue becoming more and more frequent, to the point now that it is ruining my hearing experience for the past couple of days:

More often than earlier (and more and more frequent recently), heavily-distorted sound (and sometimes short complete interruptions of sound for half a second) suddenly in the middle of a song for only about half a second to maximum 2 seconds (and then sounding normal again), at random times… On average (earlier, in 2018 and early 2019) it used to happen only maybe a couple of times over several weeks, and I just ignored it, but for the past 3 months it happened more often, maybe even once or twice per day (on listening days)… Most recently it happened every day, every few minutes even, e.g. today it happened every one or two minutes, and is getting unbearable (cannot enjoy listening to music via Roon anymore).

(Am very pissed off because I spent lots of money on a new device to make a “ROCK” music server, with top specifications as recommended by Roon, because this should make Roon run better and bugs should be history ; as Roon staff had told me my earlier machine was not powerful enough… but that is NOT happening, and I have a non-working system once again! I even do not use any DSP, so with such a powerful machine, the bugs are now really ‘inexcusable’…)

Dear Support team: Please run remote diagnostics on my machine…? (Please give me a sign where you read this, then I’ll start playing music again with Roon for the day(s) when you are watching… now I am using my old CD player meanwhile.)

Hi @Lueneburg-based,

Sorry to hear about the difficulties here, I have a few suggestions starting off:

  • You mentioned that you are using the Devialet Air driver. Can you confirm that you have followed the Devialet Air Setup Guide if you are also using the Devialet AIR driver on any other machine on the network?

  • Have you installed the newest firmware on the Devialet? I would follow these instructions from Devialet to ensure that you have the newest firmware installed on your DAC as there may have been some improvements.

  • Does any of the other Expert’s connection type have similar behavior? I would try the RAAT/Airplay and Air-Wifi to see if the behavior is the same for all of them or just for one as this will give us a good data point.

  • I noticed that you are using a Sitecom Ethernet switch in this setup, is the behavior the same if you bypass the switch and have the Devialet connected directly to the router?

  • Can you let me know the exact local time + date in your country when you next observe this behavior? E.g. 4:54PM on 7/12/19? Two or three examples of such time will suffice, and this will be useful for diagnostics purposes, and having the timestamp will give us a window to take a closer look in.

Please let me know if my above suggestions help with the issue.

Thanks,
Noris

Thanks Noris for your detailed reply! Here’s a first feedback:

  • I am not using the Devialet Air driver itself, only Roon’s built in devialet air implementation. And yes I did implement it as indicated on the setup guide.

  • Yes I have the latest Devialet firmware for the Devialet Expert 400 - which is an old driver btw, the 10.1.0 (please remember that all the later devialet drivers for “Expert Pro with CI” are NOT compatible with the “Expert” devices like the 120, 200 and 400; one can only use “10.x.x Firmware versions for Expert and Expert Pro without Core Infinity”).

  • I don’t know what “RAAT/Airplay” connection is (does that work at all with the Expert? I thnk RAAT works only with the newer “Expert Pro” devices). The Wifi is not activated on my Devialet device. Next time I get the time to redo a configuration file on the Devialet Configurator, I will then test with Wifi instead of Ethernet…

  • I changed it and now (today) have the Devialet connected to the router directly (but not the ROCK computer ; I can’t have both directly connected to the router - not enough ports; so the ROCK is still, as it was, connected to the switch).

  • I am now restarting to listen to music via Roon and I will report here - with the local time + date, as soon as the incident re-occurs. (Maybe I’m lucky and the problem will be gone by connecting the devialet’s ethernet cable directly to the router… Let’s see…) [by the way, the time when the problem last occured, most heavily, was about 21 hours ago just a few minutes before I wrote my first post on this thread, which by memory would be approximately around 21:00 yesterday Friday July 12th…]

Had an interruption just now (16:49, on July 13th, Berlin time). It was just an interruption without sound-distortions/noises now… Just one (fraction of a second) interruption… (Much less bad than yesterday, so far…)

Just happened once now, at 17:30 (July 13th, Berlin time) for half a second: short disruption of the sound (same typical noise/distortion).

Happened again just now at 18:07, once (short interruption followed by the ‘brzwwrz’ typical noise/distortion…)

19:16, now happened again (distorted sound/noise) twice close to each other, a first time for 1 or 2 seconds, and then about 30 seconds later once again for a second or two…
As these are already now 4 examples of the issue, I will stop Roon for today and look forward to your feedback. (The Devialet today is connected directly to the Router, as you suggested. Connection is still through Ethernet, didn’t try yet via wifi… as it would need for me to redo the Devialet device’s configuration, to reactivate the wifi on the amplifier…)

Hi @Lueneburg-based,

Thank you for listing those timestamps. I have gone ahead and activated diagnostics mode for your account and what this action does is automatically generate and upload a set of logs to our servers for analysis.

I have forwarded the diagnostics over to our technical team for analysis and while this occurs on our end, can you please confirm if using WiFi on the Devialet exhibits the same behavior? If so can you let me know a couple of timestamps when using WiFi?

Thank you Noris. Am just starting now to listen with the Devialet’s Wifi instead of Ethernet (it took a bit to re-create my devialet configuration files, as the new ‘devialet configurator’ no longer recognizes the old config files… another story, not relevant here except that it slowed me down a bit ;-)… I will report if and when I hear the problem again using wifi (as it is now late night in Germany, I won’t have much time for testing tonight, and will resume test-listening for a longer while tomorrow)…

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Hi @noris : I am re-awakening this thread because the problem is back, for several weeks more heavily. Back in July 2019 when I had switched to Wifi on the Devialet (instead of using Lan), it had largely gone away. But meanwhile it came back, gradually more and more often, like a cancer growing back, and in the past couple of months it has become a very frequent pain in the a… again (like it’s doing today; like just now again: 16:48 CET on 27.03.2020). … Please give me a sign if you can restart “diagnostics mode” on my account. I will then resume playing and send you time-stamps on this thread, when the problems occur… Meanwhile I will get back to listening to my turntable and old vinyles instead.

Hi @Lueneburg-based,

Sorry to hear that the issue is back.

I have re-activated diagnostics and I can confirm that the report has been received and passed to the technical team for closer inspection. We will reach out once more when the report has been reviewed.

Hello @Lueneburg-based,

While looking at your diagnostic logs, we noticed a large amount of “NAK” and packet re-transmission in the logs

03/27 15:47:51 Trace: [Devialet wifi] [Lossless, 16/44 FLAC => 16/44] [100% buf] [PLAYING @ 5:14/6:57] Symphony No. 8: Movement III - Philip Glass / Dennis Russell Davies / Bruckner Orchester Linz
03/27 15:47:51 Debug: [devialet] NAK[1]
03/27 15:47:52 Debug: [devialet] NAK[1]
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[1]
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[1]
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[1]
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[1]
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114401 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[11]
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[11]
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[11]
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114401 4 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[11]
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114469 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114472 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114474 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114476 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114478 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[11]
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114480 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114481 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114483 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114484 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114490 3 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[11]
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114401 5 times!
03/27 15:47:54 Debug: [devialet] NAK[31]
03/27 15:47:54 Warn: [devialet] sent packet 114469 4 times!

This is a sign something is getting overwhelmed or bottlenecked on the Expert side, Roon and your NUC are performing as expected. Our CTO went into some further details about the possible causes of these interruptions here. I recommend reaching out to Devialet with this report and troubleshooting further with them.

If you would like to experiment, it may be worth switching back to ethernet but using a 100mbps switch in-between your router and the Devialet. I cannot guarantee this will work, but we have had a few users report success.

-John

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