Hardware: IntelNUC 8i7 BEH2, with 2 GB RAM, SSD HD for Roon Rock
Networking Gear & Setup Details
My NUC is connected through ethernet cable to one of the DECO units on the 3rd floor. Through mesh wifi it is connected with other DECO unit on the 2nd floor (which acts as main mash node) and my Chord Poly streamer in living room is connected through wifi with DECO unit on the 1st floor
WiFi connection with newest mesh TP-Link Deco X20 with huge bandwidth (wiFi 6, dual band, 1800 Mb/s),
Internet with optical fiber network to my house with checked 300Mb/s
Connected Audio Devices
• Living Room: Chord Poly (through RAAT) with Moly Dac connected to amp and speakers
• Sleeping Room: Sonos One (through AirPlay)
My remotes are Iphone 11, Iphone 7, Tablet Huawei AG52
Library Size
• My music is stored on Synology NAS 218+ as well as I am using Tidal,
• I have 4937 tracks on NAS and 1514 tracks on Tidal
Description of Issue
Unfortunately I am continuously having issues with “Tidal media is running slowly. This may indicate a networking or connectivity problem”.
I thought it is a network issue so I:
completely changed my network to the newest mesh TP-Link Deco X20 with huge bandwidth (wiFi 6, dual band, 1800 Mb/s),
Upgraded my optical fiber network provider form 100Mbits to 300Mb/s
So for sure it is not related to my network speed.
After I upgraded it happens not so often but still occasionally, somtimes once an hour, sometimes less frequently. Track then stops and moves to the next song that works ok. When I put back the track that stopped and generated problem, second time it works ok and could be played without interruption – so it is not related to any particular song/resolution.
Please see below screenshot:
My signal path is the following:
I checked also many threads with similar problems - and I checked it is not computing power as it never gets below 4,5 so it should not ne my dedicated IntelNuc which is Intel i7 with sufficient RAM.
Last time it happened today around 10.00 AM CET.
Please let me know as it is very upsetting. Thank you in advance! Lukasz
Your system is going to be constantly swapping to disk.
I think adding more RAM is your best bet. As an example the last 2 versions of the raspberry pi have 4gb and 8gb respectively. 4GB is the recommended minimum.
ROCK For Small to Medium-Sized Libraries
We recommend the NUC10i3FNH with 4GB RAM and 64GB M.2 SSD for small to medium-sized libraries. Please note that 4GB RAM sticks and 64GB M.2 SSDs are difficult to find, and there’s little price difference between the 8GB and 128GB upgrades.
You simply do not have adequate resources to drive the gear in the manner you are trying.
As a minimum I’d throw 8Gb RAM in there. Not even aware how I could get only 4Gb RAM anymore.
How much processing are you doing? none 8gb is good, some? add RAM
You have an i7 processor and are choking out the path to get it data to process.
While there appears to have been some Tidal issues today, what @MamaTried says is totally correct.
I would certainly add an additional memory stick to your NUC. While 4GB is the minimum, I would probably go to 8GB as Roon seems to get eber bigger and will require more memory in the future
Guys, thank you for your support but i bought Nuc according to Roon specification. So i thought it should be sufficient.
Can anyone from Roon confirm that RAM is the problem?
If I’m not mistaken you are connecting your core to a mesh wi-fi point? This is not recommended and, I would venture, the most likely cause of your problem - the core should be connected to the router (or a switch) via ethernet for best performance. Also set the DNS server for the router to 1.1.1.1.
Does this happen with local content, or onlyTidal?
LM: both local and TIDAL, there is slightly diffrent messege (once TIDAL, once networking problem) but happens on both
If you disable DSP is there any change?
LM: if i lower upsampling to DSD64 - no change, still error happens, if I switch dsp off, it does happen as well
Does this happen for all endpoints?
LM: interruptions happen also to other endpoints, i dont know exactly if the error is the same
If you go to Settings > Services and set Tidal streaming quality to the lowest setting, is there any change?
LM: i still need to check but looking at answer 1 i dont suppose, as there is no problem with outside connection
Guys, can anyone from Roon can solve this network problem? What kind of settings I need to change in order to solve this issue? Someone proposed to change DNS server but how to do it.
I cannot have for several weeks such a miserable performance with aborted playng in the middle of songs and skipped tracks.
Should I resign from Roon and find other software?
You can enable it by going to Settings > Audio and then select it for playback. Definitely worth trying!
If you store an album locally or on a USB drive instead of the NAS, just as a test, does that work any better?
It sounds like there might be some networking issues at play here based on the symptoms. These tests will help us clarify. Please make a note of the names of the tracks you try to play during these tests and the time you start playback. If there are any errors I can take a look at logs for this time period.
Could you Please check the logs today at 8:20-8:25 where i tried to play 5 songs and each of them stopped after couple of seconds with the same error messege and skipped to the next song and after 7 skips it stopped at the song „may i ask” from Magnus Ringblom Quartet and did not play any more. Songs in the order:
Solitude - Kendence Spring
Dreamin - Hara Noda
Moon river - Bill Frisell
Im getting sentimental - Julian Lage
Put on happy face - JD allen
Generique - Miles Davis
Light ahead - hara Noda
And finally it stopped at May I ask that i mentioned ealier.
My end point is Auralic Aries G1.
Thank you in advance as I am already loosing hope
I would say with 100% conviction that this is a wifi networking issue. WiFi stability isn’t just about bandwidth, just because equipment claims it handles such speeds doesn’t mean it will or ever will in your environment. Your internet speed doesn’t play a part in this , you could have 20mb or 1gb and you can have same issues. There are many factors that affect wireless performance and the biggest issue for audio is latency. It might be something as simple as a setting that’s not allowing the multicast communications between devices to work properly but more likely it’s just wireless performance.
Check for anything related to IGMP or multicasting, Roon relies on this to discover devices and on wireless this can consume a lot of bandwidth if not managed correctly and many wireless systems tend to block it.
Wireless systems are not instantaneous they can only send or receive to and from one device at a time, it’s very easily for them to get swamped with devices asking to send and receive data. This is compounded by other WiFi systems in your area from your neighbours taking the valuable airtime required for this.
Every WiFi device in the local area has an impact on your system, all this adds latency. Now add in a system that is sending a lot of network traffic using multicast like Roon and wifi can get overwhelmed very quickly if it’s not got good multicast support. Some even block it by default.
You have all the hallmarks of this as you have all the sources of music all interconnected via WiFi likely with many other devices also using this WiFi in your house this is compounded. Is you NAS connected to the same node as you core or on a different one? This would explain poor local playback to.
Roon puts demands on a wifi system as it’s server client system it’s not like a Sonos that just pulls data from the internet. The core is constantly pulling and sending data to all endpoints on your network. If the core is on WiFi which it is here as it’s wifi back haul to the other floor then this is not ideal. Factor in all your endpoints are on wireless to and maybe your nas then your up against constant environmental issues that WiFi has. Bandwidth can be fine for one minute and drastically drop the next it’s never constant and never predictable as so many environmental things affect it. The latency as described above will take it’s part and cause delays and packet loss which will cause further delays for resends. These combined cause drops in performance and Roon can’t pull the data quick enough to maintain steady streams. It requires very accurate timings to endpoints to maintain sync play amount other things.
If you have no way of making the core fully wired to your main router and have Nas the same, then I don’t think much will change here. I know it’s not something you want to hear after likely spending money on your mesh system, but Roons core really isn’t a device that will work at its best on a wireless backbone. Your endpoints would likely be fine but the core needs a consistent and stable network throughput to function at capacity and wireless seldom brings this.
