Roon Frustration -Again

ihmeyers

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Nov 13, 2017
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My digital music system crapped out over the weekend. It would play music for about 20 minutes and then stop. I'd reset everything, it would play for ~20 minutes and stop again. After some trouble shooting by LDMS chief Lucas Domensky, we suspected the Lobaga Ruby USB cable I bought in April had gone bad. When I mentioned a recent ROON update Lucas noted that none of his other users had reported any issues. He was likely right as the cheap Audioquest cable I installed in the system (LDMS to Lampizator TRP) continued to work post-ROON update. Lucas contacted David Laboga who agreed to send a new cable.

Lo and behold, Lucas contacted me yesterday to say that he had three other clients whose servers stopped functioning correctly in the past week. The common thread, ALL were using ROON and had just updated. Short version of the story, Lucas, not ROON determined that some change they made messed up the buffering causing USB to stop playing after about 20 minutes. Another common thread was that most had Lampi DACS. Lucas installed a hot fix to the USB driver that fixed the issue at least for now but the conclusions I reached that he pretty much agreed with (I don't want to speak for him) were:

1) ROON's quality control is terrible. This is not the first update that broke things on my end and Lucas said other customers of his have experienced the same thing.

2) The JL Audio USB card doesn't work as well as some others. Lampi has recently switched from Amanero to JL because they believe it provides an increase in sound quality. In my opinion it does nothing of the sort and some other Lampi owners have told me the same thing. In addition, the Amanero driver is much more forgiving and less buggy than the JL.

Something interesting that came out of our conversation yesterday is Lucas said that when he gets a new USB cable he puts in on an oscilloscope to see what it looks like passing data before he installs it in his test audio system. He mentioned that many high-end USB cables don't pass data correctly on the 'scope (the cheap generic ones all do) but will work fine in an audio setup and many sound great. I'm sure the high-end cables aren't deficient technically in passing data because the manufacturers don't know what they're doing. It's the tweaks they make to get great sound that negatively impact the cables ability to function as a true USB cable. It's why some cables can be fussy in some installs (Roon and JL Audio). I found that observation interesting.

Above is just my opinion. YMMV. :)
 

Golum

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OK I guess I'm also one of those three guys that LD was mentioning, as same BS was happening to me but in my case, as I have two Lampi DACs on hand (Pacific with Amanero and B3 with JL) this music interruption was happening on both of them. He proposed solution with increasing the allocated buffer size in Roon yesterday and since than music was playing without any issues. Will check today or tmr again.
On another note I had zero issues with USB cables (FTA Callisto and some FTA undisclosed model (yet)) on both USB cards in those two Lampi DACs...

Will report back how it goes...

Forgot to mention - my issue was only related to the music which was streamed from Tidal and all was normal for the music pulled out from the local library
 

bryans

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1) ROON's quality control is terrible. This is not the first update that broke things on my end and Lucas said other customers of his have experienced the same thing.
Hmm very interesting that Roon and Lucas seem to be having ongoing issues with updates. I personally have had great success with Roon over the years but I'm sure others have had issues at some point. I did have an issue when Roon went to 1.8 on my Samsung Tablet where I couldn't see the menu tab. It was fixed in a later update so I'm good.

I was told many years ago "Anything and everything made by man will fail at some point".

Glad Lucas was able to provide you a fix.
 
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ihmeyers

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OK I guess I'm also one of those three guys that LD was mentioning, as same BS was happening to me but in my case, as I have two Lampi DACs on hand (Pacific with Amanero and B3 with JL) this music interruption was happening on both of them. He proposed solution with increasing the allocated buffer size in Roon yesterday and since than music was playing without any issues. Will check today or tmr again.
On another note I had zero issues with USB cables (FTA Callisto and some FTA undisclosed model (yet)) on both USB cards in those two Lampi DACs...

Will report back how it goes...

Hi Golum, yes Lucas mentioned you. I liked the Callisto and never had any issues with it. It just worked. Always.

My server worked fine last night (for 5 hrs before I turned it off to go to bed). Lucas employed the same buffer fix he used with you. He was helpful as always, but you can hear the frustration with Roon in his voice. This is the second time in 3 months that a Roon update 'broke' my front-end that Lucas had to step in to fix.
 

bryans

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I'm sure the high-end cables aren't deficient technically in passing data because the manufacturers don't know what they're doing.
This is a pretty bold statement. Hard for me to believe someone can be in business selling gear at these prices if they didn't know what they are doing. Maybe I need to start a high-end business because I definitely don't know what I am doing.

