Roon server extreme memory use and slow down. This has been a lot better with recent updates... it had been running over a week with a memory footprint of a fairly steady 800MB. But just now the Roon app on my Windows 10 desktop machine was showing the jellyfish for a very long time right below the "Recent Activity" block on my home screen. So I took a look at the server and noticed that it has gone back to using lots of memory and going very slow. I have no idea what I might have done to cause this.
Describe your network setup
1Gb LAN. TP-Link 1Gb network switch. Fritz Router, 60Mbps broadband only v.lightly loaded. Roon Server and all clients on same LAN.
Hi @Andrew_Beveridge,
Thanks for writing in to let us know about this issue. Are you using any DSP when this high memory usage happens? Is it associated with playing to a specific zone or are all zones impacted?
erm,… possibly.
Some zones are flat. Some of the zones with smaller speakers have a 3db lift on low frequencies. So those zones have Headroom management enabled and they also have a Parametric EQ enabled in MUSE.
I do not really keep track of when DSP is on or off, I jut move between zones now and then.
I am fairly sure that it ran for a week or more with a fairly steady footprint of 800-1000MB and was responsive before it all changed; and I would be fairly confident that the week would have included a fair few times using the zones with MUSE enabled.
The symptoms of memory leaking and slow down happened in exactly the same way as in my previous support posts. But something has changed in recent updates that this now happens much more rarely.
Sorry I can’t be more specific about what might be triggering this. I tend not to notice it until the server memory use gets to over 2.5 GB and everything slows down (and I start seeing the jellyfish much more, and then occasionally things just won’t play).
While there may be a technical reason for this a quick fix is to restart the server software.
During our summer we have horrendous thunderstorms so my system is shut dow and restarted at least daily. I see non of these issues. In winter i leave it on and do see it a reboot fixes
Our team is still investigating potential areas where a leak could occur.
Does a restart of your Roon Server typically clear your issues?
Are you updating or grooming your library often? If you think of any specific actions you repeat (outside of simply listening to music of course ) generally around when you notice the uptick in server memory usage, that would be helpful!
I hope to have more information to share after the team has a closer look into things.
I don’t need to restart the server.
I just close (via right-click on Roon tooltray icon) and then relaunch RoonServer.
After that it spends about 2 minutes building up to about 800MB footprint and then it is fairly steady until the next time the problem occurs.
I was going to say that it’s been fine since I last reported this… but I just went to check it and I see it has happened again. Current memory use by RoonAppliance is a fairly 2.3GBytes. It is not too slow though… still useable. It seems that I start to see the jellyfish a lot more after it gets nearer 3GB.
No, I hardly ever update my library EXCEPT that I have a podcasts folder that automatically receives new podcasts from a few BBC pages. That folder maybe gets one or two new podcasts every day. Some older podcasts automatically get deleted too.
I’ll keep an eye out. Maybe I’ll try taking the podcasts folder out of the library too.
After the last post I disabled the podcasts folder in Settings/Storage so I can be sure there have been no update to my library at all.
I have been busy elsewhere since so have only used Roon perhaps twice, and for just a few minutes since then.
Despite that it seems to have happened again. Memory use has mysteriously shot up to 3.2GB
The 26.6% CPU use (on a 4-hardware thread machine) is with no playback in any zones and just one UI open (but inactive) on a desktop PC on the same LAN.
And after having done that I see Roon UI is now asking to update the server so I have just let it do that so I am now running 2.0 (Build 1444) earlyaccess. I will leave this one with podcasts enabled for a few more days to see if it happens again.
The new build is seeming a little unstable so far… it has crashed on me twice today.
No obvious reason… nothing I can link to what I am doing… except that I have been playing music much more today… searching for things (matches beung found on Qobuz and Tidal) and things start playing but then just stop with a “searching for roon server” message and when I check the server I find the RoonAppliance has gone and then I seems to automatically restart.
That is what I assume is happening anyway. It disappears altogether from task manager when that client message happens. And then it re-appears with a memoy footprint steadily growing from 0MB up to 800MB and then the client is all working again.
Sorry I cannot pin down what exactly I was doing that might have caused this.
Thanks for the follow-up report! We’ve enabled a fresh debug tool for your Roon Server, could you please stop and reboot your Roon Server machine twice, and see how things perform?
