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I'm not sure if this is a Roon problem or a Qobuz problem, but...


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But here is the problem as best I can explain it. I am trying to listen to an album in 24/192, I’ll upload a picture of which album I am listening to now, but this happens frequently. I will start playback by clicking the play now button, my core computer (2011 Mac mini i5 with an SSD and 16GB of RAM) will begin streaming/downloading the song and playing. Normally it will download all of the second song as well so that it stays a song ahead, however lately it has been only downloading a bit of the second song. Roon will get to that point and stop and skip ahead to the next song, and the process repeats again and again on every other song. If I manually start playback on the partially skipped track, that track plays fine, but the next does not. Is there a setting I need to set that will eliminate this?

 

 

My network setup is Xfinity internet into a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro, to a Switch that connects to various access points and hard wired ethernet connections such as the one to my Roon Core on a 2011 Mac mini, which is also hard wired to my Signature Rendu SE Optical, etc…

My remotes are iPad/iPhone or my MacBook Pro, which I am using right now.

This only happens on 24/192 streams, not local files or lower bit rate files.

If I had to guess, it’s a cache issue. For example, there just isn’t enough room in the cache for 2 24/192 songs to fit at a time.

 

I tried rebooting the core, same thing happened.

 

Example album.

Screen Shot 2020-06-26 at 10.02.51 AM.png

No electron left behind.

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23 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

But here is the problem as best I can explain it. I am trying to listen to an album in 24/192, I’ll upload a picture of which album I am listening to now, but this happens frequently. I will start playback by clicking the play now button, my core computer (2011 Mac mini i5 with an SSD and 16GB of RAM) will begin streaming/downloading the song and playing. Normally it will download all of the second song as well so that it stays a song ahead, however lately it has been only downloading a bit of the second song. Roon will get to that point and stop and skip ahead to the next song, and the process repeats again and again on every other song. If I manually start playback on the partially skipped track, that track plays fine, but the next does not. Is there a setting I need to set that will eliminate this?

 

 

My network setup is Xfinity internet into a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Pro, to a Switch that connects to various access points and hard wired ethernet connections such as the one to my Roon Core on a 2011 Mac mini, which is also hard wired to my Signature Rendu SE Optical, etc…

My remotes are iPad/iPhone or my MacBook Pro, which I am using right now.

This only happens on 24/192 streams, not local files or lower bit rate files.

If I had to guess, it’s a cache issue. For example, there just isn’t enough room in the cache for 2 24/192 songs to fit at a time.

 

I tried rebooting the core, same thing happened.

 

Example album.

Screen Shot 2020-06-26 at 10.02.51 AM.png

Post this on the Roon support forum as well. The support guys there may have seen this before. I have seen issues with Qobuz 24/192 playback there from time to time.

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If your Mac Mini were wine, I would say it is just about ready for enjoying, but a nine year old computer is ready for recycling.   Seriously, modern software on older hardware can have unexpected results.  Business computers are commonly on three year life cycles for this reason.

RIG:  iFi Zen Stream - Benchmark DAC3 L - LA4  AHB2 | Paradigm Sig S6 Cables:  anything available

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4 hours ago, photonman said:

If your Mac Mini were wine, I would say it is just about ready for enjoying, but a nine year old computer is ready for recycling.   Seriously, modern software on older hardware can have unexpected results.  Business computers are commonly on three year life cycles for this reason.

 

I am in the process of looking for a new Core and it will probably not be a new Mini. However, the same mini plays the exact same files on Audirvana without problems. Additionally, until the latest Roon update, it played them fine on Roon as well.

No electron left behind.

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1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

However, the same mini plays the exact same files on Audirvana without problems

And that is exactly my point.  Not all software is created equally.

RIG:  iFi Zen Stream - Benchmark DAC3 L - LA4  AHB2 | Paradigm Sig S6 Cables:  anything available

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1 minute ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Can you temporarily switch your Roon core to another machine on the same network and test?

 

Just unauthorize the Mini temporarily then unauthorize the test one when you’re done and you’ll be back to good. 

 

I suppose, I'll switch it to the iMac.

No electron left behind.

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2 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Another interesting thing may be to see the total time before a stoppage. Track 1 is 5 minutes, track 2 is 5 minutes but it always stops at 7 minutes 30 seconds total time. 

 

I did that last night and I found that a Bob Dylan album, Nashville Skyline played just fine at 24/192, but an album with longer songs caused the problem to happen again.

 

edit: I don't know yet if it is a time limit or data limit.

No electron left behind.

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7 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Those should be one in the same, with all tracks at 24/192 using the same compression, correct?

 

I suppose, I don't know if all songs at 24/192 have the same amount of data per time.


