Sound quality - Roon RAAT vs Roon Air

[Saint0]

Nice to know the ETGERRegen fixed the problem; however it's pretty pricy at $650 (USD). I wonder if a cheap 100M switch per Devialet and Roon's recommendation will do the same?

I think you're looking at my post in the wrong way.

First, the ETHERRegen hasn't fixed the problem. The problem is a problem with Devialet's handling of ethernet input. The problem still exists today. The last firmware update, now nearly a year old now, improved things somewhat but still didn't fix the whole of the problem. Some people are still reporting the issue after that last update.

Using a switch to connect to the Devialet at 100 mbps doesn't fix the problem, it's an effective work around that manages to avoid the problem, just as using wifi with RAAT instead of ethernet also avoids the problem. Work arounds are great but they don't fix the problem, they just let you avoid triggering the problem and that's a great thing to do if there isn't a fix for the problem. 

If you want to use an ethernet connection, you just want an ethernet related workaround for this problem and you aren't interested in chasing an improvement in sound quality by going down the rabbit hole of audiophile switches, then definitely by a standard100 mbps switch. It should let you avoid the problem entirely, just as the ETHERRegen does, but normal 100 mbps switches and audiophile 100 mbps switches like the ETHERRegen don't solve the problem, they just avoid the problem. Solving the problem requires a firmware fix from Devialet and they don't seem to be in a hurry to fix the bug they introduced or even to roll out the last couple of features they originally promised for the CI board which were still listed as outstanding in the info sheet with the last firmware update a year of so ago. The problem lies in Devialet's handling of the incoming ethernet stream. Using a lower speed ethernet stream doesn't fix the problem, it just avoids triggering the problem which gives us a result we want but it's definitely not the ideal solution.

I didn't buy the ETHERRegen to avoid this problem. I was getting by quite fine prior to getting the ETHERRegen simply by not streaming any 24/192 resolution music to my Devialet because I didn't get the problem at lower resolutions but others were not so fortunate. If I had wanted to swap to a 100mbps switch in order to avoid this problem occurring then I would have bought a normal and much cheaper 100 mbps switch and I would have done so much earlier than I bought the ETHERRegen. Getting the workaround of a 100 mbps connection to the Devialet from the ETHERRegen was a free bonus for me, nice to have but not essential since I wasn't running into the problem as long as I avoided 24/192 streams.

Interesting development, Roon dropped the new 1.8 (Build 831) last week. I've been using AIR. After reading the previous posts I decided to try Roon Ready again after the update. I'm not sure what was changed, but the latest Roon version fixed the audio dropout issue. I've been playing Tidal Master MQA at max sample rate last few days, and no problems so far. I've not made any changes to the network or setup, still using the same old GigE switch.

Just to recap, yes, Devialet had major Ethernet issues with Roon Ready before. It was a catastrophic failure and unusable, but the latest update fixed the problem (for my system at least).

The random audio dropout started after the Roon 1.8 update. The short, random audio dropout is different from the previous Ethernet connectivity failures. I contacted Roon. They denied it's caused by 1.8 changes, and claimed it's a Devialet Ethernet stack issue. They explained that Roon Ready decode the file to raw PCM, and Devialet's processor can't handle the bit rate of HiRes MQA files. They recommended the 100Mb/s switch workaround. I contacted Devialet as well, and they don't know what's the root cause, and also suggested to try downgrading the switch to 100Mb/s per Roon's recommendation. I decided to use Devialet AIR instead, and it works perfectly over Ethernet.

I have a few issues with Roon's explanations:
1. The Roon Ready dropout is not related to bit rate, it occurred with low bit rate internet Radio streaming as well as local & Tidal CD or HiRes files.
2. Changing to 100Mb/s switch won't change the raw PCM bit rate.
3. If it's a generic Devialet Ethernet issue, it should affect AIR as well. AIR and ROON Ready just different protocol over Ethernet, but AIR works perfectly over Ethernet.
4. Finally the dropout issue follows the Roon software version, it started with the 1.8 update and fixed after the latest 1.8 version.

I don't claim to know exactly what's going on behind the curtain. Based on my observation with my system, the audio dropout seems to be a Roon issue as it follows the Roon 1.8 changes.