Build 29 (Mavericks and Yosemite) process "mono-sgen" using significant CPU

I noticed the fan on my Mac Mini spins up when I’m using Roon. Using the “top” command (CLI), it’s clear that the “mono-sgen” process is in a nearly constant run state when Roon is running. This much graphics overhead is puzzling for an audio player.

Roon can definitely hit your graphics card a bit harder than your typical audio player – creating a fast, immersive interface in which to explore your collection is key for us, but we also work hard to minimize resource use during normal day to day use.

Note that the initial import and identification of your collection uses significantly more resources than normal activity, so it’s worth confirming that your collection has been fully imported. You should no longer see the activity spinner in the top-right near search when that process has been completed.

You might also confirm whether any background analysis is in progress, which you can check from the Setup tab of the Settings screen. Normal use shouldn’t spin your fan, but setting analysis to Fast very well might.

Let us know a little more about your system and what you’re seeing @phm, and we can take a deeper look if anything seems out of order. Thanks!

My system specifics:

Macmini 5,2
Mac OS 10.10.3
16GB of RAM
driving a Schiit Yggdrasil

No, the import is long since done.

But I will say that it happens when playing local files as opposed to Tidal (I use both). And I notice that for local files, there is a nifty little waveform display the progress indicator slides across (Tidal tracks don’t have this, bummer).

Is it possible that little bit of extra graphics is causing the spike in CPU usage of the mono garbage collector?

EDIT: No fan spinup this evening. I did notice after adding 20 tracks to the local library that Setup/Audio Analysis Speed (set to Normal) had a spinning wheel next to it for quite a while (3+ minutes). There was no spinning indicator near the top bar. That finished, but at no time did the fan spin up.

Thanks for your attention. I’ll post if it happens again.