James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
21
Here’s a data point:
[Preface]: I’m not particularly good in Linux. My son, who is, help me set up Ubuntu and Roon on it and it was very solid initially. So I’m not good at seeing detail on system resources when Roon is misbehaving as per my description in the OP. (I’m great in Windows)
When Roon was misbehaving badly, I was able to get a temp reading on the CPU. It was 62C. I’ve had Roon running this morning with the same audio system load 4 3 hours and it’s at 42C.
My Ubuntu server only runs Roon. We never installed anything but the dependencies to run Roon. Nothing else should be taxing resources. The Ubuntu command line is perfectly responsive during Roon’s misbehavior. Roon just reboots itself or loses connectivity while Ubuntu is perfectly available.
So yes, something is happening that is stressing the CPU. I really do think it’s you, Roon.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
22
It’s at it again. CPU temp is 58C, well up from when Roon was behaving well.
I think my best bet is to build a second Roon server and keep them synched by backing up primary to secondary. When Roon misbehaves, I switch cores.
Then I can tell, if Roon on the second core is still unbearable, that it’s actually something Roon is doing on the remote end. And unless the problems are on both machines, I should at least be able to listen to music while the other server does its CPU crushing process.
I do think this relates to metadata updates. Most of the time it misbehaves, there is the spinning circle in the upper right. Not sure it always is, though.
That’s a pretty mild CPU temperature, but I wonder if something is not quite right (with sensors or software) and what you are actually experiencing is CPU throttling. Or some other temperature sensitive issue, for instance with the internal SSD. My first Roon NUC died slowly, first getting sluggish, then crashing occasionally, finally dead as a doorknob. My second one, in an Akasa fanless case, worked well for a couple of years, but then started spewing more and more hardware-related warnings and errors, and slowing down. My current Roon servers are beefy, espensive fanless servers that work beautifully.
Easy to check when it happens, ssh in and do a tail on Roons logs it will show up if it is. That’s how I spotted it was metadata updates causing it. Obviously if you use rock you cant do this, but if any other Linux distro you can.
I as well am experiencing a very slow Roon Server, sometimes to the extent of not being able to access anything on the server anymore. Although the current music keeps on playing. As soon the metadata update has finished, everything is back to normal. What seems strange is that the update takes a very long time, compared to the speed of an initial library load.
Yep it’s really intensive for what appears to be no reason. Why such a process would tie up the whole cpu seems to be very sub optimal especially as it stops usage of the system.
I see this too quite often, and I have posted about this several times in the past, without ever receiving any meaningful answer by Roon staff. And no, this has nothing whatsoever to do with CPU throttling; this and other arguments blaming users’ hardware are just red herrings.
Yes, the way to catch what is going on is to tail the Roon log… it makes things evident, and you can concurrently monitor your CPU frequency to make sure there is no throttling responsible for the slow-down…
The one-threaded Roon server processes which max out one CPU core and make all user interaction with the system near impossible, not only occur with metadata updates. This also entails Qobuz and Tidal ‘storage library updates’…
I also see that all these processes run ever slower and use ever more CPU cycles, as longer the Roon server has been up running. While a recently restarted system runs these processes at a speed you can’t visually follow the log file entries scrolling by, a system that has been up for several days will run the same processes orders of magnitude more slowly…
As to metadata updates, I have observed that this process mostly starts when I save an album from Tidal/Qobuz into the database… Sometimes the process starts without any evident trigger, though… and with a larger database it can run for hours…
I suppose there’s not much Roon developers and the support team can do about this, as it seems a consequence of early design decisions. So it seems one tactics is avoidance of acknowledging the problem… But please, stop blaming users’ hardware or setup or network or whatever… this is clearly a problem inherent in Roon’s system and how it works.
6 Likes
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
28
I’m looking on the bright side. This is an excuse for yet another cool looking computer in a unique case with some RGB bouncing with the music. Parts already here or on their way.
Also the best form of backup for Roon’s library.
This does seem like something that might be deep in a design decision made in the past, BUT, that doesn’t mean Roon couldn’t create tools making it easier to manage these issues:
—Allow server software restart from any remote. Even system reboot.
—Allow schedule or pause of background processes like metadata improver.
—If relevant, allow designation of unidentified albums as “identified” so that they don’t tax the system - can find and un-designate these with Focus so that you can occasionally check to see if they are identifiable.
Yeah, that would be kind of an admission of Roon’s issues. But some of those tools would probably help with many of the different problems people have with Roon.
So am I. I gave Roon 12 months overall and it requires too much tinkering, I had to remove my favourites from Qobuz to make it useable, I kept seeing albums needing cleaning from my library without knowing what they were.
I’ve been back on LMS for a month and am just listening to music without the tinkering. I have added my Qobuz favourites back and they integrate nicely in LMS, see below, one release on my NAS and four Qobuz saved to the library
No it’s not as polished as Roon but I just want to listen to music and the SQ is no different IMO.
