Audio streaming latency ... help!

[Keith_W]

I am suffering from pretty severe latency issues

I am using BubbleUPNP to stream Tidal from my Android tablet to my Windows PC. In Windows, I use JRiver as a DLNA endpoint with its built-in convolver. With this setup, wi-fi streams to the tablet, which then streams to the PC, where it goes into JRiver for convolution. I have no choice but to do this, because I have not found a way to make Tidal's Android app control Tidal on the PC! It takes 10-15 seconds between issuing a command on the tablet to sound output from the speakers. This latency only occurs on track change. It does not occur with volume adjustment which maybe has a 1/2 second latency.

The latency issue also occurs on the desktop, but it is much less severe. When playing music on the PC, I use the Tidal app to output to JRiver, which uses its convolution engine before output to the DAC. I have a Merging 8 channel DAC, and the PC talks to the DAC via Merging's Ravenna ASIO driver. I have noticed that every time I change track, JRiver has to handshake the DAC before anything happens.

I don't know how to determine where the bottleneck is, without going on a merry go round trying different software to reduce the latency At the moment, I have several theories:

- Having Tidal stream into the tablet first and then re-streamed into the PC is probably contributing to latency. Any ideas on how to get the Tidal Android app to control playback on the Windows Android app would be appreciated.
- Having Tidal on Windows go through JRiver's convolution engine might be contributing. When I use JRiver to play files locally without streaming, the convolution engine is really quick, and does not have to handshake the DAC on every track change. For some reason, JRiver only wants to do that with streaming. Does anybody have suggestions for a faster convolution engine?
- If I use another convolution engine, I will need another DLNA endpoint. I don't know of any others besides JRiver. What do other people use?

 

[radix]

I believe if you put a Roon core on the PC, it will be a Tidal endpoint and you can play Tidal through the Roon app. If you set the default output of the PC to be JRiver, the Core will then play through JRiver.

I don't use Tidal or JRiver. I've not done any of this, but you can see this thread about using Roon through JRiver: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-and-jriver-playing-at-all-together/44644/3

I sounds like you're using JRiver for a multichannel crossover and DRC?

 

[Keith_W]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I do not want to install Roon. It is too expensive, and it is terrible for classical music. I tried it and it made an awful mess of my collection.

Yes, I am using JRiver for multichannel and DRC.

 

[radix]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I do not want to install Roon. It is too expensive, and it is terrible for classical music. I tried it and it made an awful mess of my collection.

Yes, I am using JRiver for multichannel and DRC.

Ok. You don't need to actually connect Roon to your library, you could always play remotely through it. but I do get the cost issue.

You might be able to do the same thing with Volumio (or other streamer). Volumio supports a Tidal endpoint, but I'm not sure if that's in the free version.

EDIT: Sorry, Volumio is linux only (or its own OS). There might be some other Windows streamer that supports Tidal connect, but I don't know what it is.