So I’m trialling Roon. I now have it installed on a desktop PC (Core i5), with a variety of remotes ( two Intel Atom tablets and a Core i7 laptop).
I’m having problems that I think (but I could be wrong) are being caused by WiFi connectivity issues.
The remotes will stop playing in the middle of a track for no apparent reason. Moving to the next track seems to get things going again for a while, before playback stops once more.
Sometimes, things seem to be OK for several hours at a time, but then playback stops once more. It is extremely frustrating. Particularly since both Plex and Emby will play back my music (and movies) to the same tablets and laptop all day long.
My (European) WiFi network is fine as far as I am aware. I am out in the countryside, so I don’t have interference from neighbours’ WiFi. I do have a WiFi repeater installed to ensure coverage of the whole house and the garden, but apart from that, I think it’s a standard setup (router is capable of 802.11n+g+b @2.4 GHz - devices all seem to be connected with n).
What can I do to track down the cause of this annoying problem? Thanks.
@mike and @vova will be along soon to investigate further. It would help if you could set out some system details. When you refer to remotes stopping playing, are you sending output to devices connected to those remotes ?
My Network
• Router is an AVM Fritz!Box 7360 with the latest firmware installed (06.30)
• The WLAN has a repeater, an AVM FRITZ!WLAN Repeater N/G
• Home network is a mixture of wired and wireless
My Media
• Music library is predominantly CDs ripped to FLAC 44.1 16bit files. Some MP3 and FLAC purchased downloads.
• All files I’ve tried so far show the issue.
My Output
• PC output on Remotes, using either built-in speakers or Bluetooth connected Sony SRS-BTM8 speaker. (Note System Output on wired Desktop PC with Roon Core is not an issue)
• Nothing else in my chain (such as DIRAC, Amarra sQ, etc)
• Only tried FLAC - will try MP3 files as well.
I’m wondering whether it’s a WiFi issue caused by the WiFi-connected remotes switching between the router and the repeater, and losing the stream? Is this a possibility? If so, I can do some testing by switching off the repeater.
One other thing - I notice that both the Router and the Repeater have a checkbox in the WLAN settings to “optimise WLAN transmission for IPTV applications”. Should this be turned on?
I would be interested to know if this helps, and also if things improve with a wired connection – that may not be a viable long term solution, but it would be interesting to know if that helps, and will help us confirm whether WiFi is the issue here.
Let me know how that testing goes and we’ll get this working. Also, let me know if your trial is running out and we need some more time to resolve this.
Also note that the audio architecture in Roon Remotes is undergoing some major changes under the hood for our upcoming 1.2 release, so there’s a lot of improvements coming here.
Thanks Mike, I’ll continue testing here, but it does seem as though when the remotes are connected via the repeater that things are sailing close to the edge - playback stops, or in the worst case, the remote temporarily loses connectivity with the Roon Core.
I notice that Roon network traffic is pretty constant at around 1.5 Mbps (for a FLAC file), whereas with Plex or Emby, traffic is much more ‘bursty’.
Things will almost certainly improve with a wired connection. I’m just not in a position yet to be able to test this properly. I’ve still got a week left on my free trial, but I may need an extension - I’ll let you know if that’s the case.
There’s certainly lots to like about Roon, but I really need my tablets and laptops to work as well as my main HTPC and Audio system.
OK, still testing, but it seems that the issue of playback stopping or the remote losing connection temporarily with the Core is occurring when a remote switches between the router or the repeater.
I’m monitoring the device connections displayed by both the router and the repeater, and I’ve seen instances of a device running Roon remote switching from using the Wifi of the router to using the repeater or vice versa. And when the switch occurs, playback on the Roon remote is stopped, and in some cases I get the “lost connection” message displayed on the screen.
To all intents and purposes, as far as the device is concerned, it is just a momentary disconnection while it switches from one WiFi signal to another (both on the same WiFi channel), but it is enough to upset Roon. Other applications are not so sensitive, and nothing untoward is seen.
It may not be connected to your problem, but very early on I had a persistent problem with my Meridian endpoints disappearing from Roon (this was after the new firmware which meant they should ‘play nicely’. At that point I had an Apple Airport Extreme, with an Airport Express providing a secondary roaming wireless network. The only way I could cure it was to remove the Airport Express, though I never found the direct cause.
Thanks Paul, it sounds somewhat similar. I don’t think Roon likes having the WiFi network being switched under it. For a device that happens to find itself in a position where it can choose to lock onto a network being provided via different access points, this seems to cause a problem.
Still testing. For the past day, I’ve been running my WiFi network without the repeater, just have the main access point operating. This afternoon I had one Windows tablet running Roon remote, while another new laptop was downloading a bunch of Windows updates. There was also a Windows phone and a Windows desktop connected to the network, but these were not being used, so they would only generate traffic occasionally.
Even in this situation, the Roon remote would stop playback of FLAC files every ten minutes or so. I would need to restart the playback manually. Occasionally I would also get dropouts, where playback was paused for less than a second.
It does seem as though using WiFi with Roon is less than stellar. My question is, is this just me, or is this generally a fact of life with Roon?
Hey @Geoff_Coupe – we put a lot of effort into making sure Roon is robust over wifi, but we have heard a few reports of issues with repeaters, although not enough for us to really investigate. A lot of this depends on how the repeater is configured and whether it’s able to maintain a solid connection, which will vary a lot from environment to environment.
Without having the networking gear to test with, it’s going to be difficult for us to make definitive statements about your setup, but we can gather information and dig a little deeper.
I’m going to send you some instructions via PM for how to help us gather some information about the issue, and we’ll go from there @Geoff_Coupe ok?
