My current Roon server is an elderly MacBook Pro. Library of ripped CDs, Bandcamp purchases, etc. lives on a Synology NAS (though playlists are a mixture of those and Qobuz tracks). Music is streamed to a Bluesound amp via wifi. Both the Mac and NAS have direct (ethernet) connections to the wifi router (a not-too-old Amplifi HD).
I’ve sometimes gotten “loading slow” or “this track is unavailable”-type messages for not just Qobuz but also my local files. This has gotten abruptly more frequent. I choose to blame the Macbook Pro, so I’m thinking of replacing it with a Mac Mini (certainly more powerful than the Pro) and – what the heck – put all the files on the Mini instead of the spinning iron in the NAS.
I am hoping this will be something along the lines of:
make or use existing backup of Roon data,
copy all the audio files to Mini (necessarily putting them at a different location),
restore Roon backup (such that it uses new locations for local tracks),
and now launching music from my phone or daily-use laptop will Just Work. For example, no file-path problems because either each track has a unique id (maybe a hash of the bits) or migration automagically compensates for the new location.
My default assumption with any sort of consumer electronics is that nothing Just Works. Will I face such a problem?
I would first blame the Wi-Fi connection before anything else. If possible, try to wire the amp either directly to the router or, if no more ports, using a cheap gigabit switch.
This thread indicates you might require assistance from Roon technical support. Before spending money on new hardware. Roon support can run diagnostics to determine where the issue is in your setup. As @Marian says, it is more likely a network-related issue.
To equip the Roon Technical Support team to assist you directly, please follow this link to provide the details of your case to Technical Support: Technical Support Request
Respond to the prompts there to ensure that you’ve performed basic troubleshooting and to ensure Technical Support has the full details necessary to expedite Technical Support’s investigation into the case. Your responses will auto-generate a Community thread in the appropriate section.
I will investigate the alternative people have suggested. In the meantime, does anyone have an answer to my question? I have other reasons for wanting to replace the Mac Pro.
@Marian Thanks, but I have some questions before I drag boxes/cables around the house.
Is it likely that Roon alone would have wifi problems at the same time other bandwidth-heavy applications aren’t?
What would make the wifi work badly sometimes (for a within-house connection) and at other times work fine?
What would my options be if it was the router? It’s only a 2-3 years old, reasonably high end. I should replace it? Hardwire connections are not realistically possible without stringing cables through walls.
All in all, I’d rather try the migration to a Mini. If wifi is actually the weak link, that’d seem to mean that the idea of using wifi instead of direct connections doesn’t work. But it does! (Doesn’t it?)
@anon15113244 Yes, the errors occur with Qobuz as well as local files. More often. However, I have AT&T fiber, and they’re not so good at that whole “reliably providing bandwidth” thing. Sometimes their switches get grumpy and just slow down for a day or two.
The files are ripped CDs, so fairly low bandwidth.
I think it’s possible. Roon’s protocol is more time-sensitive and thus less resilient than other protocols. It also depends on the resolution you’re streaming. I personally never had any problems with CD resolution on any Wi-Fi, which is what I almost always stream.
That sounds like interference to me.
It’s not the router’s age per se that matters. For example, Wi-Fi standard; newest is 7, but 6E is also good. Of course, you are limited by what is supported by Bluesound. Placement is also important, i.e. the distance between endpoints and obstacles in between. You could run a speed test on a laptop or phone on your Wi-Fi. What is the exact router model?
You can just try it temporarily, to see if Wi-Fi is the culprit.
Since you are already used to running things from your MacBook Pro, the experience with the Mac Mini will be similar in regards to the fact that you will have the usual Apple updates to either deal with, or ignore. By this, I am just stating that as Apple updates the MacOS, this will make things the same, better or worse for Roon. But, you have already been dealing with this on your MacBook.
The benefit will be that you will be resetting your database, and that may (or may not) be some of the issue that you are currently experiencing. If you really want to explore a “difference”, you will probably want to go towards a dedicated music server, rather than a multi-use device like a MacBook or Mac Mini. Even if you decide to only use Roon on them, they are not designed as dedicated music servers, so the software is not optimized or ideal for that purpose.
I used my M2 Mac Mini to setup Roon Server for a bit, to compare it to my i5NUC with RoPieee, and I was impressed with the speed of the initial analysis of my local library and Qobuz account, but it wasn’t significantly better than a refresh on the NUC with RoPieee.
The Roon Nucleus One is the same price as the base Mac Mini, but obviously the software is refined specific to the Roon purpose. Even a NUC with RoPieee is going to be better in the same regards. So, in the end, it’s up to you to decide if you want the dedicated music server, or a more multi-function device, but with more potential for issues with music playback.
OP - I think your original question is how to migrate. It is finicky. You need to do a backup, then move music files in exactly the file structure they were in before. When you bring up the new Roon core on the new machine, you’ll go to Settings/Library and you’ll need to move the location of the existing folder (which will initially be not found) instead of adding a new location. If you do that, you won’t have to reindex / identify / etc.
I’m sure there is a detailed version of this somewhere on the forum that explains far better than I just did, but this is the important part whenever migrating. Don’t add a new library, take the old location and point it at the new location (which has to have the exact same structure).
I second the idea that your old hardware may be doing just fine… but the new Mac minis are so inexpensive it’s crazy.
EDIT: All that said, I reread your post(s). I think you should get a new mini, well, just because I like toys. I have a new M4 mini, and an insane double monitor set-up, though that’s not my core. However, I’d bet that even if you get a new set-up, you’ll have the exact same symptoms and will still end up running ethernet / relocating. If you do get a new mini, you might as well just take your old computer and sit it next to your router plugged in via ethernet, and bob’s your uncle.
Good luck!
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
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Certainly your choice. But what is happening here is that a bunch of people with LOTS of experience with Roon are opining that the server is not the most likely culprit given the message. Slow/old servers can have symptoms, but stopped playback and the error message doesn’t seem to us to correlate to those symptoms.
Very likely. There are a bunch of us that experience this issue. It’s unpredictable enough and reproduces but we cannot always trigger it, so it’s been a real challenge to deduce a definite cause and the Roon team so far hasn’t seemed to put a lot of resource to tackle it. It’s intermittent.
But that is why I suggested taking a look at CPU or memory usage when this is happening to you. If it’s constant rather than intermittent, I am probably wrong and it sounds like a bad network card.
I would suggest opening a support thread if you’d like to look into the behavior further on the Macbook, we keep a close eye on the support section. I did enable diagnostics and take a quick look over your Roon Server logs and I am seeing signs of network instability, and it looks like at least several times the playback issues happened because Qobuz could not return a proper streaming URL.
I assume the streaming URL issue may have happened if the URL request didn’t go through because of a network issue, or if the album changed. If these are indeed the main issues, then a new Roon Server won’t necessarily help, you’ll still be in a similar position of needing an Ethernet connection.