No more dropouts streaming Roon RAAT over gigabit ethernet

[David A]

I don't know what is the root cause, but I can confirm that it is likely to be a hairy combination of factors.

I had occasional stopping of Raat (just hitting play again was resolving the issue) perhaps once every two days... I was blaming Roon, my D220ci... until my company stoped using Symantec Endpoint Protection as an antivirus and security enforcement tool and switched to Microsoft Defender ATP.
Suddenly, no more drops....

Similarly, a couple of 3 or 4 month ago, I started to have the 'slow loading file' issue with Roon Raat, to the point that I could no longer use it (I don't use high res at all so everything was 44.1/16) and switched to Devialet Air from Roon.
This issue disappeared (touching wood it does not come back) and the only change I can identify is the regular security updates of softwares and OS running on my Mac. I did zero other change on the D220, nor the network, nor the Mac itself.

Last but not least, my network is constituted of an ADSL Modem which also serves as router, DHCP server and WiFi AP1. I also have a WiFI AP2 which is used to connect the Mac. I use PLC between all AP1 and the D220 is also directly connected through PLC.
I usually control Roon from my iPad which is connected to AP1. From times to times, my iPad Roon remote looses access to the Roon Core... but if I switch the iPad from AP1 to AP2 (the same as where the Roon Core on the Mac is connected) most of the time it recovers access. Once access have been recovered, 9 times out of ten I can switch back the iPad to AP1....

This to say that Roon protocols appear not to be as robust to perturbations as we think they would and the interactions can really be hairy...

@Jean-Marie,

I'm unconvinced that your conclusion, "Roon protocols appear not to be as robust to perturbations as we think they would and the interactions can really be hair" is a conclusion that can be logically drawn from your account of the issues you have experienced. I accept that networking issues can be complicated and that interactions can be a problem but I see problems with your reasoning on this occasion.

You've described 3 different issues you've experienced and I'll deal with the issues I see in turn:

1- RAAT occasionally stopping, fixed with change of antivirus software: You haven't mentioned whether, while you were experiencing this problem,  you tried using AIR instead of RAAT and whether the problem also occurred with AIR. AIR isn't a Roon protocol, it's a Devialet protocol, and if the problem also occurred with AIR then that would suggest that the problem wasn't due to the robustness of Roon protocols but rather to your original antivirus software causing a more general network problem. If you didn't try to see whether AIR solved this problem then, without any evidence that the problem occurred with RAAT but not with any other non-Roon protocol, you've got no evidence to support a view that the problem was related to a Roon protocol rather than being a general networking problem related to the antivirus software.

2- the "audio file loading slowly" problem with RAAT - you say the problem disappeared when you changed to streaming with AIR but you attribute the disappearance of the problem to a change in the regular security updates on your Mac. Changing to AIR has been recognised as one of the ways to avoid the audio file loading slowly problem right from the start and is one of the options recommended by Devialet themselves. I would suggest that it was the change to AIR which solved this problem for you but that still leaves the question of whether this problem is related to something in Roon's software or something in Devialet's. Roon said fairly soon after people started reporting the problem that the cause wasn't in their software. Devialet took much longer to acknowledge that there was a problem but when they did, they never suggested that the issue lay with Roon's software. Their current FW release claims to deliver improvements to streaming with RAAT and makes no other comment. If there was an issue which Devialet felt needed to be fixed by Roon I think they would have mentioned it. Given that Devialet have been working on the problem, and hopefully are still working on it since they haven't said it's fixed, and haven't said that there are any issues with Roon's software, I think it's reasonable to assume that Devialet believe the problem lies in their own software and has nothing to do with the robustness of Roon's protocol. After the length of time this issue has been around, I would think Devialet would have said there was an issue at the Roon end if they believed that to be the case.

3-the problem with the Roon app on your iPad losing connection to your Roon core. You're fixing this with a change to your network connection for the iPad. How can you be sure that the problem isn't an iPad network connection problem rather than a Roon-related problem?

Back when the "audio file loading slowly" problem first started to be reported soon after the February 2019 update which gave us RAAT capability, I was of the opinion that the issue was caused by a combination of factors including network hardware interactions, an opinion not too dissimilar from your position here. 22 months later my opinion has changed about the "audio file loading slowly" problem. It has not been reported as affecting any Roon Ready endpoints other than our Devialet's and I think that if the problem was due in part to something in Roon's protocol or software, or to network hardware or the interaction of other software such as antivirus software or software updates, then non-Devialet users would also be reporting the problem because they have all of the software and hardware variations that you can find amongst Devialet users. When the only consistent factors amongst people reporting this problem are the use of a Devialet and high res files then, given non-Devialet users also stream high res files but don't report problems with them, the only relevant factor appears to be the Devialet. That in itself seems to suggest that the RAAT protocol is quite robust because it's working reliably on a number of different computer platforms streaming data at all resolutions including high resolutions and even streaming multi-channel high resolution streams to a large number of other Roon Ready endpoints without problems. I would think that if RAAT was a less robust protocol than Roon suggest, people with Roon Ready endpoints other than Devialet's would surely be experiencing the same problems as we have been.

It took me many months to come to the conclusion that the audio file loading slowly problem was a Devialet problem but I eventually came to that conclusion and, try as I might, I am unable to find anything which indicates that it isn't simply a Devialet problem.

I may be wrong, the cause of the problem may not lie entirely with Devialet, and you may be right in believing that there's a more complex set of issues and interactions at the cause of the problem than just an issue with Devialet's software but I don't believe you have presented any evidence that clearly points to anything other than a Devialet software issue being the cause of the issues you've listed, or anything which suggests that the RAAT protocol isn't robust.