I am using ROCK on a HP EliteDesk with i7-8700T, 32 GB memory, 240GB nvme SSD with my music files on a Synology DS423+.
At this moment my library is: 7414 artists / 31750 albums / 391028 tracks. Roon counts 1145 unidentified albums in my collection all local files, flac and DSD. Got Tidal for the discographies but nothing from Tidal added to my collection.
I would like to kindly ask from fellow users with similar hardware and/or library size if it is normal to have 20-30 seconds of “Loading Artist” / “Loading album” message on screen whatever I do? It isn’t enjoyable at all
Is it the end of what roon can do with my hardware and my library?
I have a i5-8500T with 32gb of RAM. the other week I had, with Tidal, Qobuz and local files ~420k tracks. Local files ~190k are store on a USB SSD.
Performance was acceptable.
Could you explain how both your NAS, and Roon Rock and endpoints are connected to your network.
Also, my thoughts lead me to think you’re running Rock on unsupported hardware. I run Roon on DietPi. I tested both the other week and DietPi with Roon Server installed have a better performance.
I have used some variations on this theme previously, but you are straining the capabilities of the old, but reasonably swift, T-processor of that generation.
And to me, ROCK or RoonOS lost usability on older hardware a few years back. My Nucleus+ (gen1 Core i7 7:th gen, comparable to yours) as an example, was a freakin’ slug running RoonOS. I switched to Windows 11 and it became perfectly usable, with no waiting, no delays and a perfectly adequate user experience.
Roon OS lost it value long ago to me, an appliance needs to be effective, swift and not “driving your car around with the hand brake engaged”.
That’s quite a lot. There are several reports that a large number of unidentified albums could make Roon sluggish. Is there any way you could decrease this number?
Have you set up the new settings in library management, you can force metadata maintenance into ab time when you don’t listen. I assume not ID album retries comes into that bracket
can’t really help with the unidentified albums, they are mostly japanese jazz, bootleg releases out of any db that roon uses. So far I thought it isn’t that much, 1145 out of 31750 doesn’t seem much.
I’m hesitant in replacing ROCK with an installed Windows OS+Roon server, hard to believe for me that it would be better, but who knows.
Today, I logged off Tidal as a service and it looks like the app is a bit snappier without Tidal - this needs more time to check.
I assume, although I’m not sure, that it’s not about the percentage here. A total of 1145 is rather high. For each album, Roon will try to find metadata. @Mike_O_Neill’s advise to use the new time settings for library management is very helpful.
OK it looks like, since I don’t want to buy new hardware, I’m left with a few options:
reinstall roon rock and try with a fresh database;
install windows and run roon server;
install Daphile
For now I’ve reinstalled roon rock, a new database is in progress but since it takes a lot of time to import my library for sure I’ll skip option two if the first does not help.
Something to consider. Roon is heavily dependent on single-thread CPU performance for key tasks.
The i7-8700T has a single thread rating of 2303 on CPU benchmarks.
FWIW I was using a Lenovo box running ROCK with a i7-6700T with a single thread rating of 2015 and quite frankly its performance was rather poor. I moved to a Lenovo box running ROCK and a i7-13700T with a rating of 3814 and now its like the server isn’t there anymore.
No waiting - all processes done in the background very quickly. And its snappy on the GUI.
My library is only 53K tracks - but if it made such a difference to my library then it could be something worth investigating. The single thread rating of the CPU seems to have a big impact. YMMV.
Up until a couple of months ago I had been running ROCK on an 7i5 Intel nuc and over time was experiencing slow callups and such. My experience with almost everything computer and phone-wise has been that 3-5 years is about the service life before software upgrades, memory demands, interfaces, and random hardware events all combine to catch up with you.
You can spend an inordinate amount of time chasing down what could or might be the problem and blaming ROON or ROCK, but by eliminating the possibility of upgrading your hardware you may have set yourself up for failure.
I upgraded to a i91200H/16G mock nuc running ROCK. Total cost was under $400 and the installation took less than 30 minutes. Now the callups are instantaneous and the library analysis just zooms by.
I figure this’ll be good for another 3-5 years before I have to look at it again.
And - side note - not positive about this, but I think the ROON setting “use file information” in the Metadata Edit function stops ROON from continuously trying to identify the file or album. If you could segregate all the non-identifiable albums and then mass edit them to “use file information,” it might save the recurring scan problem.
Sure - my library’s not as large as yours, around 60,000 tracks, all in lossless 16bit or better.
I got a refurbished Minisforum NAD9, similar to this one but 12th Gen. I researched Minisforum and they have had some problems reported in manufactuing, but I figured a refurbished one has had those problems fixed. So far, so good. They don’t have everything all the time, so it pays to just check their site. Some come bare and some come with RAM and/or M2 already installed. The Minisforum nuc is really well designed - much easier to assemble, upgrade, or change than the Intel nuc, plus it has a massive copper heat sink cooling system that looked good. Again, time will tell.
I have the nuc hardwired to the router and hardwired to the amp for the system.
It’s very slow and glitchy for me often times. ARC is a compete joke. I have almost given up completely on depending on Roon for any kind of real listening session. I can mostly get it to work but If I do a search it might take 2 seconds or 2 minutes. it can hang for a long time just trying to switch a track. I said screw it a long time ago and went back to playing CDs. They sound a whole lot better in my system than Roon does anyway. I consider streaming second rate sound to playing the disc.
And I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. Once the hardware and connections were sorted there have been no glitches, and I’ve successfully used ARC streaming to Europe from my home server on the East Coast of the US. That depended on fast internet access over there, but I expected that.
Other than some occasional shake-out problems when there is a ROON upgrade, the pretty steep initial climb learning the bells and whistles of the software, and hardware problems on my end (replaced three nuc fans since they are on 24/7), ROON has been a great experience.
My experience as well , I have run Roon for nearly 10 yrs as my primary source . I ran on a desktop i7-7700 then on a 10 i7 NUC both with no issues.
I live in a high lightening area in Johannesburg so whenever a storm comes I unplug all sensitive electronics for safeties sake.( Lost a lot of hi fi in one particularly vicious storm) In doing so I restart Roon Server most days, you will see elsewhere I am a great advocate of restarting the sever software . I believe this is the secret of my trouble free life with Roon
The second principal is KISS , use ethernet where possible, bog standard switches keep away from anything fancy.
Roon is not forgiving of network issues,. if you follow the support section you will see many resolutions come down to network not software !!