Mac Mini (Late 2012) 2.5 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
MacOS Catalina 10.15.7 (up to date)
Streaming to HQPlayer 4 Desktop 4.19.0
Networking Gear & Setup Details
Core switch - NETGEAR 16-Port Gigabit Ethernet Smart Managed Pro Switch with various other un-managed Gigigabit network switches.
WiFi is provided by three TP-Link AC1350 Wi-Fi Dual Band Gigabit Ceiling Mount Access Points.
Roon Core (Mac Mini) and PI2AES streamer are connected to the network via Ethernet.
Connected Audio Devices
Raspberry Pi-based PI2AES Streamer running RoPieeeXL Configured as HQPlayer NAA
Roon Remotes all connect wirelessly
iPhone XR
iPad mini 4
MacBook Pro 13
Number of Tracks in Library
Not many - Use mainly Qobuz
Description of Issue
iOS devices iPhone and iPad connect to the core intermittently. This has not always been the case - they used to work fine but more recently there has been a problem. The Macbook Pro always connects without any problem.
When I open Roon on the iPhone or iPad it usually fails to connect - If I select the option to connect to a different core, it shows a red dot âConnectingâ. Once I get a connection - which can take many minutes, then the connection can drop at any time. Music will continue to play after the connection drops.
I have tried re-installing the app on the iPhone without any luck. I have tried closing every other app on the phone - That has made no difference either. I canât think of anything else to try.
As a test, next time you disconnect, you should get a screen with a blue HELP link. This will take you to a pop up that lets you input the IP of your server. Enter 255.255.255.255 and see if that connects, and stays connected.
I find this may happen if the Roon Remote app has been âput to sleepâ by iOS . Physically closing the app and restarting fixes.
I a not sure of the technical reasons but once you have started a stream , the app goes dormant , and iOS deactivates it until the next time you try to select a new stream.
I vaguely recall @danny explaining this some time back.
Unfortunately, I donât think thatâs the problem, I have found that closing the app and re-opening it makes no difference, it still wonât connect.
I followed the Help link - but I didnât get a popup - I just get an option to select a different core. The page says 'Remote connection waiting for remote Core
Iâve attempted to enable remote diagnostics on your core but am not getting a response. Oddly, itâs showing that itâs online but doesnât respond to me.
This along with the âwaiting for coreâ errors youâre seeing might be telling. One theory I have is that perhaps some of the sleep features have changed on the Mac. Can you double-check all of these settings for us? It almost sounds like the network is there but the hard drive is going to sleep. Just an idea of something you can look at. Let me know if you find a potential culprit in the sleep settings and if so; the next part might be irrelevant.
Either way, we need to take a look at the logs. So we can move forward, I was hoping, for now, you could use the directions found here and send us over a set of logs using a shared Dropbox link.
This is an older macâŚdoes it have an SSD boot drive internally?
What else is running on the Mini?
what else is using the wifiâŚie how many devices and are any high usage systems like gaming or video streaming (TV or zoom calls etc) running at the time?
I have uploaded logs for you - 2 sets - The second set was extracted after the server was brought down (I didnât read the instructions properly until I had already sent the file).
I took a look at the sleep options - Computer Sleep was set to never but the Put hard disks to sleep when possible was checked. This is now unchecked. However, a quick check has shown no difference.
I donât actually think it has anything to do with sleep because:
My MacBook Pro connects every time without a problem,
and
When I do get a connection from one of my iOS devices it doesnât mean the other will connect. Just now my iPhone did connect but my iPad wouldnât. At that point, the MacBook was connected as well.
I upgraded the HDD to an SSD some years ago and added 16GB RAM. I only use the mini it for Roon and HQPlayer. I connect to the machine with Chrome Remote Desktop.
We are not heavy users of Wifi. We have SkyQ for TV (which sometimes streams from the Internet and between boxes over the local network) but all the boxes are connected via Ethernet. The MacBook connects wirelessly to the Roon Core over wifi without any problem.
Thank you for your uploads. Oddly, as you went to do this, the request for diagnostics finally came through. This tells me that thereâs something on the core or the connectivity that the core has is going to sleep
In looking at the logging I see a whole host of connection timeouts and failures. This is occurring between your iPhone and core as well as your Macbook Pro and core. There are recoveries of the connection as well which would explain why the issue seems to happen intermittently.
Hereâs an example without providing any internal address information:
08/29 19:45:16 Trace: [rnet/RnetJsonClient] no data received for >10000ms. Killing connection.
08/29 19:45:16 Warn: [rnet/RnetJsonClient] error writing to connection
8/29 20:41:08 Trace: [raatserver] [RaatServer MacBook-Pro-2 @ 192.168.x.x:9200] client connection failed. Retrying in 500ms
There are so many possibilities with these timeouts but the main theme is that your core is losing connection to wireless devices on the network and at the same time; the core is inaccessible to Roonâs systems.
Can you see if you can duplicate this behavior by bypassing your switch?
Thanks Wes, Very interesting. If the problem is not confined to the iOS devices then that puts a whole new complexion on the problem. I have another switch I can substitute and I can look to see if there is another device on the network that might be causing a problem.
Interesting that iOS devices are more susceptible to the issue than other devices on the network. Thinking about it, this might explain other glitches I see occasionally.
Just to let you know this issue is now resolved. The problem was the RouterBoard hEX broadband router on the network. I replaced it with an alternative router I had and the problem went away.