Why doesn't crossfade work? [Ticket In]

What does “your core has enough time to calculate the crossfade” actually mean?

I assume one reason is the one mentioned i.e. sample rates must be the same. But what are the other reasons for roon running out of time? Like the OP I get quite frequent abrupt crossfades with the same sample rates But sometimes crossfade also seems to work. I assume the failures fall into the category of running out of time. Is it possible to narrow down the causes?

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Eric,

Thank you for addressing this. I’m experiencing odd crossfade behavior on all rates & depths. 16/44, 24/96, and 24/192. There does seem to be better consistency on 16/44 tracks. That said, I often experience long periods of silence between where the previous song ends and the next song begins. This often occurs even with the crossfade set to 10 seconds.

Thank you for your help.

“diamond in the rough” . Well said!

@James_I / @Tony_Casey / @brad_thompson ---- I appreciate all of you chiming in here and sharing your feedback/concerns. This type of insight is always appreciated by myself and the rest of the Roon team, so thank you!

With regard to your experience with crossfading in Roon. If something is not working by design we will gladly look into it as we try to provide our users with the best experience possible but I will need some additional information. As such may I very kindly ask you to please provide the following at your earliest convenience:

  • Please confirm that analysis has been completed on your library.

  • When you notice this issue occurring do the songs being crossfade start or end with extended silence?

  • Please reproduce the issue and provide the following screenshots…

    1. The signal path and waveform of the first track being played.
    2. The signal path and waveform of the second track that is being crossfaded into.

Again, many thanks!
-Eric

Are there any plans to readdress the crossfade implementation? I’ve never experienced a cross-fade with it enabled, rather only the abrupt cut, silence and next song start also with an abrupt beginning, all while only playing 16/44.1 tracks.

I simply gave up on it many months ago hoping it would be resolved in an update but to date it still behaves the same. I don’t think it should be listed as an option or selection in the settings given its current state of broken.

Hi @Larry_Post,

I just tried crossfade on my end and it appears to be working as expected. I have a few follow-up questions:

  • Can you clarify what kind of content you are playing? Is it local or TIDAL content?
  • What does your Signal Path look like when this issue occurs?
  • Can you let me know the exact local time + date when this behavior next occurs? E.g. 9:29PM on 7/26/19?

Hi Noris,

I’ll collect some data this weekend and update, thanks for asking.

I spent a few mins with crossfade enabled on my main zone and it works fine (though I don’t care to use it here), it’s my Shop/Garage and Patio systems that use Chromecast, either grouped or alone that experience the abrupt gap.

I also have Airplay on my Shop/Garage that has experienced the abrupt gap.

More info to follow…

Well, I’m happy to report I cannot reproduce the abrupt cut on my grouped Chromecast endpoints. It was problematic a few days ago and will update if it occurs again

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It still always does the same thing to me - cuts off the first song and cuts into the second with a little silence in-between. I have Realtek drivers as a combined zone so that I can feed a visualizer, and I suspect that’s the culprit. For some reason RAAT does not like Realtek. Too bad since those are EVERYWHERE.

Hi @James_I,

Can you let me know the exact local time + date in your country when this behavior next occurs? E.g. 2:17PM on 8/13/19? Are you using the newest Realtek drivers available? Has this issue ever occurred for any non-Realtek zone?

Hi Noris, i will turn cross fade back on and let you know. Thx.

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Hi Noris:

6:01 Chicago time today, had that happen. Oddly enough between two songs on the same album: from Flatt & Scruggs Pray for the Boys to Dear Old Dixie. I was able to repeat it 3 times.

Generally crossfade has been behaving much better than I last remember, when I turned it off. Odd that this happened on the same album given a likelier candidate would be when sampling rates change.

Hi @James_I,

Thanks for letting me know that timestamp, I can confirm that logs have been received and passed on to QA for analysis. I noticed that you had two zones grouped when this issue occurred, your System Output and also a W4S zone. A few follow-up questions:

  1. Does this behavior also occur when zones are not grouped?
  2. What is the exact W4S model you are using?
  3. What kind of volume control are these zones using? Are they both on Device Volume?

Hi Noris:

  1. Yes. I deliberately ungrouped them and the W4S zone still had the same hiccup. Tried it 3 times.

  2. Dac2 the original.

  3. Yes.

Best,

Jim

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Hi @James_I,

I wanted to touch base with some good news, which is that our technical team has been able to reproduce some abnormal behavior when using Crossfade on Windows and we’ve opened up a bug report with our developers. This behavior may not encompass the entire issue you are seeing, but it is at least part of the issue.

While I can’t say for certain when this bug will be fixed, getting things reproduced in-house is a critical first step, and I will keep this thread up to date as the team passes along feedback and work begins to get this resolved. Once a fix for this issue is deployed, we can circle back and take another look to see if it helps with the original issue. Thanks again for the report!

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Great! Cross fade is a definite enhancement and it would be great if 100% reliable!

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The problem happens frequently enough, still, that I’ve turned crossfade back off. It’s terribly annoying to have a song end abruptly without the last 5 seconds or so.

Excellent software! But I don’t like your CROSSFADING options. It doesn’t work well.

I want my favourite tracks being played in random order, gapless and without fading into the next track.

It works well as long as the previous track fades out, but whenever the previous track has a cold ending the last second of it is cut off. That’s the one thing JRIVER MEDIACENTER does much better! Can crossfading be improved? It’s a big issue for me!

And in reply to your questions: Source: SSD on LOCAL computer and YES, I notice this behaviour all the time and the content has the same sample rate, bit-depth. Preset TIME Crossfade : 1 second.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the way the JRIVER Mediacenter handles CROSSFADING, it works quite well.

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Hi @Dirk_van_Dijk,

Your post has been moved into this thread where we are investigating this behavior further. Please see my post above for a status update, thanks!

Hi @James_I / @Dirk_van_Dijk,

We’ve just released Roon 1.7 (Build 500) which includes changes that should improve this behavior. Please give it this a try and let us know how it goes!

You can read the full release notes here:


Thanks,
The Team at Roon Labs

Awesome, will check it out and report back. Thanks guys! Congrats on the new release.

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