Tidal and local tracks load slowly - no playback, issue only in Roon [solved - iMac wrongly preferred wifi]

Support
1

Core Machine

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017, CPU 4,2Ghz Quad Core Intel Core i7, RAM: 40GB), MacOS Big Sur 11.4

Network Details

Speedport Plus supplied by provider (speed: 29Mbps down/5.37 up)

Audio Devices

dCS Network Bridge via ethernet from iMac to Benchmark DAC3 via coaxial

Library Size

250,000 tracks

Description of Issue

Tidal media AND local files are loading slowly and playback stops after 4-12 seconds. Subsequent tracks also fail to load. So, Roon is unusable.
Network speed is fine with Roon Server stopped (see above).
With Roon Server running, ping times are unusually high: 400 (normal ~23).
Have restarted everything. No go.
Yet, dCS Mosaic works perfectly all the while. I’m not advertising dCS – I’m just stating that my system is functional outside of Roon.

2

I’m suspecting Synology Drive Client, the software that syncs my Synology NAS with my iMac. Testing time is quite short, but it appears that this is what impacts the ping time, and Roon seems to work fine when Drive Client is paused (it is syncing a 1TB zip file at the moment from NAS to iMac at the moment, so not just a boring day at the office).
Still, dCS Mosaic seems to be resilient to these challenges, whereas Roon is rendered totally unusable.
Definitive verdict pending further testing.

3

If this is over wifi then there is your answer… dont run your core over wifi is the party line. you dont say if the Mac is connected to the rest of the network by ethernet

4

Re: party line (10 char.)

5

Do you perform oversampling by DSP? I have the same issue with oversampling higher than 352.8kHz. When I reduce max frequency to 176.8/192 everything is OK.

6

no DSP. I find it negatively impacts audio quality.

7

That to me reads your iMac is directly connected to the dcs via Ethernet

Just to be clear there is no WiFi connection to the internet for the core?

8

Indeed there is no wifi. Wifi only used for iPad remote.

9

Notably, my original post is now 3 days old, and I’ve had replies from two fellow forum members – yet haven’t been blessed with a reply from Roon (which is paid software, mind you).

10

Hello @Highfi,

I am so sorry we’ve let you down when it comes to response times. It’s been too long and clearly not what we’re aiming for. Please, accept my apologies :pleading_face:

Thanks for letting us know of the issue you’ve ran into. If you haven’t yet, as a first troubleshooting step, could you please change your Router’s DNS servers from the ISP provided ones to Cloudflare DNS, Quad9 or Google DNS.

Thanks in advance :pray:

11

Thanks, @beka, changed DNS and will monitor issue.

1 Like
12

A similar problem to what I’m having. It’s been going on for weeks now, and I’ve reported it to Roon support, but so far it’s been a couple of days since I heard from them…

13

Thank you @Highfi. Can’t wait to hear back from you, and, I’ll say it: hopefully with great news :nerd_face:

14

Great news indeed, though not in Apple’s favour: Turns out – though I had set the preferred network order properly – that my iMac preferred the wifi connection, even though connected by Ethernet.
From what I read, the issue is common, and I couldn’t identify a solution (apart from the workaround of temporarily turning wifi off to force the Ethernet connection).
Apologies for needlessly taking up your time.

1 Like
15

On re-reading the thread title [my title, mind you], I realised that even while on wifi:

It should therefore be noted that other software has no issue playing back over wifi but Roon can’t cope. Why?

16

Roon requires all endpoints and the core on one address segment/subnet range.

1 Like
17

Thank you for your input.
Is this requirement not met when some devices are in wifi and some on ethernet?

18

Can be depending on the router options. Some create another network segment others share the lan one. Only way to know is look at the different devices ip addresses to check the first 3 numbers are the same. Or rtfm on the router settings or check in the router configs

19

Hello @Highfi,

I am indeed happy at the solution :partying_face: . Thanks for looking into it and sharing it with us :nerd_face:

I’m glad things are working now. Please, do not hesitate to reach back out if anything else comes up. And absolutely no need to apologize - we love to help anytime we can :blush: