CPU usage very high on Mac OS

Support
1

I have the exact same issue - CPU on latest MacBook Pro i5 seems to spike and sometimes goes > 100% with nothing running as if there were a RACE condition or memory leak happening.

My server is a sonicorbiter i5 only running roon, no SSD. Seems to happen when I’m playing tracks from TIDAL.

After restarting the process on Activity Monitor (Force Quit Roon) things settles down to 10-12%. Other remotes such as iPad can connect without issue.

3

Hello @Erik_Klein,

  • How often does this issue occur?
  • Does there seem to be any pattern to triggering it?
  • Which version of OSX are you using on your Macbook?
  • Are you doing anything specific before the CPU usage occurs or does it seem not related?

Thanks,
Noris

4

Thanks Noris for the follow-up.

On average a few times a week when I notice the fan kicking in - fan
goes to max and machine gets very hot

Seems to be fairly random, perhaps other processes may be related such
as google chrome helper that sometimes goes high on cpu (just guessing).

I’m on the latest version of Mojave.

Nothing that comes to mind, just do other normal work on the machine like browsing web browsing and work-related activities (Word, Slack etc.). I sometimes use VPN (there are 2) Cisco AnyConnect apps disables Roon altogether, Tunnelblick used rarely (active now) has no effect. I’ll keep an eye on these but have noticed the problem at times when these are disabled.

Minimizing Roon to dock causes CPU to drop from around 12 to around 5%

5

I had the same cpu usage symptoms using 1.5 but since upgrading to Roon 1.6 they’ve calmed way down. Are you on 1.6?

6

Hello @Erik_Klein,

Thanks for letting me know that info. Are you by any chance using Time Machine and storing Roon backups to them directly from the Roon app? It does seem fairly strange that the CPU randomly spikes like that.

Also, can you please let me know the exact local time in your country (ex. 10:26PM) when the next CPU spike occurs? After receiving this info I can enable diagnostics mode for your account and take a look to see if there was any unusual behavior happening at the time.

Thanks,
Noris

7

In my case Roon1.5 was drawing batty of my macbook pro way too fast.
My observation was this was happening mostly after waking book from sleep - but can’t confirm for 100%
I have not observed this yet with 1.6

8

Hi - yes I upgraded to 1.6 when it came out, same issues. Last couple days haven’t noticed anything, will try for diagnostics mode next time I see it spiking.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: High CPU Usage on Mac Mini 2018