How can you make such a categorical claim? Given the complexity of current hardware and software, similar observed behavior can arise from many different causes. I’ve directly experienced Roon slowdowns from CPU overheating, DRAM flakiness, and SSD deterioration. I’ve also had flawless performance with the same library on different hardware. There may be a lurking memory management issue in Roon that causes similar behavior, but that issue is not that common: I’ve seen it only twice in my systems (3 different Roon servers) in two years, and not in the last year as far as I can tell.
Because I have been in contact with several users who have experienced sudden slow-downs and who have been looking at their Roon logs. Common denominator was Roon server maxing out one CPU core, bringing to a crawl all user interaction with the system. As I wrote before, this can be a massive metadata update or a storage library update, and these processes all by themselves make RAM usage steeply go up (besides the thread making one CPU core run at 100%). File handle count as reported in the Roon logs goes also steeply up (can double or even triple), without going down again after the server process stops. Interestingly, running a Roon database update brings the file handle count down again…
You have to take into account that these server processes will run for far longer with a big database. Users with smallish databases possibly won’t notice it happen. And as I noticed many times… on a recently restarted system, these processes run very fast, and on systems with longer uptime they take ever more time to run, hours even… When I have run into these situations, only way to recover system usability was to restart Roon server…
Yep, this is circumstantial evidence, but common sense suggests that these common observations of several users are a much more likely cause for the observed phenomena than hardware problems, for which there is no evidence at all, wouldn’t you think?
I am not interested anymore in debating these issues. I am quite sure that Roon staff know about this. As the issues seem to be rooted in a very fundamental design decision, there is little what they can do to remedy and avoid the problems, and I repeat that from reading extensively through forum threads for quite a long time, I am convinced that they prefer to not take up these issues nor discuss them with their user base. And so be it then…
Because it only affects Roon at the time it happens. Roons logs show the metadata process is running and this is the only time it experiences this issue. Using htop shows roon is the process causing the one core to max out, remember Roon is single core process. No other app running on same machine that all use same hardware at same time experience any io issues in connection or operation of function. In all other operations the system is running as it should I can easily connect to it, and run diagnostics only Roon becomes inaccessible .As soon as I stop and restart Roon it goes back to normal.
FWIW, and not entirely inline with the issue @CrystalGipsy and @Andreas_Philipp1 raise, but gives an example that there’s a difference in behaviour.
CPU thermal management set to performance “eep me cool” in the bios.
Under normal use, just playing music, no active DSP etc, my CPU cores are idling along and CPU temp rarely rises about 42C. This goes for Roon and Plex and anything else I have tried.
This is a fresh install of Plex Server scanning my music folder. All 6 cores in use and CPU temp temp reached around 49C. This is similar to Emby, JellyFin, Logitech Media Server to name a few.
This is a fresh Roon install (DietPi), scanning the same folder (Plex disabled). I have physically set all 6 cores available to Roon. CPU temp rises to 58C. But can, and does get to 62 to 64C at times.
This may well be comparing apples to oranges, as we cannot be sure that ‘scanning my music folder’ means exactly the same to Plex as it does to Roon. I have never used Plex, but does Plex download metadata from a repository on the cloud for every album it identifies in your media folder, as Roon does? The exact amount of work done by every media server while processing your media folder very well may be quite different…
It uses a single core at any point in time, but switches between available cores, to keep core temp as low as possible… This is normal behavior…
Just had it happen out of the blue after an album had just finished. Clicked on Qobuz section and oh ohh message pops, up I had htop open already and low and behold one core maxed out. Did it a few times then all ok again.
Yes it does download metadata for all albums/artists that are in TiVo much like Roon. But you can set a time fo when it performs updates and other maintenance tasks, but on initial scan and adding new media it will pull metadata.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
39
OK, last night I caught Roon in the act. I used the TOP command in Ubuntu to see system load in real time.
When Roon is just playing music and behaving, CPU usage is between 1% and 3%. Open a new remote and it may spike to 6%-8%.
So last night music kept dropping out or pausing. Then the blue spinning circle and the “waiting for your core” message.
Check CPU usage and it’s fluctuating between 80% and 120%. All of it RoonAppliance. It took Roon about an hour to complete whatever it was doing and go back down to 3%. However there was no activity referenced in the upper right of the Roon remote window. Whatever was happening was completely behind the scenes.
Roon is unusable during that time. If a record player stopped randomly or skipped tracks, the manufacturer would be skewered.
ROON - YOUR APPLICATION SELF DESTRUCTS!
The remainder of the minor processes on the server machine operated perfectly well during this time. It’s just Roon, killing itself over and over again, pausing music, skipping tracks telling me they are loading slowly, losing connections, all of it.
My library isn’t that large - 11K albums, 150K tracks, maybe 500 unidentified albums (mostly BD and DVD-Audio rips where the track length doesn’t match the database so they are not identified). Roon should work for me!
