Have you tried using an unmanaged switch in its place?
1 Like
I was having loooooonger gaps until I did enabled Flow Control
Do you have any recommendation of an unmanaged switch?
I like the NetGear GS105 and GS108…simple, inexpensive, functional, and reliable.
Netgear GS108GE or something like it. GE not SE
1 Like
Thank you!
Hi @benjamin
I love listing to music and producing music. I love the experience that Roon brings to exploring and listening to music. This is why I spend once more time describing the symptoms of the issue and where I assume the cause of the issue.
Based on my experience as IT professional with a PhD in computer science I know that it is not advisable to exclude possible explanation for a problem to early. This is why I have duly followed all suggestions that I received so far, even though none of them sounded like a plausible explanation for the symptoms.
From the exchange to far I get the impression that you don´t consider, that the cause for the issue is coming from the Roon software in combination with the underlying database. This was my assumption from the beginning of this thread in December and with all the evidence that is now available and also shared from other users I am even more convinced that the problem is not originating in hardware or network issues. That’s why I am happy that you are now looking into the database.
I fully accept that you use a public forum as the only support channel, but I hope there is an internal escalation path for issues that can´t be resolved peer-to-peer. At a certain moment the software engineering team should be involved. Maybe this already happened behind the scenes but based on our communication I can only guess that this has not happened yet.
Let me summarize the consistent pattern of the issue that provides evidence to my assumption that the problem originates in the combination of the Roon application software and the underlying database.
The delay only occurs for me in one very specific circumstance. I have to manually start playback of a track by pressing either “Play Now” or the “Next” button AND the playback time of a track has to be long enough for Roon to consider it relevant for usage statistics. In the user interface this is represented by increasing the play counter.
When the playback time of a track was so short that the playback counter is not incremented, there is no delay between playing back tracks.
The precise time of the delay is represented in the logfile entry “Trace: [library] endmutation”. The time shown for endmutation is the sum of the preceding times for the “Computed stats” entries.
There is no delay after restarting the Roon Core. The delay time is increasing over time. In my case this takes 6-8 hours until the delay times goes beyond 3-4 seconds.
Please correct me if there is a better explanation. For me it looks as if Roon updates the database entries (Genres, Performer, Album) for the creating the information that is shown on the Roon home page under “What you´ve listening to” every time the playback counter is incremented. My assumption is that over time some “garbage” is piling up in the database or that some indexes are not created or updated or similar DB maintenance stuff. This “garbage” is cleaned with every restart and resolves the delay temporarily.
I experience the same amount of delay on every endpoint that I am using (MacMini, Windows PC, iPad, iPhone) and also when the audio files are stored on the same machine as Roon Core and the Roon client.
One theory as to why this problem only affects a few users: I started using Roon 2 months ago and migrated 60,000 audio files from iTunes. During the first month, I rediscovered a lot of music and did a lot of cleanups, mostly in the genres and ratings area. My usage patterns may therefore be unusual since I frequently skip tracks and also jump from album to album. I assume that most users listen to consecutive tracks in playlists or albums. Then the situation I described above does not occur.
3 Likes
I would echo @musicjunkie917 's suggestion earlier: can you replace your Netgear GS10SE with an unmanaged switch temporarily to see what effect that might have?
The reason I asked about the switch is that this problem seems to be relatively unique to the OP environment. It appears that he has tried multiple cores and remotes. If this were a systemic problem, a bunch of other purple would be experiencing it as well. That’s just not the case. So, it makes sense to look at the infrastructure that the OP runs. Managed switches have proven to be problematic in the past so…
I am experiencing the same issue as described in this post. When pressing next during the middle of a playing song, there is a significant delay (21 seconds) before the next track plays. The issue seems to clear itself if you press the back bottom on a playing track and after this when pressing the next button during playing a track, the next track plays instantaneously. I previously had Roon installed on an M1 Mac Mini and this problem was exhibited, however after I switched to Windows 11 on an i5 NUC with 32GB of RAM, following Apple’s release of Ventura 13 - 13.2 which has killed SMB/file sharing and they still can’t rectify the issue.