Either way, I am going to time with my iPhone right now on a few different albums.

 

edit: and then switch the Core to the iMac.

No electron left behind.

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And of course, now that I am timing it, it's working perfectly...

 

sigh...

 

Edit: the only difference is I had quit Roon Server because I had been using Audirvana to stream via UPnP to the Sonore devices... I had to restart Roon Server to test it out. The actual mini was on the whole time. The really weird thing is, I had restarted the entire computer many times testing various fixes during this period and that didn't do anything.

No electron left behind.

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I have given myself a headache investigating this today, and I believe I have found both the problem and a solution.

 

The Problem:

Roon was stopping playback seemingly at random of tracks at 24/192, no others, and skipping ahead to the next song, which would play normally, and then repeat again on the next song.

 

After many long hours of watching Activity Monitor on the 2011 mini that runs my Roon Core, and witnessing this happen in real time, I believe I know the problem now. In the short window that Roon uses to download the songs, it spikes CPU usage to nearly 100%. If the OS decides to do something at the same time that takes a fair bit of CPU, Roon will "crash" and go to the next song. However, it seems to then get stuck in a high CPU usage mode and will not recover from this until the Roon Server is quit, and restarted. Once the Roon Server is quit and restarted it will play normally again until the above described conditions repeat.

 

Solution? The one I have been considering for a while now and that's replace my 2011 mini with its slow as heck i5 dual core, its SSD Drive that I recently upgraded, and its 16GB of RAM with a dedicated Roon Appliance for my server such as the Sonic Transporter i9.

 

Interestingly, HQPlayer never used more than 11% of the processing in use whether or not the song was downloading or not, so that doesn't seem to be the problem. Roon will use more processing power depending on the bit rate of the file being played, which I found odd, but ok, nothing I can do about that.

No electron left behind.

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1 hour ago, AudioDoctor said:

I have given myself a headache investigating this today, and I believe I have found both the problem and a solution.

 

The Problem:

Roon was stopping playback seemingly at random of tracks at 24/192, no others, and skipping ahead to the next song, which would play normally, and then repeat again on the next song.

 

After many long hours of watching Activity Monitor on the 2011 mini that runs my Roon Core, and witnessing this happen in real time, I believe I know the problem now. In the short window that Roon uses to download the songs, it spikes CPU usage to nearly 100%. If the OS decides to do something at the same time that takes a fair bit of CPU, Roon will "crash" and go to the next song. However, it seems to then get stuck in a high CPU usage mode and will not recover from this until the Roon Server is quit, and restarted. Once the Roon Server is quit and restarted it will play normally again until the above described conditions repeat.

 

Solution? The one I have been considering for a while now and that's replace my 2011 mini with its slow as heck i5 dual core, its SSD Drive that I recently upgraded, and its 16GB of RAM with a dedicated Roon Appliance for my server such as the Sonic Transporter i9.

 

Interestingly, HQPlayer never used more than 11% of the processing in use whether or not the song was downloading or not, so that doesn't seem to be the problem. Roon will use more processing power depending on the bit rate of the file being played, which I found odd, but ok, nothing I can do about that.

I think you will be happy with ST i9. The only other choice is a DIY project like the one Chris is coming out with for this purpose (CAPS 20). If you are up for that you may want to wait and see what it entails. I have Roon and HQP together on a two year old specially built for me Win 10 machine. That is another possibility but it does require some fiddling around with BIOS and Win 10 to get it stable. 

 

Have fun.

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Well that was good troubleshooting.  Definitely sounds like a buggy software change exasperated by older hardware.  Although, after looking at the Roon Core system requirements, your Mac Mini seems to be fulfill those easily. Unfortunately, this is the wild world of software development and live beta testing to flush out problems.  Microsoft and Apple do it all the time with great success but that is the unwritten process.  Sorry not offering much help here but these issues intrigue me.

 

Can you roll back to the previous version that was working?

RIG:  iFi Zen Stream - Benchmark DAC3 L - LA4  AHB2 | Paradigm Sig S6 Cables:  anything available

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25 minutes ago, photonman said:

Well that was good troubleshooting.  Definitely sounds like a buggy software change exasperated by older hardware.  Although, after looking at the Roon Core system requirements, your Mac Mini seems to be fulfill those easily. Unfortunately, this is the wild world of software development and live beta testing to flush out problems.  Microsoft and Apple do it all the time with great success but that is the unwritten process.  Sorry not offering much help here but these issues intrigue me.

 

Can you roll back to the previous version that was working?

 

I honestly haven't given any thought to rolling back to the previous version. I don't know if it's available anywhere.

No electron left behind.

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