Incompatibility of Roon with older MacBook Air version (ref#317RSE)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· None of the above quite fits

None of the above quite fits

· None of these quite match

Tell us what's going on

· Upgrade and current version won’t work on older Mac
BookAir not interested in doing workaround or buying new computer Roon is not worth the effort

Tell us about your home network

· No

2

An interesting first post, what help would you like?

3

Hello @Robert_Bailey

To answer you properly we need two pieces of information, because “older Mac” covers two very different situations and only one of them has a fix.

Please tell us:

  1. Which macOS version the MacBook Air is running. You will find it under the Apple menu, then About This Mac.
  2. Which model and year it is, shown on the same screen.

Here is why it matters.

If it is running macOS 12 or 13, then you very likely hit a fault in a recent build that stopped Roon Server starting on those versions. That has already been fixed. You would need to download a fresh copy from our downloads page and install it over the top, because the built-in updater cannot run while the server will not start. Nothing is lost in doing so, and no workaround or new computer is involved.

If the Mac cannot run macOS 12 at all, then we will tell you straight: Roon requires macOS 12 or later, and there is no version of current Roon that will run on it. Older Roon builds are not an answer either, because the server and every remote have to be on the same version, so an older copy would launch and then refuse to connect. In that case your assessment is reasonable and we would not try to talk you out of it.

So please send us those two numbers. If it is the first case, this is a ten minute fix. If it is the second, you will have a clear answer rather than a runaround.

4

Hello @Robert_Bailey,

Reaching out to see where things stand. Were you able to check the MacBook Air’s macOS version and the model and year from About This Mac, as we asked? That will tell us whether this is the macOS 12 or 13 startup issue, which we can fix by reinstalling a fresh copy from our downloads page, or whether the Mac is too old to run a current version of Roon at all. Please send those two details when you can, and we can take it from there.

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