Transport: Failed to initiate the audio device - DTS 5.1 24bit/192 kHz Files Only

Support
22

Herb,

I think he wants to know the local time where you are when you hit the Play button so he can look for that time in the logs.

Tim

23

Dylan:

I just recreated this error 25 or so minutes ago. I created the screen capture a few minutes before I posted the photo in this thread.

Hopefully, that’s close enough for you!

Herb…

24

Thanks, @Herb_Goedecke.

I’ve enabled diagnostics and will pass the report along to the team for analysis. I’ll be sure to let you know when I’ve received their feedback.

25

Dylan, Any progress on this problem?

26

Hi @Herb_Goedecke,

I spoke with the team regarding their investigation, and so far they have not had any luck reproducing this behavior. We are hoping you would share this media with us so that we can investigate these specific files.

Ideally, you can zip up the entire folder and send me private message containing a shared dropbox link. If you don’t have Dropbox or need another way to send the media, just let me know.

29

Hello @Herb_Goedecke,

I just wanted to follow up with you here and see if you are still experiencing this issue, if so can you please upload the entire zip file and submit it as a shared Dropbox link as per Dylan’s instructions?

Thanks,
Noris

30

Hello @Herb_Goedecke,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you here. I have spoke to QA regarding your case today and they would like to confirm if this same issue happens when trying to play the media directly using another application such as Foobar 2000, can you please verify this? Foobar also has an addon for streaming to WASAPI drivers linked here, I would suggest installing both and then giving it a try.

Thanks,
Noris

31

Hi Noris:

As per my original post, the files play using JRIVER (and VLC Media Player). It’s ROON that won’t play the 5.1 files.

See my original post as follows:

An odd error in playing back a new recording of Herbert von Karajan’s Beethoven: 9 Symphonies. This is a Blu-Ray Audio ripped to the NAS in 3 separate formats: Dolby ATMOS 7.1, DTS 5.1, and LPCM 2.0.

On my HTPC which hosts ROON Core there is no problem playing the 7.1 and 2.0 files. On my main system, the error message above shows up when playing the DTS 5.1 files.

When I test ROON Core with other DTS 5.1 files, everything plays fine. When launching JRiver, the DTS 5.1 files play perfectly on the HTPC.

When I select other audio zones (Squeezebox Touch, Audioengine D1, Samsung Phone), the DTS 5.1 files play perfectly via ROON. Notably, these zones are not multi-channel and mix down to 2.0 - but the files play.

Looks like ROON Core is having difficulty playing these particular files in multi-channel and shuts down.

Any thoughts on what might be going on?

Thanks,
Herb…

32

I had the same “initialization” issue whenever I tried to play 5.1 files that were over 96 kHz. Even though I have a different model PC, I found this article about driver limitations on NUCs: NUC HD Audio Issue.

Since my PC also used Intel Display Audio drivers, I decided to try some possible work-arounds in order to test if it was a driver problem:

  • ASIO4ALL: By changing my RoonBridge to use this instead of WASAPI on the problem PC (Windows 10), the “initialization” issues vanished and I could play 5.1 files that were 24bit/176.4 kHz.
    (Unfortunately, I don’t have any 24bit/192 kHz files in 5.1 to test your exact scenario.)

  • ALSA: I made a bootable USB with AudioLinux and installed it on the exact same PC. The Linux RoonBridge client never had any “initialization” issues either and once again played 5.1 files that were over 96 kHz.

These results confirmed the Roon software and my PC HW were perfectly capable of playing these HD 5.1 files. So I concluded either the Windows/Intel driver or how Roon interacts with that specific driver was causing “initialization” issues for certain HD formats.

You mention some applications work, so your issue might be different (unless these apps use their own custom drivers.) But since your issue has been open a while, I wanted to share my experience in case it helps.

33

To be clear … it’s only this file that doesn’t play. All other DTS 5.1 24bit/192 kHz files play perfectly ok.

Herb…

34

Try downgrading the driver: