Intermittent audio dropouts when streaming Qobuz Hi Res files on Lumin streamer

I had problems with my Lumin T2 streamer until I changed internet providers and stepped up about 100x in speed. Went from about 3mbs to 300mbs, all my problems disappeared. This was with Tidal.

@chrisoshea 

I do have turntables in my main dedicated listening rooms aka main dedicated systems (see above post) but I don’t hava a turntable in my living room setup as it is my secondary system and is more for casual listening. 

The Aurrender’s Conductor app is very good and reliable. It is being upgraded bringing more functionality. Aurrender does not support Roon at this time. There is rumor they are going to. I am personally not a fan and suspect Roon’s life is limited anyway.

Yes, the equipment you are using determines whether streaming or physical media sound better. That is the bottom line.

My analog side, CD player, and streaming sound the same, with streaming occasionally sounding a minuscule amount better or occasionally vinyl sounding every so slightly better when comparing the same recording. I attribute this to what number the vinyl pressing occurred in a lot: beginning vs end of run.

I chose the analog and digital / CD ends to reflect the sound I wanted and so are shaped by the Audio Research Reference phonostage and cartridge (Koetsu Rosewood Signature) and the Aurdio Research Reference DAC and Aurender W20SE in my system. So the investment in the analog and digital ends is roughly the same.

I should have bought the Aurender streamer or Linn or Naim streamer for my living room setup since I don’t have any physical media player in this living room setup.
How is the Aurender app? Pretty reliable? Or are you using Roon instead of the Aurender app? I have a an MSB DAC (entry level MSB DAC) for this living room setup since my Lumin streamer is only digital transport and has no DAC.

It depends on the physical media players (CD/SACD players or turntable players) you are comparing to. In one of my main dedicated listening room / system I have all Wadax Reference DAC with its own external Reference separate power supply, Wadax Reference master clock with its own external Reference power supply, Wadax Reference server with its own external Reference power supply, & Wadax Reference CD/SACD transport with its own external Reference power supply. This is probably one of the best sounding and most musical sounding digital front end source components I’ve ever owned and heard and is much superior sounding to any streamers out there. In this main system I also have a Clearaudio Statement ll turntable with a D’Agostino Momentum phono pre. This is also a much superior sounding to any digital products out there. There’s something magical in musical reproduction about vinyl / turntable or analog front end source components that digital audio can’t compare.

In my other dedicated main listening room / system I have DCS Vivaldi stacks : Vivaldi DAC, Vivaldi masterclock, Vivaldi upsampler, Vivaldi CD/SACD transport. I use Taeko Aufio music server for this setup. These are also superior sounding to just about any streamers out there. In this setup I have Kronos Pro turntable with an ARC Ref 10 phono pre.

On the other hand I have not needed to reboot either of my two  Aurrender ever… and they sound as good or better than physical media.

Couldn’t agree more. That’s why the majority of my listening is physical media discs : vinyl, CD, SACD, and reel-to-reel master audio tape. But I mainly stream Tidal and Qobuz in this living room setup since it is not my main primary dedicated listening room / system. I have two dedicated main listening rooms and systems where I don’t stream Tidal & Qobuz. I only listen to vinyl, CD, SACD & reel-to-reel tape in these main dedicated listening rooms or main primary systems. But I do have digital downloads stored in dedicated music servers in these dedicated main listening rooms / systems. 

I had an Aurlic Aries G2 streamer that was always getting confused. It actually had a setting to reboot nightly. I turned the function on. It helped. Yep, anytime exibiting problems: phones, watches, modems, routers, TV, Amazon’s TV boxes, toilets, and pretty soon cars.

Rebooting is always a first choice. I had the unfortunate experience once of wasting 4 days trying to figure out my streaming issues. I had forgotten that there was an ROON Core update, and I had not rebooted my server. Normally this is not needed but that one time the reboot solved everything.

@yyzsantabarbara 

Hi there,

Today I’ve just tried streaming the George Harrison’s 50th anniversary All Things Must Pass album particularly on that Hear Me Lord song on Qobuz Hi Res 192/24 and didn’t get audio dropout at all. Everything seems to be working fine so far ever since I rebooted my Lumin streamer and my network internet modem/router the other day. But will see if the intermittent audio dropout will come back on, hopefully not. 

Thank you all for all the responses. I did reboot my Lumin streamer and my internet network modem/router, I rebooted everything and now it seems to be doing fine so far but I need to give it another couple weeks and see how it goes. But so far no intermittent audio dropouts when streaming Qobuz Hi Res materials. But will see and will keep you all posted.

Thank you again.

Maybe also turn off and on your switch?

I run a cary and have a few problems with qobuz. It gets interupted once in a great while. My main problem is from app to dac, but I am pretty happy. Sometimes there's some problem solves to go through. I once read not to log out because logging in can be a problem. Had to contact quboz. They said the site got attacked once, but I wouldn't have problems the next day. They were right and they have always been pretty good to me.

I also have problems with Qobuz on a Playback Designs MPS-X with JPLAY, with songs cutting off in the middle and then advancing to the next song in the queue.  The problem might be my internet service which has a lot of dropped packets.  There are some sites you can use to test your ISP, but I was not able to include the links to them here.

FWIW I have similar experience with 192/24 files on Qobuz streaming through my PC. I have 100 meg fiber and I'm hardwired to my router. I have tried a different cable with no effect. It only happens on 192 files and I have assumed that it is on Qobuz' end. I'm in central Washington state.

One of the reasons I think it is a Qobuz problem is that I can stream hi res video files on the same equipment without a hitch.

I have had the same issue using my iPhone Bluetoothed to a sound bar, since my system is boxed up right now. With that said, I think it is a Qobuz issue. 

