Roon RAAT and "An audio file is loading slowly"

[Jean-Marie]

So, I am wondering: why using Roon RAAT, and not Roon AIR?
I am also wondering why Roon Core playing the same track is sending to Devialet almost a double amount of information  for Roon READY versus Roon AIR?

I'm wondering the same, lol. I've gone back to AIR for some listening tests, works great.

I will leave aside the question of perceived quality difference since:
1) I don’t perceive any
2) I don’t know of any physical mechanism providing an explanation

This being said, there is one major difference between RAAT and Air: RAAT is designed to support multiple zones synchronization. 
This alone is enough to explain the difference is throughput, especially in the Devialet to Roon direction. 

In the case of Air, the only needed feedback is for flow control. I am not surprised that this is much less information and frequent than what is required by RAAT to achieve their synchronization. 

So bottom line, unless you use multiple synchronized zones, there is very little advantage of RAAT over Air. The only one I can think of is there is more details on the audio path representation with SAM, subsonic filters etc appearing with RAAT and not with Air. 

The drawback is the increased load on the network and for those unfortunate to experience the ‘slow loading issue’ drop outs and stuttering. 

Jean-Marie