Just my 2 cents (before taxes) :)
 
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christoph

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Dec 11, 2015
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My digital music system crapped out over the weekend. It would play music for about 20 minutes and then stop. I'd reset everything, it would play for ~20 minutes and stop again. After some trouble shooting by LDMS chief Lucas Domensky, we suspected the Lobaga Ruby USB cable I bought in April had gone bad. When I mentioned a recent ROON update Lucas noted that none of his other users had reported any issues. He was likely right as the cheap Audioquest cable I installed in the system (LDMS to Lampizator TRP) continued to work post-ROON update. Lucas contacted David Laboga who agreed to send a new cable.

Lo and behold, Lucas contacted me yesterday to say that he had three other clients whose servers stopped functioning correctly in the past week. The common thread, ALL were using ROON and had just updated. Short version of the story, Lucas, not ROON determined that some change they made messed up the buffering causing USB to stop playing after about 20 minutes. Another common thread was that most had Lampi DACS. Lucas installed a hot fix to the USB driver that fixed the issue at least for now but the conclusions I reached that he pretty much agreed with (I don't want to speak for him) were:

1) ROON's quality control is terrible. This is not the first update that broke things on my end and Lucas said other customers of his have experienced the same thing.

2) The JL Audio USB card doesn't work as well as some others. Lampi has recently switched from Amanero to JL because they believe it provides an increase in sound quality. In my opinion it does nothing of the sort and some other Lampi owners have told me the same thing. In addition, the Amanero driver is much more forgiving and less buggy than the JL.

Something interesting that came out of our conversation yesterday is Lucas said that when he gets a new USB cable he puts in on an oscilloscope to see what it looks like passing data before he installs it in his test audio system. He mentioned that many high-end USB cables don't pass data correctly on the 'scope (the cheap generic ones all do) but will work fine in an audio setup and many sound great. I'm sure the high-end cables aren't deficient technically in passing data because the manufacturers don't know what they're doing. It's the tweaks they make to get great sound that negatively impact the cables ability to function as a true USB cable. It's why some cables can be fussy in some installs (Roon and JL Audio). I found that observation interesting.

Above is just my opinion. YMMV. :)
Sorry to read about your troubles :(
I will try to listen to some music via roon later in the evening.
I hope I will not be affected by the same problems :eek:
 
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ihmeyers

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This is a pretty bold statement. Hard for me to believe someone can be in business selling gear at these prices if they didn't know what they are doing. Maybe I need to start a high-end business because I definitely don't know what I am doing.

Just my 2 cents (before taxes) :)


I think you mis-interpreted what I was saying. I said it's NOT because they don't know what they're doing. It's because the tweaks they make to their USB cables (that yield lesser data passing performance) result in much better fidelity than a cheap generic cable that "looks good" on a scope. The point I was making is that from a technical standpoint I'm not sure USB is a great digital audio interface. Manufacturers have learned to work around it but maybe ethernet is better.

It's why you have to listen to components, cables, etc to judge their merit. I don't think measurements tell you much about how something sounds. Our belief in this statement separates us from the "all cables sound the same crowd."
 
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Golum

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Hmm very interesting that Roon and Lucas seem to be having ongoing issues with updates.
I would say it's a bit excessive to say Roon & LD having ongoing issues with updates as I have his server now for almost 3 years and never ever had one single glitch with it overall as well as with countless Roon updates in between. This was in my case first ever problem being solved in literally 4 clicks on the screen ;)
 

bryans

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I think you mis-interpreted what I was saying. I said it's NOT because they don't know what they're doing. It's because the tweaks they make to their USB cables (that yield lesser data passing performance) result in much better fidelity than a cheap generic cable that "looks good" on a scope. The point I was making is that from a technical standpoint I'm not sure USB is a great digital audio interface. Manufacturers have learned to work around it but maybe ethernet is better.
Gotcha. Yes I misunderstood.
 
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ihmeyers

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I would say it's a bit excessive to say Roon & LD having ongoing issues with updates as I have his server now for almost 3 years and never ever had one single glitch with it overall as well as with countless Roon updates in between. This was in my case first ever problem being solved in literally 4 clicks on the screen ;)
For me, this was the second issue with a Roon update that Lucas had to fix. I haven't had my server as long as you have so I can only speak to the 6 month period I have owned it. :)

These issues aside, I'm a fan of Roon.
 
