Interruptions during play, high memory usage NUC i7

Roon Core Machine

NUC i7-8559U 16gb, roon core on Windows 11

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Cable connection synology-router-nuc

Connected Audio Devices

Lyngdorf tdai-3400 (v. 3.0)

Number of Tracks in Library

Approx 635k

Description of Issue

When listening I have randomly occuring “waiting for core” circle in roon app for Android. After that I getting like 0.5-2 sec pause in song. Rarely it pause song then I need start again. It can happen 0 to 5 times per song.
Music on synology NAS, connected by cable to network to router then from router by cable to NUC with roon.
When playing the memory usage changes from 65% to 96%, with CPU usage 35-42% during just a playing a music.I observed fluctuations of memory usage in 2 minutes - from 80% to 97% then dumping memory to 65% and growing again to 82%. When it hapenning the loading time of songs, changing album takes a lot of time. In Radio it can take like 5-10sec to start new song (no matter if from library or tidal/qobuz).

Sometimes it stabilizes at 25% CPU and 85% of ram.

No VPN on NUC with Roon. No other antivirus than Win defender on NUC. Windows 11 22621.819. More than 50% free ssd space. Synology restarted today. Roon restarted 1 or 2 days ago.

No scanning in background. ARC connected but rarely used. It started about 2.0.3. I am sure that there was no issues with 1.8.

I also had interruption when listening to tidal. I observed it today when I started to listen to Nick Cave “lyre of the orpheus” album, about 00:01AM 20.11.2022 my time. About 4 interruptions in 4 first songs.

I didn’t obs


Stabilized play, no interruptions (from about 00:40 AM)

Can you check my log? Do I need upload it or it is synced? There is a lot of going in Roon log during playing…like background scanning…Can it be disabled?

It is rather annoying when I want to listen to music and first 30 min I need to be irritated by some interruptions…

Thanks in advance for any tips and help.

@Grzegorz_Gromadzki, there may some WiFi network issues happening also. As a quick check, what is your router manufacturer and model, and what is the Android phone and Android version you are using? How is your WiFi configured?

WiFi is only involved when using phone to change songs etc. - everything else is on cable. I suspect memory leaks and CPU throttling in app. I read that songs should be buffered when playing, so why it happening? I also o serving that when occurs pause my lyngdorf goes in hangout or looking for zone.

EDIT:
Here is my last log.

Stops as mentioned above. Today at Cate le Bon.
Even got it video, in 20 sec:

It is normal to have 8000 tracks in queue reported in log?
Log also report back corrupted files - how I can get full list? It is not the same as “skipped files” or clearing removed files.

In your Storage Folder setup, is Roon reanalyzing your library by any chance?

–MD

No. Analyzing takes about 5 minutes, it is rather fast. Waveform checking or whatever is off. Roon have constant monitoring for new files and I think that it is broken - it constantly checking files, even when last added files were few days ago. Maybe there is some loop with corrupted files… But I tried to clear them (library menu) but in log are different files that shown in library management. Somehow Roon is weak for huge offline libraries but I never had these issues with playback stops or losing connection with zone.

I am going to tag @support for assistance. This is a short week in the US due to the Thanksgiving holiday, so don’t know when they will be able to review your posts @Grzegorz_Gromadzki, but I believe they will need to work through this with you.

Both “background” and “real time”?

How is your Audio device (Lyngdorf) connected to the Roon Core on the NUC?

Thank you, @Robert_F and @Mikael_Ollars for your willingness to help. I hope that what I described below will somehow help in my case:

There is no “ongoing scanning/adding to library”. In s"storage" menu I have set library scan interval 8h (default value). In “library” menu I have “background sound analysis speed” set to “Disabled”, On demand analysis - “Disabled”.

Roon core is installed on NUC with i7-8559U CPU @ 2.70GHz and 16gb ram - marked as a “Computer 2” on map made in MS paint :slight_smile:

Here, below, is a video how it works when roon is running 2 or 4 days. There is no sound but I have interruptions and even “full pause” when I lost played track at about 1:55. Memory usage at 93-97%…

Here is more interesting movie how my roon core works. From reboot to playing songs. I have roon on autostart.

