Pioneer VSX-30 Drops IP when scanned

I am performing the initial setup of Roomie. Most everything works fine. However, when I attempt to add a new device, my Pioneer VSX-30 Receiver looses IP connectivity after 1-2 minutes of roomie scanning for network devices. I have to pull the power from the receiver to get it to respond via IP again. This is very repeatable. If roomie doesn't try to scan, then the receiver never goes down.

That's a well-known issue with that older generation of VSX models from 2010. We have a test VSX-33 here that will reliably crash just by plugging the Ethernet cord in. It's the same issue. Basically any kind of DLNA/UPnP activity causes those early models to crash.

There is a firmware bug, but updating the firmware on that model is very difficult and requires sending it to one of only a handful of authorized service centers. You would need to contact Pioneer for more information. We recommend adding the receiver and then not scanning for it again as that's certainly going to be easier than trying to get it fixed. OTOH as we identify in the compatibility list, the VSX-30 also doesn't support Network Standby, so you might want to use more infrared for basic control and mix it with IP just for volume perhaps.

Im seeing my VSK-1020-K dropping off the network all the time as well. Pioneer claims there is no known issues with the device but since I have two and they both do it I don't really believe them. Any chance you have some insight?

One warning we would give is that Pioneer basically always says there are no known issues on this topic -- we assume some of their front line support must not know. At some point a year or so ago we thought maybe we were doing something too aggressively, but then we realized that putting any 2010 Pioneer even on the same network as a Yamaha receiver would cause the Pioneer to have a network crash within a few minutes. It's just a huge bug in their 2010 line, and we think they have a firmware fix for it but we're not 100% sure of that because it's near impossible to upgrade those models. One of their backline support personnel did read us a change history of their firmware errata for those models and it *sounded* like they had a fix, but we really don't know.

We have many devices, basically anything that does UPnP searching, that cause 2010 Pioneer models to exhibit a network crash. A lot of their customers probably don't notice it because the network going down doesn't affect basic audio/video functionality. Our advice is to press harder on Pioneer, or look into a new receiver of course.