When I switch from an App on my MacBook back to Roon, sometimes the text in Roon is missing … things like Song Titles, text about the Album or Artist … the Album title.
Sometimes rather than the text being missing … it is just “garbled” … like trying to run an App without having the right Font installed.
I went into my MacBook’s utilities and ran a repair on my Font book.
I have a MacBook with 2 graphics cards … it seems to happen mainly when the default “Integrated” Intel HD3000 graphics card is used.
Have found a work around … have “gfxCardstatus” installed, so I just switch to the “Discrete” AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics card.
Then go back into Roon and text appears normal again.
rovinggecko … thank you for the link !!, it was helpful (at least to let me understand why my switching to the AMD graphics card seems to fix the issue).
In your thread, Danny mentioned …
“It seems like you may be running out of video memory…”
I checked my graphics cards in my MacBook …
Intel has 512 MB
AMD has 1024MB
So my AMD graphics card has a lot more video memory … this must be why it fix’s my issue (though my MacBook runs a lot warmer on the AMD card, I much prefer to use my Intel graphics card).
the issue is getting worse … I am now experiencing missing fonts, garbled text, and sometimes no text at all … even when I switch to my AMD graphics card (previously it was always happening just on my Intel card).
Ronnie I have 600 Albums, not a very large library.
I am having a few issues this weekend … though am really loving Roon for discovering new music.
Plus, I went into Settings “general” tab … and selected
“Allow for smaller covers and photos”
and my font issue has resolved itself (for the moment) though it has been intermittent all day.
Oh oh … this could be a case of “problem between chair and keyboard” … that is me!
I have changed the setting for “Memory for Photo’s/Artwork” back to 64MB (I had a higher setting selected). Will see how that goes.
@brian 64MB for graphics memory seems to be stable so far for me … before I was trying 128MB (or higher) to check any effect/improvement of using higher.
[If] The next time I see this issue, I will just try selecting “Minimum” for graphics memory.
Happened again at 64MB (though much less frequently …went quite a while).
I will now just try selecting “Minimum” for graphics memory (which I think is the default anyway). Was just checking out the graphics and CPU options in Settings to see if there were any benefits to changing them.
Yesterday I switched to “Minimum” … yet when I started Roon today … it looked okay for about 5 minutes … I also checked the RAM setting for Graphics Memory … and for some reason this is now 256MB (I had set it to “Minimum” yesterday) so it seems to have changed on it’s own accord.
I will try to attach some screen shots of what I see …
1st) On AMD Graphics card … all OK … most of the time … simply switching to AMD is usually enough to resolve the problem … though sometimes I have to restart Roon … even after just 5 minutes (like this morning)
2nd) On Intel Graphics card … garbled fonts
3rd) An example of the “Overview” screen … neither Intel or AMD worked … had to do a restart of Roon
4th) An example of within an Album … neither Intel or AMD worked … had to do a restart of Roon
As an aside … though it does not help me right now …
…the new “Metal for OSX El Capitan” looks interesting …
… and should improve the rendering/graphics performance of Roon even further … I hope. I just remember reading the support threads and one of the Roon guys mentioning that sending out audio data is the easy part & it was the graphics rendering which was actually more intensive (not exactly word for word, a lot of paraphrasing going on here, that was just the jist of what I recall).
Tonight Roon lasted for 3 hours before the garbled graphics & text occurred … I did a cold restart of my MacBook tonight to ensure that the graphic memory was cleared.
I also tried just keeping it on the “Tracks” view … instead of “Overview” to see if that caused any difference … I thought as “Tracks” view does not have any album art it may behave better.
I am really enjoying Roon , it is great !!! … just wish this issue would go away.
Not sure what happened … though I did start up the Tidal OS X app, and the next minute I clicked on Roon … and it had fixed itself graphically. So the next time it happens I will just start the Tidal OS X app and see if that is actually the real fix.
Previously I have had to manually switch from Intel graphics card to AMD graphics card …
or…
restart Roon
or …
restart MacBook.
Well … Roon lasted an hour before the graphics issue happened again.
Tried starting Tidal OS X … it did not fix it like last time.
2nd time opening Tidal OS X … and I saw the Roon graphics fix themselves.
This starting of Tidal to fix the Roon graphics may be a red herring … maybe the starting of Tidal is forcing the graphics memory to free up some video ram … which has a side effect of making Roon readable again.
Anyway, just journaling my experience as it happens (I dont trust my memory to get all the exact details down otherwise).
I have 16 GB RAM.
My video ram is 512 MB for the Integrated Intel HD 3000 card, I also have a AMD Radeon HD 6770M graphics card in my 17" MacBook which has 1024 MB video ram.
Im my MacBook’s settings “Display” I have selected for “Resolution” the setting “Default for Display” which I believe is 1920 x 1200 for my native resolution of my MacBook.
Since you have two graphics cards, and the integrated one is quite old (Intel 3000 is from the Sandy Bridge era), you might want to see if you have better luck using the Radeon. The more recent integrated chips have gotten pretty good, but back when that one came out in 2011, there was still a huge gap between the Intel HD chips and the discrete adapters available at the time.
I use this tool to monitor and manually switch between graphics adapters on my mac: https://gfx.io/
If nothing else, it might help you determine if graphics issues are occurring with one adapter, the other, or both, and at best, it may give you a button that you can use to force one or the other when you run into trouble.
