Crashing on MacBook Pro (OSX 10.12.6)

Support
1

Hi all,

I have a similar issue, albeit on OS X 10.12.6 (not sure if I should create a new thread…), and on a 2017 15" MacBook Pro. Roon will crash after a minute or so, although only when playing music; it does not crash if the window is left alone. Restarting Roon does not help, it will occur repeatedly every time I open it anew, I seem to only be able to solve it after one or more reboots. I have not been able to pin down any specific causes, although I can say it is not related to any specific audio setup, as it also happens when the Mac is not connected to anything.

I sent the issues log through the Apple reporting system, but I have saved one in a file if needed.

2

Hi @Albert-Philip_Burger — Thank you for the report and sharing your feedback with us. I have went ahead and moved your post out to it’s own thread so we can address this behavior with you directly :sunglasses:

Moving forward, may I very kindly ask you for the following:

  • An expanded description of your current setup, using this link as a guide.

  • You mentioned the following in your report:

“…although I can say it is not related to any specific audio setup, as it also happens when the Mac is not connected to anything.”

  • Can you please provide some further insight into the above comment(s).

-Eric

3

Hi Eric,

I’m running Roon 1.3 on a 2017 Macbook Pro, 2,9GHz i7, 16GB ram. The music is stored on the internal HD, with perhaps 12,000 tracks (although I usually focus on and play only the couple of thousands that are flac).

For the audio setup, I use headphones going through a DAC, but to test the issue, I tried to run Roon directly though the Mac speakers: that’s what I meant by my Mac not being connected to anything.

4

Hi @Albert-Philip_Burger ---- Thank you for the follow up and my apologies for the slow response. I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions, as well as clarifying that data point for me :thumbsup:

Moving froward, you mentioned that this behavior only occurs when playing music and if the window is “left alone” the application stays active. You’ve also made note, that during a listening session you are usually focusing on, and playing FLAC files. Can you verify if you play a different format, do you experience the same crash? If the mentioned FLAC files are same sample rate, can you please also confirm how other rates behave, in relation to this crashing behavior.

-Eric

5

Hi Eric,

Sorry for the delay in my response, but the problem hasn’t presented itself in a while. I’ve just encountered the issue and tried a few things, and it does not seem format or sample rates affect the behaviour.

It might be completely irrelevant, but one thing I notice is that the issue seems to crop up when I have poor Internet bandwidth. I live in West Africa, so my internet can get REALLY poor. Right now, with a few other pieces of software drawing on my bandwidth, Roon has these crashes issues. But when I completely switched off my wifi, Roon started running fine.

As I said, it might be irrelevant, but I know of other software that behaves erratically with very poor bandwidth (Apple Mail among others).

Cheers.

6

Thanks @Albert-Philip_Burger – I’ve enabled some diagnostics on your account, and your system is going to upload a report to us with some logs.

We’ll look them over, and then @Eric will be in touch.

7

Hi @Albert-Philip_Burger ----- Thank you for touching base with me, very appreciated!

Following up to let you know that we have received the automated diagnostics report from your system, as mentioned in @mike 's post. I am going to be passing this information over to our techs to see if we can figure out what is causing this behavior to occur. Your patience is appreciated!

-Eric

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Hi @Albert-Philip_Burger ----- Thank you for your patience here while our techs have been evaluating the information found in the diagnostics report/logs files.

Moving forward, as per their update, they have asked for the following:

  • The next time you notice this issue (or if you have one saved already :sunglasses:) can you please provide us with a copy of the OSX crash report.

  • Can you give us a rough estimate in regard to how many times do you notice the problem occurring?

-Eric

9

Hi Eric,

I did have one saved (!), but as the problem just reoccured, I just copy/pasted the report for that one and pm’ed it to you.

In terms of occurence, it’s always a bit difficult to say, as it pretty much depend on how much time I have to actually listen to music. Right now, I’d say it’s 2 to 5 times a week, but if it occurs once, it occurs repeatedly until I reboot my computer. Let’s say it barely registered as an issue last week, but it’s been bothering me quite a bit this week (crashes yesterday morning and today) and we’re only Tuesday? :slight_smile:

Cheers.

10

Hi @Albert-Philip_Burger ----- Thank you for touching base with me, very appreciated!

Confirming that I have seen your PM and have downloaded the supplied OSX crash report, thank you again for supplying that to me :thumbsup:

Moving forward, I met with a few our tech staff members this morning to discuss this behavior you are experiencing with your Roon install. As I am sure you can understand, identifying the “trigger” of an intermittent/sporadic behavior can be quite a challenge. The best method for addressing these types of issue is to try to identify any patterns we notice either in behavior (i.e use of the application etc) or in the traces found in logs.

With the above in mind, the team has asked if you could please do the following to help aide in their investigation.

GOAL: Record the dates + Times for 5 crashes you experience on the MacBookPro.

LOGS: After you experience a crash and the time has been noted (along with the date) we would like you to please make a manual copy of your Roon “logs” folder (using the procedure below) so we can see the traces from that “run” of the application.

