UK event with Mathieu Pernot - 17 July

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Hello all,

Just back from this afternoon's event at Oxford Audio.

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1) What's the current status of investigating/fixing the problems with Roon (RAAT) over Gb Ethernet?

Mathieu is working on this but said it's a very tricky problem.  In fact it has not been possible to reproduce it at Devialet; the suspicion is that it may depend on the specific router being used.  Mathieu said that Devialet have had no help from Roon on this topic.  The availability of a work-around - using 100base-T - seems to be seen as acceptable.
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Ian,

Many thanks for the report, very interesting.

Re the problems with Roon RAAT, I've long suspected that differences in user networks was at least part of the problem and the router being used could certainly be an issue since that's one of the differences that can occur in our networks.  When Mathieu said that "it may depend on the specific router being used " did you get a sense of whether he was suggesting that there was one specific router which could be the problem or that they thought there may be a number of different routers involved, and did he suggest that choice of ethernet switches may also be an issue along the same lines?

No, he didn't elaborate about what he meant by "speficic router".  Also he might have been using "router" to refer to whatever device the Roon Core and/or Devialet are connected to, whether it's a true router or a switch without router capabilities, so there is quite a bit of ambiguity there.  One other comment he made, if I remember correctly, was that he had heard of one instance where the problem also occurred with a 100base-T connection in full-duplex and it could be resolved - or rather, avoided - by running the connection in half-duplex.  All in all I don't think this tells us much that we hadn't already thought about.

Assuming that their supposition is plausible (I think it is but I'm not convinced it accounts for the whole of the problem) I can't help but think that Devialet's apparent aversion to communicating with their customers is part of the reason they're having trouble replicating it. It would be easy for them to set up a web page with a survey form asking whether or not you were having the problem and asking you to specify what router and switches you were using, and simply send out an email to all Expert owners with CI models giving them the link and asking them to respond. That would give them access to data telling them whether or niot there were any common features in the network devices people with or without the problem were using and  also make it easier to replicate the problem if there were some commonalities. Of course it would also involve a very public acknowledgement that owners are having problems.

Yes, I agree.  From my point of view it does seem that there is a willingness to have one-to-one communication with individual customers (although from reports here I am not sure how effective that is in practice), but not to engage with a community.  Working together as you said could bring benefits other than information capture: first of all, the problems are more easily reproducible so there is a ready-made test bed for potential fixes, and secondly many of the people experiencing these problems may have knowledge and insights in networking that could spark useful discoveries.

Finally, while Mathieu said that they have had no help from Roon on the problem, Roon have said on their forums that they have been in touch with Devialet and have offered assistance. In the early days after we got the Roon Ready update a number of us were having issues with Roon not recognising our amps as certified Roon Ready products. Roon fixed that issue in a number of days so they demonstrated their commitment to solving user problems rather convincingly. It's hard to believe they haven't been as committed to ensuring we get this problem solved as well so I'm more inclined to trust Roon than Devialet regarding comments on whether Roon has tried to help.

That statement of Mathieu's surprised me too for the same reasons you mentioned; unless I completely misheard, those are the words he used so there seems to be no room for interpretation.