In my setup I have a Roon ROCK (NUC) running the Roon Server (core)… Attached to this NUC are two external USB drives that serve as FLAC and DSD file storage for Roon. I use strictly wired Ethernet to a Sonore OpticalRendu streamer which is connected via USB to my DAc.
I recently upgraded my streamer from a the Sonore OpticalRendu to an Aurender N20 streamer (network transport only).
I aim to use both the Aurender playback software (Aurender Conductor) and the Roon remote software to control playback.
The dilema for me is where to store the files now. Here are my 3 options:
1- Keep everything as is, USB drives connected to the Roon ROCK NUC and have the Aurender scan those locations (for when I want to use Aurender’s Conductor app for playback)
2- Move all the files on my Synology NAS and have both Roon and Aurender point to the NAS as the file storage
3- Move all the files to my Aurender streamer (it has an SSD that can store the library). and have the Aurender storage added as the storage location in Roon.
My preferred approach would be to move everything to the Aurender since this will cut down the latency and improve Aurender performance when using their Conductor app for playback. But my worry is how the Roon ROCK would behave then with the entire library moved to the Aurender storage. Not to mention issues with conflicting meta-data (although I believe Aurender does not mess much with the file meta data (rating, genre, etc.)
My library is around 9000 albums and 120,000 tracks, mostly FLAC with some DXD and DSD.
Any thoughts on this would be welcome.
I’ve had a considerable deterioration in the Roon performance lately (before I added the Aurender to the mix). The search function, browsing albums, etc, is simply too slow now, it definitely is very laggy now, and that is with the USB drives attached to the Roon ROCK device!
One man’s opinion, but with a library of that size, I recommend more “professional” storage that can only be provided by a NAS with RAID 5 or 6 (or Synology Hybrid RAID 2).
What do you use more often, Roon or Conductor? If one is used much more often than the other, I would put the files on that system. Although even that would be mostly for neatness. You avoid sending the same data back and forth over the same path, but unless you have many multichannel DSD512 tracks, audio isn’t exactly going to saturate a 1Gb Ethernet even.
Alternatively, as @DDPS mentions, you can put at least the music collection on Synology – that’s exactly what it is designed for (depending on the model, it might be possible to run Roon on it as well, but since you already have Rock and assuming you are happy with it, there’s no much point in migrating everything).
As long as Aurender can share its disk using SMB, Rock should be happy enough accessing it. Rescans would be slower, but it should not have any effect on performance. Once albums have been identified, all searches are done in the local database (which will remain on ROCK anyway) and the cloud. If you have some significant performance issues, that would be something separate to look at; even an ancient spinning disk can serve up an audio file fast enough for anything Roon needs.
That is where I am today keeping a backup of everything, but yes, it is a valid option to put it all there and have both Roon and Aurender point to the same files for their respective library management purpose.
Could you specify which CPU your NUC is running, how much of RAM and on which storage type roon´s internal database is located please?
Delays and sluggishness you are describing are a hint you might push your CPU or database storage to the limits with that library. I had a similar experience with my former machine, also with a considerable number of hi-res FLAC and DSD/DxD files as well as lots of unidentified albums and complicated library structure. Underpowered CPU, roon database on a slow-rate flash drive are textbook examples of making roon sluggish. And that sluggishness seems to get more annoying exponentially with every additional album added.
If roon database and files are sharing the same connection, it might be a cause of sluggishness as well. Particularly with slow drives or USB 2.0 or alike.
Sounds like the best option as you can easily improve all factors on which system performance depends on. If the core´s CPU power is sufficient, using any performance-oriented RAID (1 or 5/6) for the NAS will make file access faster and reducing interference between Roon and Aurender.
Both system should not interfere with local files metadata so this should not be a problem. It is merely a question how quickly both systems can access random files on the same storage.
No, roon after scanning and identifying the whole library is running its own internal database which is meant to have all the performance operations based on (such as text search, album browsing, composition lists, artist´s pages and alike). File storage on the NAS would not be touched at all before starting a stream so it does not affect snappiness of the UI. When starting a stream while continuing to browse it might even be an advantage to have both things separated.
I am using an Intel NUC model: NUC8i7BEH, with 128GB of SSD storage… The files are located on two USB 3.0 drives attached to the NUC.
I can live with slower scanning of folders, but the way the UI operates today is distracting, changing views, changing artist or albums takes too long.
Where is the backup? Roon likes to have the data local, so keep the external USB drives there for Roon. The NAS is good to hold a backup, so place a copy there. If the Aurender already has a sufficiently big disk inside, place a copy there too for Conductor. With three copies of your music library on three different devices you’re pretty good protected against the loss of your library (or parts of it).
