Large library on OS X having playback skipping and general unresponsiveness issues

Roon Software Discussion
1

I have a mix of local and Tidal/Qobuz music in a 500,000+ track library with my core running on OSX. I’ve been having playback skipping and general unresponsiveness issues forever and finally stumbled on a post regarding the inferior garbage collector which smells exactly like what I’m seeing. To that end, I recently submitted an order for a bare bones Nucleus to relieve myself of these frustrations. If this helps substantially, I will be reposting to beg you to please stop advertising support for OS X and any other platforms that cannot support “large” libraries.

2

Very large libraries suffering from slow response time can sometimes be a result of not enough ram.
What are your machine specs?

3

Mac mini running Monterey
3.6 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i3, 64 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

4

No shortage of ram there!

5

In case you have no other use for the Mac, try installing Windows 10 on it for Roon Core. Note that the Roon database has to reside on SSD for performance reasons.

6

i3 might struggle a little. Assuming this is a 2018 MacMini

where is the library located? Local drive or network attached?

what formats are you struggling with 44.1 or higher?

how many endpoints?

what network connections are in use? wifi or all wired? especially for the CORE…and any Ethernet over power or involved?

I run a MacMini M1 with 16GB RAM and 350K tracks on local library with no issues, similarly on an i7 NUC with 16G Ram with a library over a network share on Windows PC, or a Windows 10700 with 16G Ram local drives same library.

500K tracks is a very large ask of any roon core

7

Yes it’s a 2018 Mac mini. Library is on a single USB attached drive. All formats are affected, whether local or streamed. Total of two endpoints, never playing to more than one simultaneously. Core is ethernet attached, everything else is wireless, no ethernet over power. The network is solid, all other network activity on the core by other apps and on other other devices is fine. Issues seem to worsen the longer the core is up, a core reboot seems to help. Activity monitor shows plenty of memory available.