Background Audio Analysis Problem

Tinkering
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Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

Roon server build 610 running on debian 10 which is installed at freenas bhyve vm enviroment with 4gb ram dedicated + 3 cores dedicated with 2 treads each + 50gb of zvol

The PC that freenas is running on; intel i7 4790 + 16gb ram and zvol is located on a 512gb ssd

Music folder is added through smb.

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

Connected to the home network through TP Link powerline adapters.

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

SMSL M8A DAC through Volumio on rpi 4, android tablet, iphone 11, iphone se

Description Of Issue

I have my Background audio analysis scheduled for once in 8 hours. At each scheduled analysis it keeps scanning aroudn 11000 files although I let the server finish scanning the whole archive at the very first setup.

I was using Roon Server on a windows 10 vm with exactly the same config, running with exactly the same archive and there was no such thing happening. I switched to linux enviroment because windows was consuming too much resource on my freenas thus effecting nas performance.

I just did a clean install completely from the scratch and result is same.

I tried to port the database from windows roon server to linux roon server by taking a backup from windows one and uploading it to linux one (both were build 610) which ended up making the linux server crash. That’s another story.

When I check skipped files from the library, there are around 1500 files that are claimed to be curropt. Some are really curropt but most play fine on other players. I won’t go into that topic.

Scanning 11000 files takes around 2.5 hours with the cırrent setup that simply means running the hard disks 7.5 hours a day for nothing.

Searching for solutions to problems for a software that I paid for makes me an unhappy customer as there are cheaper or free alternatives that run just fine. As struggling with such bugs (tidal login problem, etc) for the past couple of months, I feel very lucky that I didn’t purchase a lifetime licence. I probably will not subscribe to Roon for next year.

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Hello @Kerem_Erdag,

Thanks for reaching out!

Generally speaking, we cannot properly troubleshoot a VM environment since there is such a wide array of setting you can configure in a VM, and this configuration type is not officially supported.

Once analysis has been completed, your Roon library should not re-analyze the files. If this is happening on each boot, I would check for a “deep freeze” kind of setting on your VM.

It sounds like you have had a few issues with VMs, if you want a dedicated Roon Server we do have some very good options like ROCK, Nucleus or servers from one of our partners.

I’ve moved your thread over to the #tinkering section as well, perhaps another user who has your VM setup can chime in.

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Thanks for the reply. I have to clear out two points.

First, it scans 11.000 files out of around 100.000 files.

Secondly, it doesn’t do this only after each reboot. It also does at each scheduled scan. For me it’s once in 8 hours.

My nas (thus my vm) shuts down at 3.00am and starts up at 8.00 am each day. So it scans those 11.000 files out of around 100.000 files at 8.00, at 16.00 and at 24.00. Same amount of files are analyzed at each scheduled background audio analysis scan.

This simply indicates that vm is working fine as it does start scheduled scans at the correct times. And I have other things installed on this vm which also work just fine.

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Hi @Kerem_Erdag,

If you try to make an edit to the metadata from one of the albums, do you see the edits being retained between reboots? This test should help clarify if the database is in a deep freeze state and being refreshed after each reboot.

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Sorry for the late reply as the past couple of days were too busy for me.

I’ve done the test you proposed. I’ve added a genre to a particular album. Then I rebooted the vm. When I checked that album, the added genre was there after reboot.

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Would somebody like to help me???

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Hi @Kerem_Erdag,

Thanks for trying the metadata edit test, this does confirm that information is stored across reboots. Do you Roon logs by any chance show what is being scanned? You can access them by using these instructions.

I do want to re-iterate that we don’t do any testing on VMs with Roon, it can work as expected but if you are able to also reproduce this issue in a non-VM setup that would be a great data point to have and would allow us to investigate is as a non-VM issue.

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Hi Noris,

I’ve checked the Logs, but they meant nothing to me. If you want to see them, please provide me a path to upload.

Thanks,
Kerem

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Hi @Kerem_Erdag,

Do you by any chance have Dropbox or Google Drive to post a link to logs?

If you don’t, that’s ok, I can also create an account for you on our servers, just let me know.

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it would be great if you could provide me.

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Hello @Kerem_Erdag,

Thanks for sending those log files over.

I spoke to the team regarding the logs but unfortunately since you are using a VM here, it is not clear what is triggering this behavior.

Would you be able to try to reproduce this behavior in a standard OS using this database and send us a log set from that attempt?

If this behavior occurs on a native OS, we would be in a much better position to try to reproduce it on our end.

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I’ve done some more investigation on my side too since our last communication.

I found duplicate files in my archive which is as much as 2500s with exactly the same name, same size but different creation dates. I deleted all the duplicates and the number of being analized went from 11500 something down to 3938. With a simple calculation, it looks like core is checking the problematic files 3 times. Also 3938 equals to around 3 times of my skipped files list.

Am I on the correct path?

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For your proposal, I need to find another pc as I don’t have a spare one at home. It will take couple of days to find one and do the test. I’ll let you know

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Hi @Kerem_Erdag,

It does sound like you are on the right path since removing those duplicates, do let me know how it goes and if you are still having issues afterwards please do try to other standard Core, thanks!

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The question is; does the core really check any kind of problematic files 3 times?

If the answer is yes, then my problem is really solved.

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Hi @Kerem_Erdag,

I am not sure what you mean by “problematic” in this case, but if you are referring to duplicates, then yes, Roon checks those as well.

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After struggling with issues (not only this one I reported) for more than 4 months of my yearly subscription, I decided to give up.

Roon is the most expensive audiophile player. But there’s a lack of support for the software. A bug that came out through an update (tidal login problem) took ages to fix. The funny thing is, it was working fine before.

And for my case, blaming the virtual machine that core was running was a good maneuver. But the sad thing is, I listened to your advice, bought a pc to install linux + roon core natively and guess what the result is… exactly the same.

Roon is not a freeware. I’m paying you guys to listen to music. I don’t deserve fighting with problems for my leasure time hoby. I don’t deserve paying for problems.

In simple words, that is enough. My subscription finishes at the end of jan 2021 and I will not renew it.

Thank you.

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Hi @Kerem_Erdag,

You have our apologies for ongoing trouble here. I know that this hasn’t been the best experience, but I want you to know that our team is on standby and ready to help.

For some context, the issue that you’re experiencing isn’t something that the vast majority of Roon users are experiencing. We also spoke with our technical team and they’ve tried to reproduce similar behavior in-house, but our team has not been successful in doing so.

In the past we’ve seen some similar issues arise from VM configurations that aren’t really set up to properly allow Roon to function like normal. In this case, given our testing and our discussions with you about the issue, the VM seemed like a good thing to rule out, especially since your prior setup didn’t result in this behavior on Windows. Since you’re still seeing this even without the VM configuration, it looks like there is something else occurring here.

It might be related to certain files triggering this behavior specifically in a Linux environment, and if so, we need to track those files down and we can get them to our team for further investigation. There are a couple of other possibilities about what might be causing this, and if you’re interested in continuing to troubleshoot this our team would be happy to help. For our next step, we’d like to have you do the following, making a note of the time that you do each step:

  • Reboot your Core machine.
  • Start up Roon and let the spinner go for ~5 minutes.
  • Reboot your Core machine once more.
  • Start up Roon and let the spinner go for another ~5 minutes.

This should allow the team to gain some insight into what you’re experiencing in the report. Once you’ve done this let me know the timestamps and I’ll enable diagnostics on your account. When the diagnostics report is uploaded I’ll send it over to our team for analysis.

You have our apologies again for the trouble here, Kerem. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

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