Nucleus: Roon Version 1.6 (build 416) stable (64bit)
Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)
Asus RT-AC68 router lan direct to Nucleus
Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)
Nucleus usb to Oppo udp-205 usb audio input
Description Of Issue
Have had nucleus for about 3 months since Feb 2019, works fine for over a month. Then since about mid March 2019 there have been major issue of skipping all tracks after plaing for 16-17sec of streaming with 80% of albums - “TIDAL media is loading slowly. This may indicate a networking or connectivity problem”.
I recall Nucleus had some firmware update back then and I suspect it’s related as there was no such problem before. I have read that many many people with same issue, hopefully there will be a firmware fix to resolve this.
Please… i don’t want to go through the same standard trouble shoot like the others ie. using Google domain, ping test, etc and end up having the same problem.
My Ipad plays Tidal fine by it’s self. My problem like most user is Nucleus usb connection to my DAC - Oppo 205
I know that certain album plays fine - Diana Krall -The girl in the other room, plays fine the whole album. How do you explain that?
But 80% or 90% of all other albums i try have the same problem - plays for 17sec then skip to next track with error msg - “TIDAL media is loading slowly. This may indicate a networking or connectivity problem”
Just want to add that i have tried rebooting (including uppluging power & wait over 30sec) my modem, router, nucleus, my dac but same problem.
ipad works fine playing Tidal
but not nucleus to my dac
Is the Diana Krall album a Tidal album as well? Can you give examples of albums which don’t play for comparison? Are some MQA and some not? These are some informational bits that might help support to know.
I download an album from my cd and load to Nucleus harddisk to see what happen. Surprisingly i get same drop off after playing a song for 17sec with a slightly different message “An audio file is loading slowly. This may indicate a performance of hardware problem” So it seems it’s not Tidal related.
Spoke to the shop who sold me Roon Nucleus about this, he told me to try disable DSP.
Then I recall when playing around with Roon I did set DSP up-sampling aprox a month or so ago. After i disable DSP, everything works fine again, no more drop off playing from harddisk or Tidal streaming.
So the problem seems to be not related to my network but something to do with streaming data if converted into DSP will somehow jam up my Oppo 205 DAC usb audio input and Nucleus auto respond was to skip to next track.
Is there a way to fix this?
Hi Rugby, perhaps I didn’t try or understand how to set all the DSD perimeters properly.
Sample rate conversion to DSD
DSD sample rate set to 256
Enable Native Dsd Processing
Since this behavior is occurring for both Local + Streaming content with DSP turned on there is likely a bottleneck somewhere, possibly the connection between the Nucleus -> Oppo. The follow-up questions here are:
Does this behavior occur on other zones or is it limited to the Oppo zone?
Is you Oppo using the newest firmware?
Have you tried a different USB cable in case the one you have is damaged? I have sometimes seen cables go bad so I wouldn’t just assume that it is working properly.
Can you share a screenshot of your Signal Path when there is content playing to the Oppo zone with DSP turned on?
Hi Noris, it’s strange but after I turn back on DSP neither problems appeared anymore in Tidal nor from hard disk.
Even with both Parallelize Delta Sigma processing On and Native Dsd Processing On.
My Synergistic Research Atmosphere x usb cable should be good then.
Hope it stay this way as it should:)) as Nucleus Sounds amazing. I’m a happy camper.
Glad to hear it Robin. If you look at your processing speed, you will notice that it is 2.2x. If it drops lower than 2x that is a sign that a faster machine could be needed to do the DSP. Upsampling to DSD’s higher resolutions are very processor intensive.
Thanks for sharing that screenshot and for letting me know that this issue has resolved itself!
I too hope that it stays that way, but if you experience this issue in the future again feel free to reach out to us again and you can give the optimizations above a try to see if it helps. Happy listening!