If, e.g. you store the music files on Aurender, and playing to it from Roon, file is read from Aurender’s drive, sent to Roon, processed there, then sent back to Aurender over the same wire. Which isn’t likely to be a problem on a good Ethernet connection, but still is a suboptimal approach. Both the Roon ↔ switch and Aurender ↔ switch wires are transmitting the same data back and forth.
If files are on a separate NAS, it’s more like NAS → switch ↔ Roon and switch → Aurender, so only the switch ↔ Roon connection is transmitting the same data (well, almost the same, it’s file data in one direction, and RAAT in the other, but close enough for these purposes) in both directions. Still, outside of some rather hard to achieve in real life edge cases it should not create any issues, just a somewhat more cleaner network layout.
Besides, keeping files on a dedicated properly setup NAS is a more reliable approach. Not to say that you should not have separate backups, but if oyu keep an eye on it, it can “just work” for years and years. Anecdotally, my old Drobo lasted for 12+ years, if not more. Still works well, actually, but at some point I wanted to upgrade to a faster NAS that actually supports something better than SMB 1. Had to swap a few drives in it, of course, but haven’t lost any data on it ever.
If roon´s proprietary database is on that fast SSD directly connected to the NUC, that one should be fast enough. I guess it is something similar to Nucleus Plus.
Did you try the following hacks to improve performance:
reboot the NUC twice
clean up library
clear queues (both history and upcoming)
sluggishness in browsing operations such as delayed album views, several seconds to show an artists´s or composer´s page or compile the composition list of a top composer according to my understanding have nothing to do with the files or the their storage. It is solely a problem of computing power, RAM, local database storage and related factors.
Your NUC is likely rather underpowered for managing such a large library, not just the Roon database but also all the disk and network I/O for moving music data around.
The processor on the Aurender N20 is low-power, relatively low performance. Good for a streamer, but I’m not sure it would be the best place to serve music data to Roon and back to it via RAAT for playback.
A well-configured NAS would be a better place to store your music files, as others have noted.
In general, I prefer to have a super-sized Roon server, with ample room for expansion, and a streamlined streamer, which only receives and pushes music data to the DAC. But you are committed to the N20. In that situation, if a bit more expenditure (low-ish relative to the cost of tne N20):
Get a more powerful machine for your Roon server, with internal SSD for music files. Use the NAS as backup. Use the N20 as streamer only. (I know what Roon server machine I’d recommend (if in the US), but that is for a Ubuntu Server-based setup, not ROCK).
I doubt this i7 NUC is underpowered. As mentioned it is on par with legacy Nucleus Plus, and 120,000 tracks should be handled well by a machine like that. Sometimes libraries of that size might be particularly demanding if populated by big DSD files, box sets, lots of unidentified albums or albums containing zillions of references between each other. But nothing serious, it should still be usable, maybe not super snappy.
One more thought: Maybe there is a problem with the CPU overheating. Did you check the CPU fan as well as airflow or how its heatsink is attached to the CPU and that everything is in place?
Good point. When I had a NUC, the airflow path got clogged with dust, leading to thermal throttling and poor performance. It got better after a careful cleaning. Until it died for good with a main board failure.
This sounds like a recipe for trouble, you are moving files around unnecessarily that will add to the performance issues.
Is it the tall form NUC with a slot for a disc drive ?
You also don’t mention how much RAM you have in the NUC , 8 Gb may be a problem ,16 Gb less so.
If so the neatest solution , and the most expensive, is to fit a 4Tb SSD into the NUC then serve from there . ROCK is designed for this situation so with an 8i7 and 120k tracks you should be fine. The proviso is how much DSP you are using , that will soak processor power
As mentioned , if I am not mistaken, the 8i7 was the basis for the Nucleus Plus which was until recently Roon’s go to device for big libraries.
If not the tall form then stay with the external USB drives ,the data transfer from drive to NUC is not a problem, sluggishness will be downstream of this.
This sounds like a separate problem, Roon performance has not deteriorated for me. Have you tried rebooting you set up, network kit as well. rebooting the NUC daily will probably eliminate your sluggishness. There are many threads talking about such sluggishness.
Use the NAS for backing up your music files.
For Reference, I run trouble free on a 10i7, 32gB RAM with a 4Tb SSD , Library of 130k tracks
I use the NAS for backup, seems this is the way I will have it setup in the end, a copy of the files moves to the Aurender local storage, Roon Rock uses the USB drives already serving Roon and the NAS will be for back-up. It seems Aurender is not as flexible in scanning remote folders (God bless Roon!)
Thank you for the tip, I did the reboot twice (although not sure why it would need to be rebooted twice!?), and also cleaned up the library (did not find a way to clear the history), when I did this Roon reported that it was “the new version of Roon I installed requires a database upgrade” which was interesting, not sure why this happened after the reboots…
Checked that, I recently replaced the fan because the older fan stopped working, but since then the NUC runs pretty cool, and the fan is running and strong… airflow is good.