I have been buying CDs since the early 90s, @kevin. And I’ve been ripping them to lossless ever since. When iPods became popular in the early 2000’s, friends and family would dump their collections of CDs with me and I would rip them one disc at a time. The same thing happened a few years ago when vinyl records became popular. And when HDTracks, HighResAudio, NativeDSD and other web shops started selling high-res albums, I would buy from them. That is how my library became so big.
Anyway, back to my issue which I hope you can help me with. I recently tried what you recommended. I bought four 10TB Western Digital RED hard drives and installed them in my computer. I used SATA cables that came with my new Asus Dark Hero motherboard and power cables from my new Corsair 850W power supply. Windows 10 had no problems recognizing the four drives and formatting them as NTFS. Then I alphabetically copied my entire library over from my NAS which took a little over 2 days at gigabit speeds. The first 10TB drive contained artists and bands whose names began with A to F. The second drive, G to K, so on and so forth. Then I disabled my NAS from Roon, powered it down, and let Roon scan the contents of the four new drives. Sadly I experienced the same issues during playback. There was no improvement whatsoever.
Here’s what would happen. Let’s say I begin from everything powered down. I switch on the computer running the Roon core and the rest of my hi-fi system, including the endpoints. Once everything is up and running, I’ll grab my iPad, run the Roon Remote app and tap on any song from any album. It will play instantly. If I choose another song within 30 seconds, it will play instantly too. As often as I like, I can choose any song from any album and it will play instantly as long as I do so within the first 30 seconds of the currently playing song.
HERE’S THE PROBLEM. If I let the current song play for more than 30 seconds and then choose any other song from any other album (even a song from the same album as the one that is playing), the song timeline will swing purple left to right 6 or 7 times before it plays. Let’s say the currently playing song is on its 31st second. If I tap on any other song from any other album or even the next song, the song timeline will swing purple left to right 6 or 7 times before it starts playing.
Then I discovered a shortcut. If I want to hear the very next song without the timeline swinging purple left to right 6 or 7 times, I simply drag the dot on the timeline to the rightmost end and the next song will play instantly. The song timeline remains flat and it will take 6-7 seconds for the “waveform” graph to show up but it will play instantly.
This happens even if I restart the Windows 10 computer running the Roon core.
To make sure the problem isn’t with my network, I decided to use UPnP/DLNA to play my songs. I have four Roon endpoints, a Sonore OpticalRendu connected via USB to a Sonore UltraDigital feeding an I2S input of a PS Audio Directstream DAC, the Network Bridge card inside the PS Audio Directstream DAC, a Sonore UltraRendu feeding the USB input of a Meitner MA3 DAC and the Network Bridge card inside the Meitner MA3 DAC. All of them support DLNA/UPnP. I have Minimserver installed in my computer and the mConnectHD app on my iPad. When I use mConnectHD to play music from Minimserver to any of the four endpoints, any song from any album plays instantly with no lag, no delay. At any point in the currently playing song’s timeline, I can select any other song from any other album and it plays instantly.
Since I also have Minimserver running on my Synology DS918+ NAS, I switched it on and waited for it to boot up. Then on the mConnectHD app, if I chose music from my NAS and any song from any album played instantly with no lag and no delay. At any point in the currently playing song’s timeline, I can select any other song from any other album and it playback starts the moment I tap on the song title. This exercise proves my home network works well and cannot be blamed for any issues I have with Roon.
Going back to why I think neither playback from a NAS nor playback from hard drives directly accessed by the Roon core is the problem - I cannot understand why Roon will instantly play any song from any album I have on either my NAS or my hard drives as long as choose the next song before the 30th second of the currently playing song. If I let whatever I’m listening to play for 31 seconds or more, the song timeline will swing purple left to right 6 or 7 times before the next song I choose starts to play. This, combined with the fact that storing my albums on hard drives the Roon Core can directly access is why I am convinced the fix lies within Roon.
I certainly hope Roon @support can help.