From 1:30 to 6:30 it starts (black screen - I don’t know what it is doing…)
From 6:30 to 15:25 it scans library (I don’t know why I have 635k imported but scanned 758k files - it scans also graphics?)
From 15:25 to 18:15 I showing app speed
From 18:15 to 19:00 I showing copying speed from my NAS to system disk (cable connection according to network map above)
From 19:00 to 21:05 - playing Cate Le Bon and adding Weyes Blood album to roon library folder and scanning it.
21:05 to 22:25 - showing settings etc, starting to play Weyes Blood
22:25 to End - showing memory use during playing and showing roon log.Worth to notice how it behaves at 26:13 to 26:39 when memory usage grows from 78% to 90% and CPU usage to 49%, then drops (flushing?) without any apparent reason when only playing a song!!

If you check videos you will see what I see - in first - after some time when Roon works, in second - on fresh reboot with its weird behaviour and possible cause of memory/cpu overload.

1 Like

Thanks for the great schematic, lots easier to see how you’re set up! :slight_smile:
First of all, with over 500K tracks i wouldn’t even consider NAS storage, local storage (even over USB) will absolutely kill a NAS based solution.

But, what i’d like to see, is if you experience similar behaviour if you (momentarily) attach your NAS to the TP Link switch. Can you please give that a try, and report back?

And i would also recommend an increase of RAM on your Core, with that amount of music, investing in two 16Gb sticks is a Pea in the Mississippi!

My ideal solution would be 20TB SSD on USB :slight_smile: Sadly, to my NUC I only have connected 2 additional, unused ssds but only about 5.4TB of space, I need about 10TB more. I could optimize my library, but I like to be surprised by roon radio :slight_smile:
But I am intrigued why NAS is far from optimal solution on 500k library? NAS right now works just like a network drive, shouldn’t be any different or slowed down. NAS shouldn’t do any other operations that are worse than doing streaming via Tidal or Qobuz - as shown on videos - copying from NAS to C:/ with speed 100mbs, which should be decent for 1 gbit network.

Later or tomorrow I will try to connect NAS to switch or I will try to change switch to unmanaged netgear switch. But It doesn’t answer a question why it behaves like in second video, when memory and cpu usage sharply rise without any specific reason. All processes should be in the BACKGROUND, not causing interruptions.

As for memory - honestly, I need to check if I have free bank, propably I have 2 x 8GB, so I need to invest in 2 x 16gb, if even possible in my model to use 16gb in dice. Once, I read that 16gb wouldn’t be never used by Roon…

I am somehow dissapointed that when already investing “few” bucks in hardware app is so bad optimized that 8 core x 2.7Ghz and 10GB for software is not enough to play a song.

Oh, come on! When I wrote it, I realized how absurd it is! What is the safe file count then? Something is not right here.

There is a guy, Uwe. How many should I have with 16gb?

No no no, thats not the issue! We’ll get this sorted! :slight_smile:
Please consider, you have amassed a library maybe 20 times the size of the average collection (guessing, but thats besides the point). You are running it on a server based in a laptop power crippled CPU with limited RAM size. Libraries your size are really best situated on a workstation class computer with local storage.

But still, i don’t think thats the issue here. I didn’t realize the TP Link was managed, so you’re thinking in a good, sensible manner. Please try a simple switch also! Simplify until everything works as intended, then expand step by stepback current situation.

Regarding storage, local storage is way, way faster than network based in these situations. There are pro solutions for network storage (IP Based) but they are “never” based on 1Gbps ethernet and their performance is much better than home network solutions.

1 Like

Yeah, I know that I have big library, so that is why I need to study Uwe’s case. He have server class Roon machine, but you know…Should be it necessery? My main working and gaming rig is i9 9900k on 32gb ram and I thought that it is strong enough for very demanding programs, but it can be still not enough for Roon. People are installing Roon on Synology/Qnap - how it works?
I don’t like have server in my living room, that is why I opted for ethernet - it is reasonable and suitable even in medium companies with larger network than mine :slight_smile: I am preparing to going to 2.5GBit, I have cat 6a cables but I thought that it is still time… like 3-5 years when I will be close to use it.

I know about local storage speed, but even then it will be “only” about 250mb on HDD - right now I have “only” 80-120mb. What connection have people when using ARC? I think that it is the problem with background monitoring if there are new files. It should be possible to disable it for physical library, so Roon, in restricted mode would only find files added from Qobuz or Tidal, but not stored in library folders. It could be checked in rescan every 4,8, 96h or any other set period of time. It would save tremendous amount of resources. I remember times when harware resources were more scarce, so devs created more “sophisticated” software, not so bloated.

I will play around with switch, but my bet is on Roon architecture as app. Going into more powerful hardware is like a running after the rabbit…would you catch it? When you will need next leap?

