[PROBLEM] Roon Bridge on Moode 9.2.4 playback error

[Pintu]

Hello! I've been using Moode 8 and Roon Bridge without any issues on an RPi4 (latest Bullseye release and Roon Bridge armv7hf). The RPi4 is connected via HDMI to my Arcam AVR.

I've made a fresh install with Moode 9.2.4 and installed Roon Bridge armv8. I can activate the renderer in Moode and activate the corresponding output device in Roon (vc4-hdmi-0). However, playback in Roon failes with a “Too many failures” error. There is no playback whatsoever and it just skips through a playlist until I get this error message. 

No other renderers are active in Moode, MPD plays fine.

I've reinstalled a couple of times to rule out any glitches, but nothing helped. Any suggestions? Thanks!

[Tim Curtis]

A quick google "roon too many failures error" and there are lots of posts.

Generally, since that error is being generated by  roon you will prolly need to look at the roon log files to see if there is any indication of what might be happening.

On the moode side you can use the command below to verify that roonbridge is running but beyond that I have no idea whether roonbridge generates error logs or what its actually doing because the source code is not publicly available to examine.

Code:

# If this returns > 0 it means that roonbridge is running
pgrep -c mono-sgen

[Pintu]

I've made further progress, and the problem seems to be how Roon Bridge interacts with the Integrated Audio Kernel Mode.

When Kernel Mode is active, I see two devices in Roon (one for each HDMI output), but neither of them show the correct information regarding channel layout, and playback fails. 

When I activate Firmware Mode, I see four devices (two for "Kernel" and two for "Firmware"), and the two new devices created through Firmware mode show the correct information and playback works!

       

The problem is that with Firmware mode on, no other renderer works and I get the following error when trying to play anything but Roon through HDMI.

   

[Tim Curtis]

I've made further progress, and the problem seems to be how Roon Bridge interacts with the Integrated Audio Kernel Mode.

When Kernel Mode is active, I see two devices in Roon (one for each HDMI output), but neither of them show the correct information regarding channel layout, and playback fails. 

When I activate Firmware Mode, I see four devices (two for "Kernel" and two for "Firmware"), and the two new devices created through Firmware mode show the correct information and playback works!



The problem is that with Firmware mode on, no other renderer works and I get the following error when trying to play anything but Roon through HDMI.

I suppose its a question for roon regarding support for the default kernel mode driver in PiOS Bookworm.

The firmware mode driver is a legacy driver in PiOS Bookworm and not really meant to be used. I added an option for it in moode but only to enable use of the Headphone jack on < Pi4 models. See the help below.

Code:

Kernel mode: Default vc4-kms-v3d driver for advanced HDMI capabilities.
Firmware mode: Legacy snd-bcm2835 driver to support Pi Headphone only configuration. No other audio, video or system features are supported.

[Pintu]

Thanks, yes I saw the information re kernels in the help and thought I just give it a go.

Makes sense that Roon needs to support kernel mode driver in PiOS Bookworm. I'll raise a case with them.

In the meantime, is there a way to make the other renderers work in legacy mode as a temporary workaround?

[Tim Curtis]

Only the Headphone port will work when using the legacy driver.