Randomly, seemingly after hours without an issue, I’m finding playback will stop in the middle of a track, and I’ll have to advance the track in order for playback to resume. Once it starts happening though, it repeats with greater and greater frequency until I restart the remote, or restart the Core, or both in some cases.
Roon 1.1 (88) is running on a MacBook with the latest version of OSX. I’m controlling the Squeezebox 3 via the iOS Roon Remote app. Squeezebox firmware is 137 (can’t seem to sort out if that’s the latest, but it’s what LMS 7.9 pulled down when I resurrected this SB3 upon the Roon integration announcement). Any ideas?
I think this happens because of a buffer underrun at the Squeezebox, meaning, data isn’t arriving at the device quickly enough.
There’s no real chance that Roon is unable to deliver CD Quality audio quickly enough while running on a non-broken computer. If you’re doing some sort of heavy downsampling (DSD128+ or 192k+ PCM) on an older Mac who’s CPU can’t keep up with the format conversions, it could play in, too.
Unlike LMS, Roon sends decoded PCM (not the compressed source file) to Squeezeboxes, so it may need more bandwidth than LMS used to. Squeezeboxes have a rather weak WiFi implementation. I occasionally experience underruns with a squeezebox positioned near the edge of my WiFi network’s usable range.
Our next release will automatically resume squeezebox playback after an underrun. I think this is how LMS handles the situation, too.
Me too. I’ve also noticed that when the audio stops, that Roon still thinks it is playing (i.e., the play button displays the pause symbol) but the progress indicator never moves. If I hit the pause button and then hit play, the music always resumes.
@rbienstock@pwright92 which model of SB are you using? I wonder if perhaps the Squeezebox implementation of wireless improved through the evolution of the line. I’m using a SB3 that was manufactured by SlimDevices prior to the Logitech takeover (so basically, old tech).
I completely agree, and even if it doesn’t get sorted, I have to remind myself that we are working with old tech that Roon has kindly extended support for due to forum requests. Mileage will vary. I would hope they wouldn’t spend too many development hours trying to get dusty squeezeboxes working when I will probably be able to achieve similar sonic results with a RaspberryPi and RoonSpeakers eventually.
Pulling the SB out of the closet was a stop-gap measure for me.
If others with newer SB models are experiencing similar issues, I’m tempted to start blaming the old MacBook I’m using to run Roon Core.
I’ve also noticed that when the audio stops, that Roon still thinks it is playing (i.e., the play button displays the pause symbol) but the progress indicator never moves. If I hit the pause button and then hit play, the music always resumes.
This failure mode is familiar to us. It is fixed in alpha as of a few days ago, and will be fixed for the next release.
@audiomuze is an alpha tester, so his reports of stability may be influenced by the newer software.
We are planning to release a build this week with some minor bug fixes (Squeezebox, HQP, and TIDAL related, mostly) plus some UI stuff needed to fully support RoonReady devices. Other than the last HQP kink, which I am working with Jussi on this weekend, I think we are about ready to let it out the door.
Buffer underrun seems like a credible explanation.
I get random stoppage on my Transporter, which is two switches away from the Roon server on my network, but no stoppage on my Touch which is on the same switch as my dedicated Roon box (a Brix Pro Core i5).
When it happens on my Transporter, the Roon software on my laptop in the room (control, not server) does not continue to show it playing. So all I need to do is click pause-then-play and things resume instantly.
All my music (about 25,000 tracks) is on a QNAP TS-251 NAS. One hypothesis is delay from the NAS: I think that when it is doing backups, I might be seeing more stoppages, so the problem might lie there? But technically it should be plenty fast enough, so not sure why this happens.
Hopefully the Maintenance release of Roon you mention will solve this for me too! Otherwise loving the Roon experience. Now trying to decide whether to go Lifetime or not.
An issue I’ve had a few times tonight in my first long listen to a random selection through Roon was a track nearing the end, skipping to the next track and not finishing properly.
Okay, being silly here, trying to replicate this, it appears the songs themselves ended abruptly but are not noticeable as such on their albums but appear this way on shuffle.
I think it has something to do with gapless playback settings. Might be a bug though.
I mostly listen to classical, and I like a gap between movements which I don’t get so much with Roon.
Not sure how much control we have of these settings, but maybe there’s a control somewhere? One week with the software and I’m still discovering stuff.
Roon plays everything gapless unless there is a format change. There is no setting for this, but not because it’s difficult to do. I just don’t know what the behavior–exactly–should be.
Maybe there are three settings:
Playback is always gapless (today’s behavior)
Playback is gapless if two tracks are consecutive within an album, otherwise Roon inserts a configurable small gap
Roon inserts a configurable small gap between all tracks
I think the middle option makes sense for a lot of people. That might even be the right default setting. It avoids discontinuities when switching between albums/non-consecutive tracks, but it doesn’t break gapless album playback.
The third one is probably what you want, since gaps between movements requires that we put gaps between tracks that are consecutive within an album, but it’s not a sensible default behavior, as it results in a gappy “Dark Side of the Moon”.
