My understanding is the RS150B is both a MQA decoder and renderer. In Roon, when I set up the RS150B as a decoder and renderer and attempt to play MQA tracks, I get pops and clicks throughout playback. The pops only occur with MQA playback, not flac. I have to set RS150B as renderer only and allow Roon to decode, then no pops. Is this a known bug? Is it a product of using Rose’s DSP software volume control? What can I do to resolve this? My Rose is connected to Roon via RAAT. Thanks.
A lot of other roon endpoints have this problem with MQA and using Roon as a decoder is a good solution.
My RS150 is used with an external DAC, but my RS451 can controlled from Roon with hardware volume control (I would this always prefer over DSP volume control).
Roon looked into the problem and responded with the following:
Thank you for getting back online so quickly — we were able to pull a full diagnostic report from your Nucleus. Here is what we found.
We confirmed both drop events you reported. The pattern is identical each time: your Rose RS150B stops communicating with the Roon Core for just over 10 seconds, which triggers Roon’s connection timeout. The Core then closes the TCP session, waits a moment, and reconnects — which is why you see the device disappear and reappear roughly 10 seconds later.
This is not an isolated incident. Across the diagnostic bundle, the same disconnect-and-reconnect cycle has occurred thousands of times over the past several weeks, meaning it is happening frequently even during sessions you may not have noticed (brief gaps between tracks, for example).
We also found a smaller number of more severe events where the Rose stops consuming audio data fast enough, causing a server-side buffer overflow. These result in a hard “Track Stopped Due to Error” rather than a transparent reconnect.
In both cases the Rose recovers on its own within 6–10 seconds, which tells us the device is not crashing — its RAAT networking layer is intermittently stalling and then resuming.
What we recommend
1. Check for a Rose firmware update (most important)
Your Rose is currently running firmware 5.10.02with RAAT version 1.1.41. Since you have already contacted HiFi Rose support in parallel, please ask them specifically whether a newer firmware addresses RAAT stability or network keepalive handling. This is the most direct path to a fix, as the stall is originating on the Rose side.
2. Swap the patch cable on your Nucleus
Just to make sure that there is no failed cable or ports, but we do not see any network-related issues.
3. Try connecting Nucleus to Rose via USB (diagnostic)
You mentioned you have not tried USB yet. Temporarily connecting the Nucleus directly to the Rose via USB would tell us a great deal: if the drops stop completely, it confirms the issue is specifically in the Rose’s network RAAT stack, not in Roon or your network. (You are correct that the Rose screen display will not show metadata in this mode — this would just be a short test.)
4. Bypass the GS108 switch as a test
If steps 1–3 do not resolve it, connect the Nucleus directly to one of the LAN ports on your Asus AX-88U, removing the GS108 from the path entirely. The GS108 is a solid unmanaged switch, but this rules it out as a variable.
Summary
The root cause is the Rose RS150B’s RAAT implementation stalling intermittently on the network — not a Roon bug and not a fundamental network outage. The recommended order of action is: firmware update on the Rose → replace Nucleus patch cable → USB test → bypass switch.
— so far, swapping the patch cable and removing the switch from the equation have made no change. Will test the USB remedy for a few days.