I've been waiting for at least 30 minutes for the app to start playing. This is not the first time I've written as I have a semi-large library (159k tracks). I'm on a iMac M1 processor 16gb memory. I have been adding music for the past 2-3 weeks - about 50 CDs and upgrading albums from lossy to lossless (about 100). I have given up on Roon being able to take the music in during the day as that just completly freezes the app. I do open Roon at night and let it have the overnight to do whatever it is you do to add and organize music. This morning I tried playing an album and as stated: 30+ minutes and still waiting.
All I ask is that you are able to play the music as fast as it takes to walk over to the CD player and drop in a disc. Honestly you should be able to to that much faster, but I'm lowering the bar quite a bit here. I don't know why your Roon Appliance takes 9GB, we went to the moon on 64kb. My music library is 4TB and sits on a LaCie d2 drive using the fastest port on my iMac. I'm giving up on the tool and will restart. I should not have to use your software like its a Windows 95 machine and just restart to get out of trouble. Apple Music plays. Same file source. Spotify plays. I can even click on the file and finder will play. Why can't Roon?
Update - rebooted machine.
Roon starts up
Can play music immediately.
Gets through 2 songs and stops playing
Circle in upper right rotating as when the library is doing something.
Music starts up again after 36 minutes!!! over an half an hour for track 3 to play.
I didn’t add content in this restart, so maybe its cleaning up old tasks. Regarless, Roon housekeeping should not interfere with playing music!
options are up to 8 core. So even if it is using 1, the rest of the app should be able to play music on the other 7?
I could try throttled but I fear that would just prolong the pain. maybe I should try all 8 to see if the pause is at least shortened. Regardless - housekeeping tasks should not be halting playback.
Performance on large libraries has persistently been an issue. It comes to light mostly when adding content or updating a file like upgrading from lossy to lossless - but I think this is more because the metadata is changing in iTunes and Roon is trying to keep up but that is impossible.
Adding an album outside Roon is usually ok. The file gets dropped into a folder that is not ‘Apple Music’ and is never edited by another app. These are FLAC files from other sources.
Some files have their tags edited by Yate, but the file names aren’t changed so Roon takes the new metadata pretty well imo.
But if a file moves from ‘Rod Stewart’ to ‘Stewart, Rod’ and then almost immediately the subfolder goes from ‘Atlantic Crossing’ to ‘Atlantic Crossing [Expanded Edition]’ - roon chokes. Its almost like in their rush to keep current they end up chasing phantoms and cause themselves more work than is necessary. Hence why when doing a lot of adds and curating of artist and titles, I turn Roon off so it isn’t chasing intermittent changes. But this morning was the last straw. Letting it run overnight to catch up and it couldn’t? That is clearly room for improvement. As a user I should not have to change my behavior to fit the software’s weaknesses. As a lifetime owner, I expect the app to play music reliably and when I wish it to play. Hopefully that is not an unreasonable request.
Software upgraded this month. Problem still exists.
I was listening to an album. I started a CD ripping. 5 songs in (20 min?) and Roon stops. Mor accurately it is paused and waiting to play track # 6 on the album. It will play eventually. But in the meantime I can cook lunch and write this note. So clearly there is a performance issue with Roon reading a new album rip in the Apple Music folder.
For the record… I haven’t been able to listen to music all week. All week I was adding and upgrading music files. But today I didn’t do anything to move files and I was only able to listen to 2 songs at lunch, and nothing since. The software updated itself during the week.
I don’t know what Roon is doing but I hope it sorts itself out soon so I can play music again. And yes I’ve shut the app down and restated. It just goes off and does its little circle thing in the upper right corner.
We’ve been working with development on this case to guide some improvements on the backend.
There’s a change testing in #earlyaccess that might provide some relief for these symptoms. Additionally, this change enables more verbose logging that will allow us to pinpoint the problem once and for all.
If you’re willing to switch your RoonServer machine to the beta branch, we’d be curious to hear if it provides a better experience.
Thanks for volunteering! Be sure to move your whole Roon system over, including RoonServer and any other Remotes. Cross-branching between a production and early access build can cause issues.
OVerall there is still massive delays in using the app when new files are added/upgraded. However, there is a new to me status for ‘Analyzing’ that I’ve started to watch. That takes a while and seems to make the app sluggish. I’ve upped it to 8 cores to try to make the pain of waiting shorter. I’ll probably have to drop it to full background and see how that works out for me.
Not much improvement, actually no improvement. I have been upgrading lossy files to lossless for 2 weeks now and not using roon as the frustration is too much to bear. I figure I’ll update everything then let Roon settle down. At one point I though the analyzing of files was the culprit, but today I did no file changes and rebooted my machine. Roon started well and played a song, let me identify an album. After the first song, it stopped. No music is being analyzed. I have no idea what is going on that Roon is too busy to play music.
If I don’t move files around, Roon is great. Today I was playing music no problems. When back into iTunes to clean up one album. Roon locked up for 10 minutes at least.
Coincidentally, the popup for a software change appeared. Relaunched the Roon server. Now it wants a database update. I’ll come back to this later, putting on a DVD-A.
It’s been some time, so I wanted to check in with you here, how are things feeling after the latest Roon updates? Has there been any improvement in behavior?
Not really. It only bogs down when I’ve moved a file(s) around. Even adding a new album can cause the app to pause for a bit. If I don’t move or add files, the app runs great.
