iMac, Roon and Sky

I’ve just spent the best part of a day downloading the Roon Core to a friend’s iMac and getting his music library setup so that he can stream to his TVs.
The music library came from his existing B&O system, and his iMac is a top spec machine which kept powering down. I solved this by first setting Roon to load on login and secondly ensuring the iMac powers up first thing and stays up and running till late at night.
The unresolved problem is one of WiFi. The skyboxes need a WiFi connection for the handsets to work, the main internet is fibre to home with a Gigaclear box (it also generates a WiFi signal), and the main lan is over the power supply. The latter is not idea but the house is old and has thick walls.
The issue is that his WAPs have a choice of at least three WiFi sources and this slows down access to the Core on the iMac. Does anyone have any tips or tricks to resolve this?

Get a drill, make a mess, run cables. Once it’s done, you will never look back!

1 Like

None of the restraint you show on the Naim forum ?
Or is that someone else?

No idea what you mean :slightly_smiling_face:

By the way, I find that running Roon on an iMac, if you are logged in but the computer is asleep, Roon will still run, and be discoverable from the Roon app on, say, an iPad. So you have the convenience of an ‘always on’ Core.

That’s good. He has a relatively small library, mainly classical that Roon has not been able to identify. He’s a bit frustrated by that, but then again he’s only playing it through his tv.

If his library has reasonable metadata, you might find it better to use that metadata instead of Roon’s, which is used by default. If you go to Settings > Library > Import settings. You’ll see the option to choose Roon’s metadata or that stored in the file, for each field. It’s a bit long winded, but hey, this is Roon, not iTunes!!!

1 Like

I’m afraid I don’t have a resolution. However, I do have a word of warning for Sky Q users who have Roon Rock installed on an Intel NUC and who also (perhaps influenced by the Naim forum) use Cisco 2960 switches.

If you connect both the NUC and the Sky Q box to your network, then the iPad (or Windows 10) Roon app will not be able to find Roon core on the NUC over wi-fi. Disconnect the Sky Q box, or substitute any other (or at least any other that I have tried, eg TP-Link) ‘cheap’ switch in place of the Cisco, or use Roon app on a Windows 10 PC hard wired to the network and hey presto, everything is fine again.

Stick the Cisco 2960 back into the network and the Core disappears again as far as the iPad Roon app is concerned. Rather annoying!

This is not an issue with my specific 2960. I have replicated the problem with other Cisco 2960 switches.

1 Like

That’s odd, sounds like some multicast issue from the sky box that the Cisco is passing through and it’s intereferring with Roons discovery and the tplink is likely blocking it being a cheap domestic switch. Have you tried to investigate it using Wireshark ? To see what might be going on. I take it support could not help?

I’m certainly not competent to investigate the issue thoroughly using Wireshark. However, I might do a little research after the Christmas period and give it a go.

Unfortunately support weren’t able to offer any suggestions. It’s annoying, but I don’t download enough from Sky that I need a fast connection to them. So, I tend to leave the Sky Q box unconnected to my network these days.

It is strange, and the only problem is with Roon Discovery via wi-fi and this happens with either of my Cisco switches. No problems when I use a network wired Roon control point, and if I replace the Cisco router with a TP Link router - no problem. However, the TP Link switch doesn’t give me enough ports.

It could be an IP clash. I take it both devices are set to use DHCP?

I’m pretty sure it’s not an IP clash, but I will double check. It will have to wait until the New Year though.