  • Open Finder and click “Go” in the top bar.
  • Hold down the Alt key to unhide the “Library” folder.
  • Click the Library folder.
  • Find and open the “Roon folder” (or RoonServer, if applicable).
  • Right click on the “Logs” folder, then select: Compress Logs.
  • Rename the newly compressed zip file with the date + time of the crash

When the above has been completed you should end up with the following:

“Albert-Philip_Burger_RoonCrash1_[Date/Time]_Logs.zip”

“Albert-Philip_Burger_RoonCrash2_[Date/Time]_Logs.zip”

“Albert-Philip_Burger_RoonCrash3_[Date/Time]_Logs.zip”

“Albert-Philip_Burger_RoonCrash4_[Date/Time]_Logs.zip”

“Albert-Philip_Burger_RoonCrash5_[Date/Time]_Logs.zip”

I have given you upload instructions in PM response to the one you sent me earlier containing the OSX crash report :wink:

Lastly, I saw that you had mentioned that the application crashed a few time this week already. After reading that update I went ahead and enabled diagnostics again on your account so we can see those traces as well.

-Eric

11

Hi Eric,

And of course, this was the time Roon decided to behave! :slight_smile: Well, it crashed today, and I started the process you described. I assume you do not want tome logs from “repeat crashes” (when Roon goes down repeatedly when I don’t restart my computer), and so I will only register one of each of those occurrences. I don’t have a lot of time to listen to music these days, but I’ll get on with it as it happens.

Cheers,

Alfy

1 Like
12

Hi @Albert-Philip_Burger ---- Touching base with you to confirm that I have seen your PMs and have downloaded the requested logs. Excellent work! Your diligence is very appreciated!

Moving forward, the logs have been attached to your ticket and sent back to our techs for analysis. Once your ticket has been passed back to me I will be sure to share the team’s thoughts/findings with you ASAP.

Again, many thanks!
-Eric

13

Quick update: I was hoping 1.4 would solve the issue, but alas, that was to be. I am now 100% convinced the issue is related to poor internet connection. It did not arise while I was back in France (where I had a superb connection), and neither did it occur at the beginning of the year when my connection was stable here in Africa. Today, the connection is poor, I can barely open a webpage, and Roon crashes repeatedly.

14

Thank you for following up with us and sharing the observations you have made during your travels, @Albert-Philip_Burger. Very appreciated!

I wanted to touch base, as I am assuming you back in Africa. How has Roon been holding up since returning? I have a sense that it is the “same” as before, but would like to confirm with you.

-Eric

15

Happy new year, Eric.

Last week was ok until last Wednesday, but most of my staff was still on holidays (and so my internet bandwidth was ok). Since then, internet reverted back to its horrible usual self, and Roon is near unusable in the office. It crashed about four times this morning, and I’m just using my Walkman instead. I might still be mistaken in making the link between the quality of my connection and the crashes, but it sure looks that way.

16

Thank you for touching base with me @Albert-Philip_Burger, a Happy New Year to you and your loved ones as well!

Moving forward, I would like to kindly ask you to please perform the following test exercises so we can have a better sense if this behavior is indeed related to the WiFi strength at your place of business. Please see below.

Test #1 - Disable TIDAL (temporarily):

  • On the MacBook Pro core, please confirm that TIDAL is synced completely (Path - > settings - > services - > TIDAL - > “edit”

  • Once you’ve confirmed that TIDAL is synced please log out of TIDAL in the application.

  • Now that you have logged out of TIDAL your library should only be comprised of the media stored on the internal HD of the MBP.

    “The music is stored on the internal HD, with perhaps 12,000 tracks (although I usually focus on and play only the couple of thousands that are flac).”

  • How does the application respond under these conditions?

Test #2 - Disable your internet connection (temporarily):

  • After you have test the above and shared the observations made during that test run, I would like you know to disconnect the MBP from the internet.

  • Once again you should have access to only your locally stored library and any USB devices mounted directly to the MBP.

  • How does the application respond under these conditions?

-Eric

17

Hi Eric,

Concerning Test 1: I don’t use Tidal (my bandwidth does not allow it! :grinning:), so I can confirm I still have the issue when tidal is not configured (and so turned off).

Concerning Test 2: I had tried that previously when I started suspecting poor bandwidth being the culprit, and the behaviour is as follow:

  • As I had mentioned previously, once Roon crashes once, it will then tend to crash repeatedly, sometimes right upon opening. Turning off the internet at this point does not correct this, I need to restart my machine (I tried this a couple of times).
  • On the other hand, I have tried to use Roon in poor-bandwidth-envrionments by turning off my wifi before starting Roon, and that seems to work fine, I’ve had no case of Roon crashing with zero connection. Note however that my worst environment, internet-wise, is at work, where I cannot spend a lot of time with my wifi turned off, so I haven’t tested this extensively.

That’s the best I can say, but it’s empirical. Because of the “repeating crash” thing, I can’t wait for a crash, and then test different configurations to see if they will sort things out.

18

Hi @Albert-Philip_Burger ----- Thank you for your patience here. Letting you know that I have sent you an update on this behavior via PM.

-Eric