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abeidrov

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Dec 17, 2015
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I am getting fed up with Roon as well. I have a very strange issue with my Antipodes CX server since Roon 1.8 update.
The server just goes into restarting cycle: the light turns to amber, then to blinking green then again to amber and again to green. It goes into this circle and just keeps restarting itself. The only thing that helps is disconnecting it from power for some time using the back switch. I later determined that it is connected to Tidal login. I use both Tidal and Qobuz. This strange behaviour happens as soon as I log in into Tidal account. So when it happened several months ago, I just stopped using Tidal and everything was fine. 2 weeks ago I tried logging in into Tidal and the same thing happened. Now I am no longer able to use Tidal!
I tried Telegartner switch couple of days ago and about 10 minutes after I connected it to CX and my router, the same shit happened again. But this time I did not use Tidal, just Qobuz!
Another annoying feature of Roon - “metadata improver paused” message. I have it almost every day, restarting Roon core helps for some time, but then it always comes back. Many people have this issue since upgrade to 1.8 and all Roon support can advise: please upgrade to the latest version and restart the Roon core.
I wanted to upgrade to Pacific, but now I am thinking that moving away from Roon to something like Taiko server would be a much better move.
 

ihmeyers

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Palm Beach County, Florida
I have been told Roon doesn't test much before rolling out a new version. They seem to roll something out with a little bit of QC and then tell end-users 'let us know if you find something.' No way to run a software company.

Having run multiple gambling websites I have some idea how much testing must be done before pushing a new version.
 
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christoph

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Sorry to read about your troubles :(
I will try to listen to some music via roon later in the evening.
I hope I will not be affected by the same problems :eek:
I tried only two endpoints (KEF LS50W and Pacific) but luckily no problems at all this time with the update.
 

christoph

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Dec 11, 2015
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I have been told Roon doesn't test much before rolling out a new version. They seem to roll something out with a little bit of QC and then tell end-users 'let us know if you find something.' No way to run a software company.

Having run multiple gambling websites I have some idea how much testing must be done before pushing a new version.
They are a bunch of megalomaniacal egos thinking they are apple and letting their obsessed disciples on their forum do the testing, troubleshooting and even curating of the metadata :rolleyes:

For each fixed bug they impart 3 new ones and often even some already eradicated old ones as well :eek:

Don't get me started on their "search" which is soo abysmally bad that it sometimes even makes me smile when I see the returned "hits" of the search o_O
 
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bryans

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Dec 26, 2017
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I am getting fed up with Roon as well. I have a very strange issue with my Antipodes CX server since Roon 1.8 update.
The server just goes into restarting cycle: the light turns to amber, then to blinking green then again to amber and again to green. It goes into this circle and just keeps restarting itself. The only thing that helps is disconnecting it from power for some time using the back switch. I later determined that it is connected to Tidal login. I use both Tidal and Qobuz. This strange behaviour happens as soon as I log in into Tidal account. So when it happened several months ago, I just stopped using Tidal and everything was fine. 2 weeks ago I tried logging in into Tidal and the same thing happened. Now I am no longer able to use Tidal!
I tried Telegartner switch couple of days ago and about 10 minutes after I connected it to CX and my router, the same shit happened again. But this time I did not use Tidal, just Qobuz!
Another annoying feature of Roon - “metadata improver paused” message. I have it almost every day, restarting Roon core helps for some time, but then it always comes back. Many people have this issue since upgrade to 1.8 and all Roon support can advise: please upgrade to the latest version and restart the Roon core.
I wanted to upgrade to Pacific, but now I am thinking that moving away from Roon to something like Taiko server would be a much better move.
Is your issue Roon or Tidal? Are you saying you logout of Tidal in Roon and this fixes your issue?
 

abeidrov

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Dec 17, 2015
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Is your issue Roon or Tidal? Are you saying you logout of Tidal in Roon and this fixes your issue?
It always happens when I log on into Tidal account in Roon, but recently it happened when I was using Qobuz. Maybe it some sort of networking issue, but it never happened prior to version 1.8.
 

bryans

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Dec 26, 2017
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Wow I believe I have been without a disc player for 10+ years. I guess I was an early adopter.

The good thing is when you find how you like to access your music go with it.
 

speakerlust

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Mar 26, 2011
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abeidrov,

I too was experiencing the "metadata improver paused" spinning arrow issue for multiple weeks with Roon. I searched Roon for answer and tried some of the suggestions to no avail. The Home screen of Roon did not show the album artwork of newly added music to my library from Qobuz. Without any apparent intervention on my part, those issues are now gone. I did not track timing, but near that time I had to manually re-enter my Qobuz password to gain access to Qobuz via Roon, but login credentials have stayed since.

I do not have Tidal, but recently saw a thread on Lumin forum, https://www.audioshark.org/lumin-169/solution-tidal-client-not-found-error-20328.html regarding Tidal recently making change in password login method that may be related to your situation. The link speaks to resolving using Lumin App, but process of clearing past login process and restarting your application management tools may be helpful.

Best of luck
 
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abeidrov

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Dec 17, 2015
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Roon is killing me. Now I cannot select my EX renderer in audio settings. It shows it in settings, I can enable or disable it, change settings, but not select it for playback.
Very nice of Roon to allow me select iPad or Apple TV though:mad:
 
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