Reading some of the posts here, my router was rebooted last week following a firmware update and whilst I am using Gig switches, I don’t think the network is an issue as I stream via Emby (UPNP) and this works fine.
Is there some other tweak I can make to stop this? Thanks.
The problem continues when going from one platform to another to host the Roon Core?
What kind of switches are you using?
Hi @benjamin,
I haven’t heard from you in two weeks. Can you tell me what is going on? I don’t expect an immediate solution, but I would like to understand what is what is happening on your end.
I can confirm that I have absolutely no problem with streaming audio over the network. It always works flawlessly.
The problem I am having is that the update of the playback statistics can take a very long time and during this time the playback of a new track is not started. I think other users who have contributed to this thread have the same problem. This only happens when the update of the statistics are not “expected” by Roon because i press “Next” during the playback of a track.
PS: For all the suggestions about changing my switch. I completely removed any switch in my network now. My statement above should also clarify that the reported issue is not related to the streaming network.
2 Likes
5 posts were split to a new topic: 15 Second Delay when manually selecting ‘Next Track’ on local files
How is this possible? Did you go all WiFi?
Hey @benjamin,
i deactivated Wifi on the Mac as i have written in this post
The issue is happening on every endpoint. How could the audio stream on one endpoint influence other endpoints? This is what you are suggesting with disabling Sonarworks Sound ID which only is active on one of my endpoints.
Did you had a chance to read my post where i describe the symptoms of the issue in detail after observing it for more than two month? I don´t see that any of the symptoms and the patterns of the issue can be explained by network the network infrastructure. As written in my previous post, I have absolutely no problem with streaming audio over the network. This works flawlessly.
The problem I am having is with the time it takes to update of the playback statistics.
After communicating in the public form for two month now, I don´t see that this conversation is getting closer to a resolution of the issue. Are you open for allowing a different communication method? Something like a direkt communication with somebody in the SW team? Any other communication channel you can suggest? Any escalation path that is available for a customer who bought a lifelong license?
2 Likes
Thanks for your efforts on this. I see the same problems as you but have not had the energy to engage as you have done. You obviously know what you’re doing, and I’m grateful.
Patrick should be being paid for this!
Thanks,
Simon
2 Likes
That’s right. If database issues have been ruled out, it can only be due to the software. The question is, however, which software is it? You assume that it can only be Roon’s and categorically exclude other possibilities.
However, the SoundID software also installed on your computer does not seem to be without issues, as a quick Google search reveals. Obviously computers can have performance issues.
“Set the power settings on your computer to high performance (Best Performance).
Adjust the Buffer size settings in the SoundID Reference standalone app.”
It seems there are problems with buffer size settings, possibly leading to dropouts and delays,
due to the CPU of the machine in question being overloaded.
And in combination with Roon?
No idea. Anyway, I’d give it a try if I wanted to keep Roon.
Yes, but isn’t it installed on your computer?
1 Like
@Patrick_Thibor, I fully get what you are experiencing, because as I have said before, at one time I saw the same behavior. That was before Roon had ported the Linux server to .NET, and before they did some changes on how the next track is being pre-buffered, while the current track is playing.
I too experienced conditions when the next track would not start to play back, until the playback statistics had been computed. In addition, during this time of statistics computing the GUI on my Mac Remote would become unresponsive.
It occurs to me that one way to show how the statistics computing and the playback behavior are related in the special use case in which you experience it, would be to do a screen recording with two open windows on a remote desktop: one a terminal window, connected to your Roon server, and tailing the Roon log to show in real time what is being logged. The other the Remote’s interface, you interacting with the playback mechanism and demonstrating the lag and in parallel the logging of the statistics computing in the other open window.
1 Like
Hey @Patrick_Thibor,
Thanks for the update. Our team is again investigating your database and freshly enabled diagnostics, and will follow up with any findings soon. 
1 Like