OK, we’re in luck. It looks like it has happened already.
I rebooted twice at around 18:00 on 03/08/2024
It settled fairly quickly at around 1064MB memory used.
At 09:12 today (04/08/2024) it’s memory use had dropped to 669MB (that’s the lowest I have seen it. It is rarely below 800MB these days.)
And I just checked it again and it’s memory use has shot up to 2060MB for no obvious reason.
That is at 22:10 today. Here is Windows Task Manager screenshot from a few minutes earlier…
Nothing is playing but CPU use by RoonAppliance is hovering around 5% to 12%.
Looking at the Roon UI I see that I only have four zones. The other three (one Roon endpoint, one Airplay) seem to have disappeared. I don’t know if that is connected.
I cannot think of a specific event that may have caused anything today. I only used Roon for an hour or so today… searching and playing Tidal tracks, playing from my library, playing a little live radio. I also switched my UI between two Zones a couple of times.
Roon UI on my desktop PC is still fairly responsive at this point so rather than reboot it I will leave it as-is and see if it looks any different tomorrow.
OK, it is now next morning. The Windows PC that is running Roon server does not run any other applications and has just been idle overnight. No zones have been active since that last message, not even running a Roon UI.
I just turned the monitor (display) on and I see task manager showing 3GB memory used by Roon Appliance.
I then went to paste a screenshot into Paint and whilst doing that I noticed the Roon memory use dropped to 2GB (actually 1969.1GB).
And whilst I have been writing this Task Manager (still open on that monitor) is showing that it has gone back up to 2.9GB (I did briefly see over 3GB), and Roon is also showing 30% CPU use… despite me not having touched a Roon client this morning.
This is now just before 09:20 on 05/08/2024.
I hope you are able to dip into some logs and find something useful from the above info anyway.
Roon UI is still reasonably responsive. I will leave it running and watch it some more.
I am a developer. I want to ask developer questions about how you are using dynamic allocation and churning any large objects during UI interaction, and again in idle time. And what is being cached, and how is that cache managed and whether you are doing anything odd that affects how C# garbage collection schedules. But I don’t really have enough information about how Roon is designed+built to go there. I do wonder if this is a C# Windows CLR issue only, or whether it happens the same on other platforms .
Thanks for the follow-up @Andrew_Beveridge! I’ve shared your findings with our development team who will examine them closer. I should have more information to share on their findings soon.
OK, backup done.
Podcast folder is now disabled again in Settings/Storage.
I’m not sure what you mean by “disable analysis”. I can close Windows “Task Manager” (now done) but I don’t think that would affect anything in CLR significantly (would it?). Do you mean something else?
How many podcasts do you have in your library over 15 minutes would you guess?
About 650.
But most are static. The odd handful (maybe 20) are added every week. And a similar amount are deleted. The rest (constant around 630ish) are my long-term library archive and do not change.
And it is feeling a bit slow today.
And it just took about 30 seconds to start playing a playlist (stuck at 0 seconds playback with the highlight on the playback bar whizzing left and right)… not sure what that was about.
I ran task manager and once again it seems it has consumed lots of RAM (2.5GB)
So I have just closed and restarted it again… it has settled back at 840MB for now.
Podcasts remain disabled FWIW.
Disabling this on top of your podcast watched folders. We were also seeing some additional activity with a reoccurring analysis of your Qobuz library. After testing disabling analysis, I’d also separately test out disabling Qobuz for during a listening session and see how things perform.
OK, thanks.
I have just disabled background and on-demand audio analysis.
And I have left podcasts folder disabled for now.
The Qobuz service is still enabled for now.
I will see how that goes.
I have disabled Qobuz before because I have long been suspicious of it’s influence on Roon Server stability… but Roon still seemed to show the same memory-use problems. That was some time ago so if it still happens after this I will disable Qobuz again also.
I noticed just now that when I started Roon client (on this Windows 10 PC) the Roon Server (on its dedicated Windows 10 NUC) appeared to shut down and restart.
ie. It disappeared completely from the Windows process list and then restarted and I watched it’s memory footprint grow from zero back to 807MB over a minute or so.
Ordinarily I would probably assume that was a crash but perhaps there are occasions when RoonApliance would be expected to shutdown and restart automatically all by itself?
) generally around when you notice the uptick in server memory usage, that would be helpful!
