There’s a sound issue when playing MQA encoded material through Roon to Brige II to a DirectStream (Sr. or Jr.). The initial sounds are truncated - sound is skipped. This happens at the beginning of MQA tracks. And only to the first MQA track played when no other MQA music is playing. If play is not interrupted as the queue moves from one MQA track to the next, the problem will not repeat on subsequent MQA tracks.
I know this is not a RedCloud issue, because I reverted to Yale, and was able to reproduce the problem. The problem occurs with both MQA tracks from Tidal, and with locally stored MQA tracks. Though to my testing, it appears to occur more consistently with material from Tidal, though certainly not exclusively.
The problem appears not to be with Roon, because other DAC vendors - who, like PSA, that required the RAAT API 1.1.21 update to decode MQA material sent from Roon - do not have this problem. And mConnect does not have this problem. That appears to leave the current Bridge II implementation of Roon’s RAAT 1.1.21 as the apparent culprit.
While this problem presents itself with high regularity with other MQA tracks, in the videos linked below I’ve selected one that is consistent and quite audible. That track is Tidal’s “Master” edition of Rhiannon Giddens song Waterboy on her Tomorrow is My Turn album. It’s pretty easy to reproduce if needed. And you’ll likely find the problem also presents frequently when you skip directly to a new MQA track, or to a different spot of a playing MQA track. I have confirmed that other Roon/PSA users have this same problem. It’s not unique to my setup.
I am experiencing this behavior as well with a DSJ. Very disappointing!
Additionally, there’s another new problem since the bridge update to 3.4.5 - Moving the volume slider in the Roon app creates audible thumps. Furthermore, when you change volume with the PS remote, the volume slider in the various Roon apps does not reflect the new setting and gets confused as you slide it up and down.
OK. This has been posted for three entire days, and thread views are approaching a couple of hundred. But no reply from PS Audio. Not sure who to raise this to within PSA.
Is PSA going to acknowledge this? And provide us an update? I have good reason to believe this is a bug in the implementation, based on conversations with another RoonReady DAC vendor. But I believe PSA should be both acknowledging this problem, and letting us know their take on it.
I’m surprised the you cannot reproduce this, assuming you are using the exact example I mentioned in my OP. Everyone I’ve been in direct contact with (which is only a few people) have been able to reproduce it.
But maybe this is not as widespread as it appeared. If it’s limited then that’s good news, as it implies the possibility that it may not be an issue with the Bridge II RAAT implementation, and possibly that it might be fixable, which would be great, as it’s pretty pervasive on my setup.
FWIW - it has been suggested to me that the problem might be mitigated by the ReDelay setting in Roon’s Setting/Audio/Device-Setup area. I’ve tried everything from 0 to 10 seconds, and while it changes a little, it does not go away. Maybe other people’s experience will differ.
Thanks for the reply. Look forward to what you find. And am happy to help if needed.
Scolley - I too am experiencing the exact same issue as you describe here and have been in contact with Jeremy at PSA about it. I have called it “start of track sputtering”. They initially asked me to try pulling the SD card and see if that helped, but it did not. As I mentioned in another thread, I and others, also have issues with the DAC display screen locking up (Progress bar and album art stop) after extended MQA play. This can only be resolved with a power cycle and doesn’t happen when playing non-MQA files. So there appears to be a couple MQA-Roon bugs with the latest Bridge update. With a little patience, I’m confident that PSA will dig in and find the issue.
Setting Roon’s Resync Delay to the maximum 10,000ms seems to have solved the “stuttering” problem for me on a DSJ. Thanks for the tip. I suppose I will reduce the delay in gradual steps until the issue recurs.
Is anybody else troubled by the thumping and sync issues with Roon’s volume slider?
…So there appears to be a couple MQA-Roon bugs with the latest Bridge update. With a little patience, I’m confident that PSA will dig in and find the issue.
I’m finding that too. There is also a crackle when moving from PCM to DSD or DSD to PSM in Roon’s queue. But it’s not loud, and it quite brief. And it does not occur when I stream Roon from a Sonore SonicOrbiter SE over USB to my DSJ. So it’s a Bridge II issue. There appear to be a few gremlins in there. Will stay tuned to see how things shake out…
Fred said
Setting Roon’s Resync Delay to the maximum 10,000ms seems to have solved the “stuttering” problem for me on a DSJ.
