I am having a couple problems with Roon Android app (build 88) on a Lenovo Tab 2 A10-70, specs below. Scrolling is choppy at times, especially with long artist bios, e.g, the Beatles. I will try to scroll but it will not move for several seconds and just a few lines at a time. At times it will freeze the entire app, although music continues to play, and I will have to force quit and relaunch. The other problem is that Roon will suddenly disconnect from my Library and to reconnect I have to restart the tablet. Could be a Lenovo wifi problem. I would like to know if it’s my overall setup that won’t work with Roon or just the tablet that’s doing this before I commit to Roon and before my time runs out to return the tablet. Just to compare I installed the Roon iOs app on an iPad Air 2 and it worked fine, although I did notice the the bios are displayed differently than on the Android version; they aren’t white type reversing out of a background photo but rather a popup type window with black type on flat with back. They same way lyrics are handled.
I suspect that it’s the tablet and not the Roon software so I would just like to confirm that before returning it and finding another one. I have found an Nvidia 8” Shield K1 tablet, 2.2 GHz Cortex A15 Quad-Core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 1920 x 1200 Screen Resolution, NVIDIA Tegra K1 Kepler GPU, Android 5.0 Lollipop. The specs look pretty good to me. Do you think it would d a better job than the Lenovo? But I do like the Lenovo otherwise and the price was nice.
Sorry to bug you with this. I scoured the forums first to see if there was an similar situation but couldn’t find one. The closest post I found was one with a Sony Z3 compact Looks like it was fixed with #15 build though.
BTW, Roon is absolutely incredible. Thanks for the great work Roon team!
My current system setup:
PC:
Headless ASRock Q1900-ITX Intel Celeron J1900 running Windows 8.1 Pro
120GB SSD with system
500GB internal SSD for music library
8GB RAM
Wired ethernet connection to router
Output through JPLAY Asio to LH Pulse DAC
I know the Celeron chip isn’t recommended but Roon runs very well on the it, no choppiness, or freezes with my Apple monitor. I have an old Apple LCD monitor but I mostly use the server headless. I haven’t tried Roon sever version yet.
Also, I can control Roon running on the PC with the tablet using MS RDP and I have none of the above problems. However the screen resolution is quite low. Roon looks great on the Lenovo, bright and crisp.
WIFI:
Apple Airport Extreme, old model, haven’t updated firmware for a while. will try that tonight. Othewise works well. Lenovo described wifi signal as Excellent and 65mbps. Last night download speed test showed 38mbps download and 7 upload. Comcast cable modem.
While i do not personally own a Shield k1 they have received pretty good reviews and seem to be the current Android tablet to beat in its respective class. I looked up some benchmarks on the two tablets to try and compare them and while there isn’t much difference in CPU performance, the Nvidia was scored about 10% better, i believe, it absolutely torches the Lenovo in GPU scores, essentially doubling the score. That makes sense as mediatek processors don’t typically have good graphics performance and that is what Nvidia does.
I have an old samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 running roon and even that ancient Nvidia processor seems to handle it fine as well as my nexus 7 2013
My guess without owning it is that you would probably experience less stuttering with the Shield K1. As an added benefit you’ll also get more Android updates on that as well going by each’s history (android 6 has already been announced for the shield).
Thanks. That confirms what I thought about the graphics hardware not being too great on the Lenovo. I’m new to the Android world so I wouldn’t have even thought about comparing brands’ Android update histories. Very helpful. I did find out that Lenovo actually came out with their Lollipop update for my tablet in July but that they have recently pulled it since it was so buggy. Thanks again.
Unfortunately in the Android ecosystem with tablets, and most phones really, are pretty much treated as disposable. You might get 1 major update but unless you get a nexus device its just not likely you’ll see any more after that. That certainly is a negative but the other positives have kept me in the android realm. The Roon app in and of itself shouldn’t be very GPU intensive so overall after thinking about it im going to guess the issues you are experiencing might be related to the Lenovo Android software, though admittedly i have no experience with that particular tablet. The Nvidia software is pretty close to stock, as i recall, which is always preferable to me.
Also to your question on the ipad can’t say for sure but i think the difference is the version of the app. Im not sure if it is still the case or not but i know there was a delay on the Apple app being updated to the new build, which is where the changes to expanding the bio data were added, as it was waiting for approval from Apple. Might just be a case of waiting for the update.
I’m using the Nvidia Shield K1 and specifically got it for roon. It works fine, but at 1920x1200 its difficult to use the touchscreen unless your fingers are incredibly thin. But there is a custom app feature that allows you to set the screen resolution to 1280x800 for Roon or any app for that matter. This setting is much better and the touchscreen is easier to use. It’s the lowest setting Roon will run.
Aside from that, I’m not crazy about the battery life. It’s not terrible, but I’m comparing to an iPhone 6Plus that has an outstanding battery. Could be Android settings, not sure.
And if you plan to use the private zone, I find that the headphone jack is noisy, but again could be a setting, I’m not super familiar with Android. I was able to connect a head/amp Dac to the microusb output and that was good and didn’t get any noise. I mainly got it for a remote, so the noisy headphone jack is not a big deal for me.
Thanks guys for your advice. AgDev01’s comment about the cause possibly being the Lenovo Android software made me check last night to see if they had any updates and actually they did, Lollipop. Apparently they had released a Lollipop OTA update in July but had so many bugs that they pulled it. That’s probably why, when tried to update the system last week is just updated the KitKat v4 that was already on the tablet. So last night I risked updating to Lollipop and it actually works better with Roon; a little faster, smoother, less choppy. I will see how it goes.
Thanks for the feedback on the Nvidia Shield K1 too, Erik. I will keep that one in mind if the Lenovo doesn’t work out. I was kind of looking forward to getting the Shield if the Lenovo didn’t improve. We’ll see.
Not only ROON but there are also some other apps which sometimes become unable to run on lenovo tablet. But the best solution of this issue in Lenovo TAB 2 A10-70 Manual is:
Turn off your device.
Press and hold the combination of keys (if you are using Nexus press and hold Volume Down, Volume Up and the Power button)
Hold the buttons until the Recovery menu shows up.
Use Volume buttons to navigate to Recovery mode and select it using the Power button.