26-Feb-2022, 00:10
@wiresandmore ,
There's a lot of history to this problem but @mdconnelly highlighted what I think are the 2 main issues when he mentioned a link with high-res music though I would have said higher sampling rates rather than 24 bit was the trigger there, and the use of a 100 MBPS connection to the Devialet as a fix. I also agree that the 2020 FW update for the Expert Pros improved things but wasn't a complete fix.
Raising the issue on the Roon forums won't help. Roon has said it's a Devialet problem and that they even offered to help Devialet solve the issue and that Devialet declined the offer. Devialet have admitted that the problem is theirs so Roon really can't do anything to solve it. We're stuck waiting for Devialet to deliver an update that will finally fix the problem for good but we've now been waiting 3 years so I wouldn't hold my breath.
I've been using an EtherRegen now for a year with a 100 MBOS connection to my Expert Pro I've had only 1 instance in that time of seeing the Audio File loading slowly message and that was while streaming an album from Qobuz so it's probable that was due to a problem with the internet connection somewhere between the server and my internet connection. Using a 100 MBPS ethernet connection rather than a gigabit connection to the Expert Pro does seem to solve the problem and it does not impact music quality.
There are 2 other fixes. One is to stream from Roon using AIR instead of RAAT. Streaming using AIR seems to avoid the problem. Using the Expert Pro's wifi input rather than ethernet also apparently solves the problem.
One thing you did not mention concerned how you stream to your Devialet. Do you have Roon upsample everything to 192/24 or do you stream at native resolution? If you have Roon upsampling everything then I would strongly recommend not doing that and simply streaming everything at native resolution. When we first got the ability to stream using RAAT which was prior to my getting the EtherRegen I couldn't understand what people were talking about when they reported this problem. I was streaming at native resolution with RAAT , the highest res files I had on my own drive were 24/96 apart from one 24/176.4 album, and I was not experiencing the problem. In the end I set Roon to upsample everything to 24/192 and I started getting the problem immediately. I swapped back to streaming at native res and the problem virtually disappeared again. I did not notice any difference in sound quality leaving the upsampling to the Devialet, which internally upsamples everything to 384 Hz and, I think, 32 bit, compared to letting Roon upsample everything to 24/192 with a second upsampling processs in my Expert Pro.
Streaming from Roon at native resolution is not a guaranteed fix for the problem but it can reduce the frequency of the problem immensely in some cases and it also does not impact on sound quality. If you've been using Roon to upsample everything to 24/192 you may even be lucky enough, provided you have no 24/192 files on your drive and don't stream anything at 24'192 from Qobuz or any other internet source, to actually not run into this problem at all even using a gigabit connection. I have no idea why I was that fortunate and whether or not my good fortune had something to do with my particular network setup but the experience of different people with this problem varies widely. I only experienced the problem if I streamed music at 24/192, never at lower resolutions including 24/176.4. If I streamed at 24/192 then the problem occurred within minutes and kept occurring every few minutes while at lower resolutions it never occurred at all for me. Others have reported the problem at all resolutions including 16/44.1. As I said, streaming at native resolution from Roon is not a guaranteed fix but it can help and it can even help immensely for some people.
Regardless of whether you choose to use a 100 MPBS ethernet connection, stream via AIR, or use wifi to solve the problem, I would recommend streaming from Roon at native resolution rather than upsampling in Roon.
There's a lot of history to this problem but @mdconnelly highlighted what I think are the 2 main issues when he mentioned a link with high-res music though I would have said higher sampling rates rather than 24 bit was the trigger there, and the use of a 100 MBPS connection to the Devialet as a fix. I also agree that the 2020 FW update for the Expert Pros improved things but wasn't a complete fix.
Raising the issue on the Roon forums won't help. Roon has said it's a Devialet problem and that they even offered to help Devialet solve the issue and that Devialet declined the offer. Devialet have admitted that the problem is theirs so Roon really can't do anything to solve it. We're stuck waiting for Devialet to deliver an update that will finally fix the problem for good but we've now been waiting 3 years so I wouldn't hold my breath.
I've been using an EtherRegen now for a year with a 100 MBOS connection to my Expert Pro I've had only 1 instance in that time of seeing the Audio File loading slowly message and that was while streaming an album from Qobuz so it's probable that was due to a problem with the internet connection somewhere between the server and my internet connection. Using a 100 MBPS ethernet connection rather than a gigabit connection to the Expert Pro does seem to solve the problem and it does not impact music quality.
There are 2 other fixes. One is to stream from Roon using AIR instead of RAAT. Streaming using AIR seems to avoid the problem. Using the Expert Pro's wifi input rather than ethernet also apparently solves the problem.
One thing you did not mention concerned how you stream to your Devialet. Do you have Roon upsample everything to 192/24 or do you stream at native resolution? If you have Roon upsampling everything then I would strongly recommend not doing that and simply streaming everything at native resolution. When we first got the ability to stream using RAAT which was prior to my getting the EtherRegen I couldn't understand what people were talking about when they reported this problem. I was streaming at native resolution with RAAT , the highest res files I had on my own drive were 24/96 apart from one 24/176.4 album, and I was not experiencing the problem. In the end I set Roon to upsample everything to 24/192 and I started getting the problem immediately. I swapped back to streaming at native res and the problem virtually disappeared again. I did not notice any difference in sound quality leaving the upsampling to the Devialet, which internally upsamples everything to 384 Hz and, I think, 32 bit, compared to letting Roon upsample everything to 24/192 with a second upsampling processs in my Expert Pro.
Streaming from Roon at native resolution is not a guaranteed fix for the problem but it can reduce the frequency of the problem immensely in some cases and it also does not impact on sound quality. If you've been using Roon to upsample everything to 24/192 you may even be lucky enough, provided you have no 24/192 files on your drive and don't stream anything at 24'192 from Qobuz or any other internet source, to actually not run into this problem at all even using a gigabit connection. I have no idea why I was that fortunate and whether or not my good fortune had something to do with my particular network setup but the experience of different people with this problem varies widely. I only experienced the problem if I streamed music at 24/192, never at lower resolutions including 24/176.4. If I streamed at 24/192 then the problem occurred within minutes and kept occurring every few minutes while at lower resolutions it never occurred at all for me. Others have reported the problem at all resolutions including 16/44.1. As I said, streaming at native resolution from Roon is not a guaranteed fix but it can help and it can even help immensely for some people.
Regardless of whether you choose to use a 100 MPBS ethernet connection, stream via AIR, or use wifi to solve the problem, I would recommend streaming from Roon at native resolution rather than upsampling in Roon.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.
Brisbane, Qld, Australia
