Audio Analysis stuck

I have an Antipodes DX and when it plays music back it stutters quite a lot. I’ve noticed recently that when I run “Background Audio Analysis” it gets stuck on analyzing a file and won’t move forward. It has been on the same file for 48 hours. I think the two problems might be related. Has anyone else had this problem?

You can turn audio analysis off and see if that helps. Sometimes analysis gets stuck if there is a problem with the actual file in question. For example, I had a flac file purchased from HDTracks which while played fine in JRiver had issues in Roon. The header was corrupt on the file. I resaved the file as a new flac file and it then worked fine.

Thanks. When the analysis is off the problem persists. My idea is that whatever is hitching up the analysis is also hitching up the streamer more generally when it uses Roon.

How big is your library? Be aware that for all its prowess, the Antipodes only sports an Atom CPU, which is way below recommended specs for running Roon Core.

Thanks. I think this is a different problem, that I have some files that are corrupted and are causing problems for Roon. When Roon is working it works fine on the Antipodes. But as the day goes on it tends to stutter more. My library is a little under 40K tracks.

Corrupted files could indeed screw with the analysis process, but with analysis turned off it can not interfere with normal operation or cause hiccups or stutter.

Antipodes also appears to be running RoonReady (Bridge) in parallel to Core, putting further strain on an already underpowered system – see http://antipodesaudio.com/roonnotes.html. (Not saying this is the cause of the stuttering per se).

Is there any way of checking the load on the DX (in a GUI or by SSH’ing in)?

In the interest of clarification, the Antipodes does not run an Atom CPU. Secondly by managing processes on a dedicated Linux Operating System we can get much better performance than with a standard build. We can also monitor actual performance, rather than speculate, and are able to see that the CPU usage is low and not at all stressed even under heavy Roon load. We have experimented with using i7 processors and found no material user response times except a small difference when searching a very large library, and that audio performance suffers when using an i7 or similar complex chipset.

From this sept 2015 Stereophile review of the DX:

If this information is wrong, you may want to have it corrected.

The problem seems to be my files because Mark Jenkins ran this unit with a similar amount of files and it worked flawlessly. BTW Mark and Tony are absolutely great when it comes to customer service. I have no complaints. I just want to figure out why my Antipodes does this (and others don’t).

Well spotted! You will appreciate that the DX reviewed in the Sept 2015 Stereophile would have been shipped to the reviewer some time prior to the actual review appearing. In response to news that Roon would become available on Linux in April 2016, Antipodes Audio launched a new generation of servers on 1 January 2016 with more powerful processors.
However it’s true to say that many customers are running Roon very successfully on the old Atom-based servers after upgrading their server to the new software platform.