Track on Qobuz that fails to play in Roon

Roon Core Machine

Mac Studio
CPU Apple M1 Max
RAM 64GB

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Ethernet, connected directly to the router.
router NETGEAR Nighthawk AX11000
cable modem NETGEAR 2050V
NOT using VPN

Connected Audio Devices

Moon 390, with an ethernet connection directly to the router.

Number of Tracks in Library

I have a Synology NAS with 8091 tracks in the library.
I’m not sure how many Qobuz tracks are in my library.
Not sure where to look for the total number of tracks that I’ve added to the library.

Description of Issue

I’ve found a track on Qobuz that Roon simply will not even START to play. It’s the second track on this three-track album: Bruckner, SYMPHONY NO.9, BUDAPEST FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA / Ivan Fischer.

Note that Roon DOES play both of the other tracks in this album.

Note also that the second track does play when I use either Simaudio’s MiND app. It also plays when I use Audirvana.

These are 192 kHz / 24 bit Flac files.

I have tried stopping and restarting the Roon server. I’ve also restarted my Mac. Always same result.

Any idea what’s going on? Thanks for any help…

I think Roon thinks the second track as an MQA track, but, because it’s resolution is higher than 48k, the MQA decoder is faulting.

See this from my logs trying to play the same file

01/04 03:59:10 Info: [1. EVGA NU ASIO] [zoneplayer] Open Result (Playing):Result[Status=Success]
01/04 03:59:10 Critical: threadpoolsynchronizationcontext: System.ArgumentException: MQA decoder does 1x->2x but got sample rate 192000
at Sooloos.Broker.Transport.AudioFileStreamWrapper…ctor(AudioEnv env, AudioStream backing, Boolean decode, Boolean divert, Boolean upsampleAll, Boolean passthrough)
at Sooloos.Broker.Transport.ZonePlayerBase._EnsurePrepared(ZonePlayerTrack track)
at Sooloos.Broker.Transport.ZonePlayerBase.<>c__DisplayClass114_0.<_Play>b__0(Result1 result) at Sooloos.Broker.Transport.ZonePlayerBase.<>c__DisplayClass115_0.<_Open>b__0(Result1 result)
at Sooloos.ThreadPoolSynchronizationContext.<>c__DisplayClass14_0.<_Dispatch>b__0(Object )

I see (I think). But shouldn’t something in Roon be fixed so that it does not try to read the second track as an MQA track?

After all, I have verified two other players (Simaudio’s MiND and Audirvana) have no problem at all with this track.

They have been tracking this as is been brought up before already I believe but it’s odd when it pops up as the core is getting false MQA info that’s triggering it for some reason and they have not been able to track it down yet.

I agree, but, I am a fellow user like yourself. I was bitten by this bug 3 years ago and reported it, but, that was with a local file downloaded from a store. I haven’t had resolution on that yet actually.

I looked in the logs, both for RoonServer and for Roon, and could find nothing like these lines. I searched for “MQA” and for “Critical.” Nothing.

I don’t really know how to spot the place in the log file were the error occurs. So I can’t share that without sharing a whole log file.

What I think is weird is that Roon plays the other tracks of this album flawlessly. It’s just the second track that it can’t handle. And, of course, it’s worth noting again that apps other than Roon play all three tracks flawlessly.

How do we get the attention of the experts at Roon?

Hi @Wes_Morriston,

The team will take a look at diagnostics to investigate, but it’s very likely you’re encountering an erroneous MQA reading as our moderators have suggested. The development team is working on a fix. In the meantime, the track will likely play back in ARC without issue, just not Roon.

Hi @Wes_Morriston,

I wanted to reach out to let you know that the team continues to make progress on a fix for the long-standing underlying transcoding issue here; we should have the solution merged in one of the next few releases. We’ll reach out again once we have a firm timeline. Thank you!

Hi @Wes_Morriston,

We’ve merged a solution with the most recent build that should (at long last) allow affected tracks to play back without issue.

Can you please attempt to play the Bruckner Symphony recording mentioned in your original post and report if you experience any issues?