Start simple, with the cables, and go one at a time. Buy two cheap Ethernet cables and replace the expensive ones and see if it persists. 

I've never bought the upgraded Ethernet cables, but I've definitely had cables go bad.

I’ve recently experienced similar with Hi res Qobuz. Its as if the incoming stream cant keep up and it will cut out momentarily then continue. Bluesound node 2.1 with upgrades. Very intermittent. Texas

I'm sure this is completely unhelpful, but I haven't had any dropout issues with my U1 mini. I live in Boise, ID, so I'm in the general region but not close enough to Seattle for my experience to apply to you, unfortunately. Just guessing wildly, have you tried taking the EtherRegen out of the chain, just to test whether it might be malfunctioning? (But if so, why are the problems on Qobuz only?....)

@caphill Peter at Lumin has given some good advice. One thing I would have asked him is how much buffering does their Lumin app do. Is there a setting to increase the buffering size. If the CDN you are connected to is slow then having a larger buffer on the Lumin app will help.

I have seen Qobuz have some streaming failures in the past. More so than Tidal. Though in those cases I am pretty sure it was at the Qobuz side and not my gear. These were more than intermittent drops. In the last 6 months Qobuz has been faultless on my setup.

I sometimes wonder why I keep Qobuz when Tidal is functionally better and for me the sonic differences are not anything I even bother testing. Other than messing up my ROON database of songs I could easily drop Qobuz.

Try the song I mentioned in my first post with both Tidal and Qobuz at hi-res rates. At the 39 second mark the data demands are high.

Try a double blind to see if you notice a difference between HiRez and Redbook. Few can pass this test reliably.

This might be much ado about ...

@erik_squires

I highly doubt it’s my internet connection because I also stream Tidal MAX (Tidal Hi Res FLAC) up to 192/24 and is flawless and not a single audio dropout at all. Tidal MAX (Tidal Hi Res FLAC) streams at exact same resolutions (same bit depths same sampling rates) as Qobuz Hi Res FLAC so I assume both use same amount of bandwidths when streaming their Hi Res FLAC files. But I never experienced a single audio dropout when streaming Tidal Hi Res FLAC (Tidal MAX) up to 192/24.

My Lumin U1 Mini streamer is hardwired using a good quality CAT6 ethernet cable. I use TWL (Triode Wire Labs) Freedom CAT6 ethernet cable (1.25 meter run) between the Lumin streamer and the UpTone Audio EtherREGEN ethernet switch. And I use a 1.75 meter run of Audioquest Cinnamon CAT7 ethernet cable between the EtherREGEN and my router/modem. They are all short runs.

My Lumin streamer does not have built-in WiFi, so using my cell phone as an internet WiFi hotspot won’t work. My Lumin streamer can only be hardwired using an ethernet cable.

But I have contacted Lumin regarding the issue with streaming Qobuz Hi Res FLAC and I explained to them the issue does not apply to Tidal MAX (Tidal Hi Res FLAC). It pertains strictly to Qobuz Hi Res FLAC streams. And they said that it is not about my internet connection or speed. This is about how fast my ISP can download from Qobuz CDN. It’s not about the "fast internet" bandwidth between the ISP and me. That’s what Lumin technical support told me.

Here’s also a reply from Peter at Lumin technical support team :

Hi,

This means your ISP downloads from Qobuz CDN for your region much slower than Tidal CDN.

If your router supports VPN, use it to connect to a different country with a VPN free trial. In some cases it works better because you’re forcing a different CDN server to be used. If this works better it proves my theory.

If your router can run as a WiFi client, you can try using that with your cellular phone as WiFi hotspot. This is an experiment only as it consumes a lot of data. Again If this works better it proves my theory.

Best regards,

Peter

But I don’t know how to do all those that Peter at Lumin advised me to do (see above reference). I’m not very technical at all when it comes to this kind of thing. Lol….

I’m keeping my Qobuz subscription cause it has larger Hi Res library collections than Tidal MAX (Tidal Hi Res FLAC) library collections. Otherwise I would have just stayed with Tidal cause it’s more reliable and stable.

@yyzsantabarbara 

The audio dropouts are intermittent and random, not on any particular track or album but it only occurs on Qobuz Hi Res material - especially 192/24 & sometimes on 96/24 too, but the CD quality streams are fine. The issue pertains only to Qobuz Hi Res streams, the Tidal MAX (Tidal Hi Res FLAC) streams (up to 192/24) are flawless without a glitch. I also stream Tidal Hi Res FLAC (Tidal MAX). 
So the issue pertains only to Qobuz Hi Res streams - especially 192/24 and sometimes on 96/24 as well. But again it happens randomly and does not happen all the time, but recently it’s becoming much more frequent. It’s frustrating. 

Bounce your modem.  Turn it off for a minute and then back on.  This sometimes cleans up path/route issues between you and your internet provider.

If you have the ability to use your cell phone as an internet hot spot, try it.  If your problems go away, it's your Internet.

I used to have streaming issues just as you have described. However, my resolution would not work for you since we have different streaming setups.

One thing that I may be able to help you with is to help you reproduce the problem. In my case, I was able to reproduce the dropouts 100% of the time on the song HEAR ME LORD - on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass (50th anniversary hi-res version). At the 39 second mark George start humming and that always caused a dropout.

I was able to use that knowledge to eliminate different potential offenders until I narrowed it down to the cause.

This resolution was very difficult because the dropouts did not happen every time with regular playback. Finding a reproducible song was essential for me to figure out my issue.

BTW - I used TIDAL and Qobuz and could reproduce it with both. My streaming has to travel though a bit of a maze.