I have never had the problem with Tidal data flow speed, not with Tidal app, Moon app, Lumin app nor Roon – until switching on the Crossfade time to any value from 1 to 10.
After that all MQA tracks (not FLAC files) will be interrupted in first 5 - 6 seconds, saying: “Tidal media is loading slowly…”. With Crossfade time setting to ON accompanies Bit depth conversion from 16 to 64 bit and from 64 down to transport device suitable 32 bit. I like the sound that this creates. All filters are disabled.
Can it be the bug in processing chain? The bit depth conversion shouldn’t affect data flow speed from outside, just processor load, isn’t it?
Processing speed in my case is around 30x.
Sorry to hear you’ve experienced some interruptions here. We’ve taken a look at diagnostics from your Core, and there appear to be some network conditions underlying the slowness. The additional DSP makes communication between Roon and your endpoint more sensitive - there may also be network traffic regulations (Quality of Service) that reassign bandwidth around your devices depending on what is streaming where.
We can likely resolve your network issues by learning a little more about the setup here. The Lumin and your phone are losing contact with Roon regularly, although they sometimes recover before you might notice in the UI. Multicast is reporting to Roon as failing on this network.
What router are you using, and how are both your Core and the Lumin X1 connected to the internet? We’ll start from there and try to illuminate the problem.
The Network acoustics Muon Ethernet Filter I added between Mac and Rubicon around 5. July, before that there was the 2 meters LINKUP Cat8 Ethernet Patch Cable.
Network speed pinged from Mac is 93 Mbps down and 30 Mbps up, ping 4 ms. It doesn’t change if I replace the Muon Ethernet Filter with 2 meters LINKUP Cat8 Ethernet Patch Cable. But it changes if I exclude the Rubicon, in this case speed in both directions is 94 Mbps.
It would be interesting to know why interruption take place exclusively when the Crossfade time is set on, and not at other times?
Personally, I would try simplifying your network setup (even if only as a test) by removing the Muon Ethernet Filter and replacing all your Cat8 cables with standard Cat6 cables.
You’re playing two streams at the same time during a cross fade so double the network bandwidth is used. As Geoff has suggested I would remove the boutique network gear and see if it behaves.
Thank you everybody here!
This is solved. The Muon filter and Cat8 cables didn’t play role here. What did was Rubicon switch. Avoiding it and connecting Mac directly to router changed the things – now it is playing without interruption. I even didn’t expect that to test this earlier.
I will check how removing the high quality switch will affect the sound.