Roon database in my opinion is the weakest part of it. It is very very slow. First - roon should start to play music, later to load all “flashy features”. It is even worse when I try to search something. Sometimes I think that it would be faster go to “Artists” tab and type letters or scroll. Horrible.
Other database oriented software (mediamonkey or musicbee) works differently…I dont feel like I am using a “battletank”, rather a cabriolet.

I’m having the same issue and my setup sounds similar to the OP.

I also have 500k songs in my library. Roon is using 10-12GB of RAM and I’m experiencing interrupted play and my remotes are losing contact with the core. It’s difficult to get through a song without the music stopping.

I’m running Windows 10. The drives are network shares to the Roon core, although I don’t understand why anything with the networking would cause such high memory usage.

I have been using Roon on this same server with a huge library for many years with no issues. I suspect that something has changed with Roon 2.0 & ARC that make it consume a lot more memory.

I bought additional 16gb that I installed today. Also I am during moving about music from NAS to usb 3.0 attached disks (5tb in ssd, 13TB in HDD) so it will take me some time. In next days I will update if there are any changes, now I have very very long adding moved files to library (and adding metadate to it) - 2000 files in about 2h - from ssd, just the matter of Roon slowness. Maybe it is because I didn’t cleaned 50k moved files and Roon just reorganize it again and it is slower than organizing from the scratch…

1 Like

Great! Thanks!
When you say 1000 files per hour, are you referring to copying speed?
What file system have you prepared the drives with, and where are they attached for this copy manouvre?

When I said about 1000 files per hour I ment recognizing them/updating metadata, not “indexing”. Indexing is faster than before. After clearing “removed files” it was the same, still slow. I left Roon for the night and it passed 16k files from 40k added in just 17h. But Today I updated Roon to new version and 24k unrecognized files took 5 or 10 minutes to recognize it again, so the issue was maybe with search engine. Right now Roon after fresh reboot takes me about 55-60% of memory, so earlier 16GB was not enough. Now I am trying to switch to ssd/hdd connected to NUC to check if loading speeds and search is fast but propably I got issue addressed in this update - no search on large lib.

1 Like

Hey @Grzegorz_Gromadzki,

It’s great to see you on the Roon Community! You have my sincerest apologies for the delayed response here, we’ve been dealing with a higher-than-usual volume following our release and we’re working as quickly as we can to get back to everyone.

Following up on this thread, are you still seeing issues around this? We’ve released some recent improvements to the search functionality that may be related to the issue you’re experiencing. I’d make sure your core and remotes are on the latest builds just in case :+1:

After two weeks, I can already say more.

  • I used a cheap unitek Y-3026 docking station on USB 3 connected to my NUC i7 (gen8). The loading speed increased a bit (real copy speeds around 90-120MB, and previously around 75MB). It took me about a week to move the data from the Synology partition to a regular NTFS partition along with transferring the copy… About 60TB…

  • I increased the memory to 32GB (all the luck when I bought the NUC I thought about the future and bought 16GB in one memory dice). The system with Roon now occupies about 57% of memory, so 114% of what I had before - this explains the behavior of the application, which itself tried, or was forced by the system to dump data from memory every now and then. CPU usage in “wait” mode is negligible now. I didn’t notice pauses while listening to music. Playback runs faster, songs load faster. Searching also works faster.

  • The slow library scanning was caused by some application error…after updating to version 2.05 everything returned to normal.

  • I can’t say much about the Roon Arc app so far…I think it’s trying to sync with Roon, but it fails to display “Recently Added” properly - are different than in the Roon app. After changing the storage location, those recently added in Roon Arc do not find the tracks, they have empty albums. But, when you search differently then the app works normally, although slow as ever (for this size of library).

I still have a additional question, comment and words of appreciation:

is/will it be possible to use Roon as Roon Arc on my head PC as a player from my Roon Core (NUC) - I mainly work on PC, and I have NUC at my fingertips, but I play with foobar on a daily basis…?

Note: - Roon as a player is terribly slow - Musicbee on the same library plays songs instantly, and the program itself is configurable in a wide range (I know, I know…you can’t have everything, but… - >)

Thanks: - Roon 2.07 brought a big change in the form of description sources. I look forward to similar tagging options (MusicBrainz, Discogs) and texts.Excellent work of whole team. Thank you!

I hope my experience and solutions will help someone. Thanks all you guys for help (Mikael_Ollars, Robert_F.

k6davis - it may help you.

This topic was automatically closed 36 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.