Stuttering and Playback Stop on Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline 192/24 from Qobuz (ref#TBS1WA)

Support
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Well, my wife turned my server off last night :joy: This morning on start-up, the problem was back. Track 1 of Nashville Skyline glitched within seconds. Server will be on all day if somebody can take a look. See my post of yesterday evening above for additional notes. Thank you! Mark

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Hi @Mark_Williford,

Thanks for the additional information! From a fresh diagnostic report, we’re still seeing error traces pointing to a weak network connection. It also looks like upsampling was still active at this time:

Trace: [Aurender N200] [Enhanced, 24/192 QOBUZ FLAC => 32/192] [PLAYING @ 0:00/3:15] Nashville Skyline Rag (Album Version) - Bob Dylan

Followed by:

Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
Debug: [prebuffer] sleeping in read -- this isn't good
Warn: FTMSI-B-OE qo/72F3865A: poor connection kbps:6545.0 (min:7892.0)

Playback starts normally, the Aurender N200 begins buffering, and the first chunk of the Qobuz 24/192 file arrives.

But within 5 to 10 seconds, the audio pipeline stalls because the stream from Qobuz is too slow to keep the buffer filled. This leads to the “sleeping in read — this isn’t good” warnings, and eventually to a “poor connection” diagnostic.

This is the smoking gun.

  • Required throughput for 24/192 FLAC from Qobuz: ~7.9 Mbps
  • Actual measured throughput: 6.5 Mbps
So your connection is too slow or unstable to support Qobuz 24/192 for this track. What we can tell is:
  • Aurender N200 is not the issue; it reports Ready and Playing normally.
  • RAAT network path (Server → Aurender) looks clean, no packet loss or sync errors.
  • CPU / memory look fine in the stats block.
The problem is upstream, in the Qobuz → Server data path.

When you tested different DNS servers, did you adjust them from your router settings as well?

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Thank you Ben. What you are saying makes sense in the context of when this incident occurs I occasionally get a message in Roon that says “Qobuz Media is loading slowly. This may indicate a networking or connectivity problem”. What doesn’t make sense if the fact that when Aurender calls for the file via Conductor, there is not a problem, nor is there a problem when I use Qobuz web player.

As for DNS settings, I ONLY adjusted them from my router. Is there somewhere else that I need to make that adjustment as well? Thank you so much for your continued assistance. I don’t want to give up Roon because I like many of its features, but music playback comes first.

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Hey @Mark_Williford,

Ok, good to know! And which model router are you currently using? We may be able to explore some potential options to allocate network priority to your Roon Server, which could help stabilize playback for you.

Let me know and we can take a closer look! :folded_hands:

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My router is Asus RT-AX55. Thanks so much for your continued support. I will be offline for a few days beginning this Sunday if you do not hear from me.

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Thanks for sharing @Mark_Williford!

With your ASUS RT-AX55 you can definitely attempt to prioritize bandwidth for your Roon Server, see if the below helps:

  1. Log into your router’s web GUI or access your router settings
  2. Go to General → Traffic Manager → QoS, enable QoS, fill in your ISP’s uplink/downlink values.
  3. Choose User-defined QoS (Traditional) or manual “User-defined priority.”
  4. Add a rule targeting your Roon server’s LAN IP or MAC address (best to give it a static IP if possible), and set Priority = “Highest.” Save / apply settings.
  5. Optionally, disable or lower priority for devices you don’t care about (phones, streaming TVs, large downloads, etc.) so they don’t compete.
Here’s more info:

Let me know if the above helps and if you have any questions along the way. Thank you! :raising_hands: