I thought I would relay a problem that I was having in case others are in the same boat. The problem developed when I upgraded my Bartok to the Apex. I really appreciated the improved sound, but now every 5-10 minutes or so, the music would stop for a few seconds. This occurred while streaming from Qobuz using Mosaic. The internet was provided over wifi to a BrosTrend wifi-ethernet converter then into the Bartok. Since the problem developed after the upgrade (purchased new Apex unit and sold the non-apex unit, not a dealer upgrade), I thought the new unit might be the problem. Long story, short, the problem was the BrosTrend wifi-ethernet converter. It had spontaneously developed this problem which just happened to occur when I switched out the dac. It was replaced by an TP-link Archer wifi-ethernet unit. All problem solved. Hope this post saves someone a bit of anguish,
Thanks Dan . I am glad that you found that the issue you had was caused by your network rather than Bartok.
I would, however, point out that recommendation of a particular network product as a solution needs some care as although it certainly can be there may be caveats. A post earlier today from Phil of dCS support explains why:
It is often not that a network component itself is not operating correctly but the way it has been configured. This can be changed ( with guidance) by the user and it may therefore fore not be necessary to buy a replacement.
Pete–so true. I arrived at a malfunctioning piece of network equipment after days of troubleshooting. I think the point of the story was to highlight that even things that should 100% work (i.e. worked perfectly for years), can sometimes be the problem.
You could update the software of the unit
Hi @Buddyman
That of course presumes that there is an updated firmware for the device but quite often once a device has been superseded in the manufacturers line-up and replaced by something newer (faster? more powerful? a different colour housing?) then there are no more updates …
In this instance the Bartok that had been working before the APEX upgrade was no longer working after the upgrade so @dankaplan quite logically presumed that what had changed (the upgrade) had caused the problem. The APEX upgrade is restricted to the DAC board and the DAC board alone, the Control Board and the streaming hardware remain totally untouched (apart from the unit should be updated to the latest firmware as part of the upgrade if it isn’t on latest firmware already) so doing an APEX upgrade doesn’t touch any of that functionality.
This is why when we get these issues reported I will pretty much without exception start out by asking “Is your streamer connected back to your router via a single length of Ethernet cable and what sort of cable is it?” (or “What exactly is there connected between your streamer and your router? Are there any network switches, media converters, network extenders or wall plates that the connection goes through?”) and then if the streamer isn’t connected directly back to the router I’ll usually ask “Can you connect your streamer back to your router via a single length of CAT5e or CAT6 Ethernet cable and confirm whether the issue persists”.
If you think this is an over-simple approach even that doesn’t always yield the required tests - recently I had an instance of streaming issues that had suddenly started after having been stable for a very long time. IIRC the streamer was connected back to the network via a WiFi network extender (which is always a possible red flag as quite often handling of UDP / IGMP over consumer grade WiFi devices can be dubious) but even when connected directly there were still issues and I was really starting to scratch my head for what was amiss as it was really sounding like an issue between the streamer and the router but the new totally standard Ethernet patch lead that had been bought for the sole purpose of connecting the streamer directly back to the router to test this was still exhibiting the same issues …
As I was about to suggest that I thought that the next step would be to get the streamer back to the dealer to confirm the fault and arrange to get it back for service the customer dropped me a message saying “Oh it’s all sorted now - I took out the Ethernet filter that I just bought and it’s working fine again.”…
P
I’d wager if we did a tally of all the reported “dCS networking issues” here on dcs.community, 99% of them have actually had nothing to do with the dCS platform itself.