Stuttering issue with Tidal on Nucleus One despite excellent broadband speed (ref#1TSGUN)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· None of the above quite fits

None of the above quite fits

· None of these quite match

Tell us what's going on

· I'm trying to resolve the "stutter" issue with Tidal. I have a Nucleus One.

The Broadband Speed is excellent but the ethernet port LED on the Nucleus is flashing orange.

Tell us about your home network

· Ethernet cable from Nucleus One to multi switch.

2

Hello @paul.tyson

Thanks for the details, and for noticing the LED, that is a useful observation.

A word of caution on it though. On most Ethernet hardware an amber or orange link LED means the port negotiated at 100 Mbps rather than gigabit, and blinking indicates traffic passing. We would not want you to focus on that too hard, because 100 Mbps is still far more bandwidth than TIDAL needs, even at the highest quality. Stuttering on a link like that usually comes from packet loss or an unstable connection rather than from raw speed. A broadband speed test measures throughput, and it can look excellent while the connection is still dropping packets.

A few things would help us pin this down.

First, please tell us whether the stuttering happens only with TIDAL, or also when you play music stored in your own library. That single answer tells us whether we are looking at the path out to the internet or at something closer to home.

Second, please tell us which zone stutters and how it is connected: is it a device on your network, or something attached directly to the Nucleus One?

Third, please send us an exact timestamp for one occurrence: the date, the time, your timezone, and the album and track that was playing. That lets us find the exact moment in the logs.

Fourth, please try connecting the Nucleus One straight to your router with a different Ethernet cable, bypassing the multi switch entirely, then see whether the stuttering changes and whether that LED changes color. This is the most useful single test, because it removes the switch and the current cable from the picture at the same time.

Let us know how that goes and we will take it from there.

5

Hi @paul.tyson,

We’ve received your request to reopen this thread to continue troubleshooting. Our apologies for the inadvertent auto-closure.

Were you able to run some of the tests suggested in the post above? We’ll watch for your reply. Thank you!

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To answer your points

  1. The stuttering seems to only happen on Tidal but I will continue to monitor this.

  2. Roon is played via a Naim NDX 2. The NDX 2 is also connected to the multi switch.

  3. Stutter Occurrence - 10th August 2026 @ 16:48. Album - Second Nature by Flying Colors. Track - Open Your Eyes. I have other occurrences logged if you require more data.

  4. The router is on a separate floor from the Nucleus One and the NDX2 so it is not possible to connect directly to the router without moving it.

Let me know if you need any further information.

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Hi @Paul_Tyson,

Thanks for the reply, we were able to review the timestamp you shared above in a fresh Roon Server log set. Right away we can see your NDX 2 is being used as an AirPlay zone rather than as a Roon Ready endpoint. Two things follow from that:

  1. Everything is being converted to 16/44 for AirPlay, several of the tracks in that session were 24/96 and 24/192 originals.
  2. Throughout playback, Roon and the NDX 2 are stuck in a volume command feedback loop, roughly 4–5 volume commands per second, sustained for the entire session, oscillating between mute and your set level. That rapid mute/unmute flapping is a very good match for what you’re hearing as stuttering, and it’s also generating thousands of extra control messages on the same connection that carries AirPlay’s audio timing.

Just as importantly, the log rules out the bandwidth theory for this session. Your playback buffer sat at 100% for essentially the whole track, Tidal downloads completed promptly, and there are no dropouts, stalls, or retries anywhere in the log. The 100 Mbps link on the Nucleus One wasn’t the problem, the audio was never starved. So please don’t go to the trouble of re-cabling to the router; that isn’t where this lives.

What I’d like you to try, in order:

  1. Switch to the Roon Ready zone. The NDX 2 is a certified Roon Ready device, so it should appear in Roon’s zone list a second time under Roon Ready, separate from the AirPlay entry. If you don’t see it, enable Roon in the Naim app under the streamer’s input/settings, then check Roon → Settings → Audio. Select that zone instead of the AirPlay one. This gives you bit-perfect playback, a much more robust transport, and it bypasses the volume mechanism at fault here entirely. I expect this alone to resolve it.
  2. If you’d like to confirm the diagnosis first, stay on the AirPlay zone and go to Roon → Settings → Audio → the gear icon next to NDX 2 → Device Setup, and set Volume Control to Fixed Volume. Then play the same track. If the stuttering stops, that confirms the volume loop as the cause, and it’s a useful data point for us either way.

Let me know how you get on. If the stutter persists on the Roon Ready zone, we’ll review fresh logs with a new timestamp.

Thank you!

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There is nothing to enable in the Focal & Naim app for Roon Ready. It’s enabled by default and there is no off switch either. It should always be there in Roon > Settings > Audio > Roon Ready.

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That seems to have cured the issue. Thanks.