I switched from the Nexus 7 (2013) to the Google Pixel C tablet, because the phone interface on the Nexus 7 is too limited to be used as primary remote. But Roon on the Pixel C isn’t the greatest experience yet.
I don’t know if the issues are caused by the Pixel C, the new Android 7.0 Nougat version that is running on it, or both. But the issues I encounter are:
The Discover screen opens up with some big gray squares and it takes at least 10 seconds to load, during this time the app is not reacting on scroll events and button presses.
When the tablet switches to standby and I activate it again a short time later, then the Roon app is restarting. This is not always the case but I haven’t been able to detect a clear pattern in the behavior. Wifi is configured to stay active during standby.
A few times some characters in links were missing, a forced restart solved the problem.
Are there any other users of the Pixel C or Android 7.0 around? What are your experiences?
I use the Nexus 9 with Android 7 and I often have the Same issue when I switch Back from browsing with chrome to roon, that roon restarts. But I get that from my Samsung Tab with Android 4.x as well.
Same with missing letters Up to were One isn’t eben able to guess the artis and track. Also with Nexus and Galaxy Tab alike.
Hi @Jan_Koudijs and @Christoph ----- Thank you for the reports and the feedback, both are appreciated!
I wanted to touch base as we’ve done some testing in house and are able to successfully use Roon on a Nexus 9 running Android 7 without issue. Jan and Christopher I just want to make sure I understand exactly what each of you have tried / are currently working with.
Jan, you were working with a Nexus 7 that had Android 7.0 on it then switched to the Google Pixel C running the same OS, correct?
Christopher, you are using a Nexus 9 with Android 7.0 on it but have also noticed this behavior when using your Samsung tablet running Android 4 as well. Is this correct?
I appreciate the clarification from you both and if there are any other details (or devices) that you feel may be relevant to this data gathering process, and can help aide in our evaluation please share your thoughts
My Nexus 7 is running on Android 6.0.1, the Pixel C is my first Android 7.0 device. The issues I listed do not show up on the Nexus 7.
The most prominent issue for me is the slow loading of the Discover screen, it currently prevents me from using it. I haven’t had the missing characters issue over the last few days, if it happens again I will try to make a screenshot.
I’m about to start using the just released update of the Roon app, if it behaves differently I will let you know. If there is anything else I can do, please let me know.
I just had a ‘not responding’ message after waking from standby and the option was given to send feedback. I did this, the message starts with ‘Roon isn’t responding (thread 14627)’, system logs are included.
I hope that you can access this information via your Android developer account, and that it will be of any help.
Hi @Jan_Koudijs ---- Thank you for following up and my apologies for the slow response. I’d like to gather some logs from your Pixel C device and will be contacting via PM momentarily.
In the Android ‘Settings’ I selected ‘Battery->Battery optimization’, and then from the pull down in the upper left corner I selected ‘All apps’, then I scrolled down to the Roon app and set it to ‘Not optimized’.
With this changed setting I played music for 1 hour without a restart of the app or a lost connection, I never had this before!
Still I consider this a workaround because the 8 days battery life will be gone by now. Would be nice if development can have a look why the app isn’t compatible with battery optimization.
Hi @Jan_Koudijs ----- Thank you for sharing your most recent observation with us I will be updating my notes with this information, as we have a meeting scheduled for mid week to discuss this issue.
Hi @Jan_Koudijs ----- I wanted to reach back out to you as we have been actively investigating this issue in house and are having a hard time reproducing this behavior
Are you noticing any patterns that cause the application to end up in this state? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
I have no new discoveries to report. I think the issue is best summarized by referring to what I wrote in the PM that contained the log files…
…And what I wrote a few posts back
The battery optimization setting gives a big improvement but doesn’t solve the problem. I still have a few restarts per day.
Is there a restart captured in the log files that I have sent you? In case you need a log from a specific situation, please let me know.
Concerning my setup, my endpoint is a PS Audio DirectStream DAC. In case you haven’t tried, this DAC in combination with the Nexus 9 running Android 7 should be pretty close to my setup…
Hi @Jan_Koudijs — My apologies for the confusion, I appreciate you clarifying that for me I went back and looked through my open tickets and PMs and saw the information you were referencing. Thanks again!
I’m having the same problem Jan reported with the Discover feature, also on a Pixel C with Android 7.0: “The Discover screen opens up with some big gray squares and it takes at least 10 seconds to load, during this time the app is not reacting on scroll events and button presses.”
My Pixel C is generally working fine with Roon, although not as snappy as my Oneplus One phone on Android 6.0.1, on which the Discover page works without any hitches.
I increased the ‘Memory for Photos/Artwork’ setting from 64 MB to 512 MB but it doesn’t improve the performance of the Discover screen. Strange thing is that all other screens load fine…
@Eric, I’m using a non-default setting for the lock time that is used after the tablet switches to standby (Android setting), this setting seems to have an impact on the restart behavior.
In ‘Settings->Security->Screen lock Settings (cog symbol upper right corner)->Automatically lock’ I have set the time to ‘30 minutes after sleep’. I did this to prevent locking of the tablet during a listening session. As a test I changed the setting to ‘Immediately after sleep’ and also enabled the battery optimization for the Roon app again. With this setting it seems to work more stable.
So in trying to reproduce the problem my suggestion is to change the lock time to 30 minutes and see what happens…
@Jan_Koudijs ---- Thank you for the feedback and the reproducible steps
I met with my team today to discuss this issue and typically when a device is only seeing “gray boxes” this means we tried to load a cover on a remote and couldn’t do it quick enough. With that being said my I ask you for the following:
A screen grab highlighting this error on your device.
A brief but detailed description of your network setup and any networking hardware that you may be implementing.
Core is running on a Linux PC with Intel i5 processor, connected to a gigabit switch which in turn is connected to the router via powerline adapters (200 Mb). The endpoint is directly connected to the router. The router and the tablet are connected via a mixed Wifi connection running at 2.4 GHz.
Some remarks:
I understand that there is not much more you can do then displaying a gray box if the image isn’t in yet, but I would not expect that this will lockup the complete user interface.
On my Nexus 7 (2013), that is running on the same network, the loading of images is quite smooth, only the scrolling isn’t very fluent but this is probably caused by the limited resources. The Nexus 7 is running in phone mode.
@Bluebeat has a similar experience when comparing the Oneplus One and Pixel C.
Marc, can you describe your network and the hardware/os of the Roon Server? That way we can see if you and Jan might have some environmental things in common.
My RoonServer is a Gigabyte Brix GB-BSi7HA-6500, which runs on Lubuntu. Music is on a Synology DS213. Both are connected with a Netgear R7000 router, which is also connected to a Sonore MicroRendu. The network is hardwired, mostly through run of the mill Cat 5e cable, except obviously for the remotes - the Pixel C and Oneplus One.
I went back and looked through my open tickets and PMs and saw the information you were referencing. Thanks again!