Glad that helped.
Fred said
Is anybody else troubled by the thumping and sync issues with Roon’s volume slider?
I get crackle using the volume slider, but only on MQA tracks, if that’s what you are referring to.
I’m surprised the you cannot reproduce this, assuming you are using the exact example I mentioned in my OP. Everyone I’ve been in direct contact with (which is only a few people) have been able to reproduce it.
I have the same issue exactly as described by scolley. Rather than reporting it and spending a lot of time debugging, I've just stopped listening to Roon until you guys figure it out.
I’ve experienced the same issue. I’ve noticed it only at the start of the first track as described. What is interesting is that the start of subsequent tracks is not affected, if play is continuous.
After some work and thanks to the information and video, we have duplicated it ourselves. Sigh. Thanks guys. Matt’s on it. Looks like the fault’s in the Converse Bridge module and we have submitted a support ticket to Converse for them to fix it. Matt identified the problem and though they are not known for speed, they do get things fixed. We’ll have a Bridge II update as soon as it’s ready. Thanks for catching that one.
Thanks Paul. Good to hear Matt has identified the problem. Will this fix correct not just the start of track stuttering, but also the album art and display locking up after extended MQA play as mentioned here and in another MQA/Roon thread? Cheers!
… Sigh. Thanks guys. Matt’s on it. Looks like the fault’s in the Converse Bridge module and we have submitted a support ticket to Converse for them to fix it…
Thanks Paul. I’m sure that sigh is heart felt, after all this work, to have to go back for a fix. That said…
It might be worth its own thread, but while they are working on this problem, they might want to look at one that I suspect might be related. I gather this one has something to do with timing and handshaking at the beginning of a song, there is another problem that also occurs at the beginning of tracks, and like this one, only when switching to a different type of music.
Specifically, there is a crackling that occurs in the beginning of any DSD track when the previous song was PCM. And also crackles in the beginning of a PCM track when the previous track was DSD.
You don’t need videos to reproduce this one. In Roon just cue up a PCM song and cue up a DSD behind it, and listen as one song transitions into another. You’ll hear it.
And I know this is with Bridge II, because I’ve sent the exact same tracks from Roon to the DSJ, but bypassing the Bridge II, and using a SonicOrbiter SE as the network endpoint, connected to the DSJ by USB. And there is no crackling as the tracks change. It’s only when using Bridge II.
Can you please look into that also Paul? Could be related.
Well, this is disappointing. We’ve got new Bridge II firmware, but the problem from my OP still has not been fixed.
And the problem I mentioned in my last post in this thread is still there too. Better - not as loud - but still bad enough that I know a guy with his DSJ still in the “send it back if you aren’t happy” time period that is sending it back. He’s not happy. Can’t say I blame him.
Were these problems supposed to be addressed in this last change? Or are they in the work queue for resolution later? For that matter, are they even in the queue to be fixed?
The problem from your original post has been on the known issue list. I was able to replicate it here and have actually been using the exact song you reference because it has such a quick and loud beginning. The issue is around the MQA authorization sequence. The newest FW I received from them fixes the ‘static’ sound from the beginning of the track when restarting MQA, or going from non-MQA to MQA, however, in the latest FW it seems to be missing the first quarter-second of audio like it is just muted or something. Most tracks you don’t notice the muting, but on this ‘Waterboy’ track it is very noticeable because the song doesn’t start with any silence or build-up. It is still a known issue and we are working with the Convers folks to get a complete fix for it.
I had hoped that the issue would be completely resolved in this last firmware release for the bridge (3.5.1), and apologize for the frustration it causes. We will continue to work diligently with Convers to completely resolve it.
Thank you very much for the clarification Matt. Still on the radar, and being addressed - that’s good news about the first problem.
And while it does not affect me a great deal, because I don’t have a lot of DSD tracks. But I have friends that do. So for their interests I’d love to know… what about the second problem, three posts up? The noise when switching from DSD to PCM or visa versa?