"Lightweight" Option

Roon Software Discussion
1

Is it possible to add a “lightweight” option to the Roon application?

The concern I have specifically is that I have a large library (50k Albums) and I suspect Roon runs into problems on my PC whenever it is doing something in the background on the library. Right now “RoonAppliance” is hogging 23 GB of my RAM, and it is tripping over itself when I try to play something. Not surprisingly I suppose given it is very busy doing something.

Whatever it is doing, I would like to be able to turn it off. Shutting down the app does not do it, nor does “end task” in Task Manager. The process just starts up again.

Clearly, an app should not start something that resource demanding without the option to shut it down (other than by uninstalling).

2

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3

I’ve had this problem for years on several computers, I do not think it is a technical issue with my installation.

Instead, I suspect that the Roon app runs tasks that scale with the size of the library so that when that library grows sufficiently large, you wind up in this situation.

However, if in fact no task in “RoonAppliance” scales with the library size, that would be useful to have confirmed.

4

The Roon technical specifications give clear recommendations for the amount of RAM depending on the library size.

Your 50k albums are how many tracks? How much RAM does the machine have where Roon Server runs on? And are there any other things you do on this machine in parallel? (You will need to add the RAM needed for Roon to the RAM needed for the other stuff you do)

5

I have 128 GB RAM.

I am not running out of RAM, but Roon stutters in playback. I expect the ROON app somehow is overloaded although there are still plenty of system resources.

Maybe the Roon App does not go to 100% of your system resources tho :wink:

Not sure what exactly the problem is, but I suspect it is in the code.

6

Yet, you have never opened a support ticket. Whilst your library is considerable, Roon does run libraries of 1 M tracks, so it would be worthwhile asking Roon to look into your situation.

Since Roon keeps the database in memory, you should expect a large memory footprint with a large library. However, that should not affect playback performance unless the machine is incorrectly sized or something else is at play, e.g., numerous unidentified albums, file-related issues, networking etc. Roon technical support would provide clarity on the underlying problem.

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7

Are you running in a container or bare bones? Does the server have many cores, or is it a Xeon? Some configurations are not perfect for Roon, which needs good single thread performance.

8

The load on the network and CPU is low single digit percentage, 1-2 % typically.

I am down to it either being the library as you mentioned, Roon seems never to be satisfied with its processing of it, or there is some code issue.

It would be useful to know that this is not a known problem, but specific to me. That would make the library the prime suspect and clarify what I need to do.

9

The CPU is an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X : 16-Cores, 4501 MHz

10

And back to my original suggestion, what I believe I would find very useful is to shut down library maintenance in Roon to instead have it be “on demand” for whatever album I am currently playing..

11

That processor should be fine.

And the way to do this is to open a Support ticket. Period.

You’re attempting to suggest a solution when you don’t have a problem definition. Symptoms ≠ problem.

12

There is a subcurrent of users that have experienced and cataloged this issue. We haven’t reached a definitive conclusion and at one point with an open SUPPORT TICKET it was said that this is expected behavior.

So, do some searches on the forum. You’re not alone.

Finally…my Roon has generally been in a state of remission. It was doing exactly as you described for years…then nothing changed on my side but perhaps after a Roon update…Roon seemed to be able to better balance library activity and playback. It registered the same resource usage but the freezing and freakouts are far less common. So the only intent of this message is for Tommy to know that this is not as uncommon as the thread might otherwise apply.

13

@Tommy

Hope this can bring you some clue, to your issue, since I think your system in general should be able to run well after some fine tuning.

My Roon Server Setup and Experience

This is how my system is configured, where I run Roon Server:

:file_cabinet: Hardware Platform

  • NAS Model: Synology DS1821+
  • RAM: 64 GB
  • UPS: SOC CX350 for power protection
  • Roon Installation: Located on a dedicated 400 GB Synology NVMe SSD storage pool
  • Read Cache: 2 TB Western Digital Red NVMe SSD configured as read cache
  • Music Library: Entirely locally stored on the NAS — no streaming services
  • Library Size: Over 48,000 albums and 587,000 tracks indexed
  • File Formats: Primarily FLAC and DSD (dsf/dff)
  • Storage Usage: Just under 20 TB in the main storage pool

:gear: Performance Behavior

  • In general, the system runs very well and is highly responsive.
  • Playback typically starts within a fraction of a second after pressing play.
  • Joining or leaving zones takes about 4–5 seconds.
  • The system handles 5 simultaneous zones smoothly, even with DSD256 playback:
    • 3 zones run native
    • 2 zones are resampled via DSP
  • Even under these conditions, navigation in the app and access to the server remain fast and stable.
  • Typical CPU load is between 1–3%, but when streaming DSD to five zones, it rises to just over 20% — and even then, performance remains smooth with plenty of headroom.
  • About once per quarter, Roon becomes sluggish. When that happens, I simply kill the Roon process and restart it.
  • After about 10–15 minutes, the system is fully operational again and becomes highly responsive.

:chart_increasing: Resource Usage

  • Typical RAM usage: Around 20 GB ±2 GB for Roon Server
  • Other processes: Use less than 10 GB of RAM
  • I recognize the situation you described with high RAM usage — it’s familiar to me too.

:receipt: Installation History

  • During the first week after initial Roon installation (over a year ago), there was intense disk activity — heavy read/write operations.
  • Since then, I’ve only made minor adjustments to the setup.

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Possible Key Difference
One thing I noticed that you didn’t mention — and which might explain why my setup performs more smoothly — is that:

  • My Roon installation and database are located on a dedicated NVMe SSD storage pool
  • I also have a 2 TB SSD read cache, which likely helps with responsiveness and indexing performance

:hammer_and_wrench: Optimization Tip
If you’re running heavy background tasks in Roon but want to prioritize smooth playback and responsiveness, it’s worth adjusting the Background Audio Analysis Speed setting under Settings → Audio. Lowering this can reduce resource usage and improve overall system fluidity.

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14

If you go into settings and library you can see how to kill any background analysis with your library. You will also be able to see cleanup and skipped files which might point to rips the core has issues with.

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15

I have developed a hypothesis regarding what may cause the problems I am encountering.

I am pretty sure it is the interaction between the code and the data. I listen to a lot of new classical music on a weekly, new release basis. (New releases typically come on Fridays and I try to listen to most of them). This has me add new releases to my online library at my streaming service at a high frequency. That might be somewhat unusual, and I think this might make my case troublesome for this reason:

I have noticed that many of the albums I add this way later come up as “not available” at the streaming service. They may be updating things on their server. Now, if Roon tries to maintain an updated library, it not only finds lots to do, but it is sending a lot of requests to that streaming service. Very reasonably, the streaming server may respond by throttling that traffic so that, since there is a large library involved, it takes ages to complete the update and moreover, while that update is going on, I am trying to listen to a server that throttles my traffic.

I am not an expert on these things but thought I would mention this.

In any case, I have convinced myself it is not an issue for technical support, but rather for the developers. Of course, the developers may have much more important things to look into.

Still, my feedback stands, I would like to be able to completely turn off automatic library maintenance to rather initiate it myself when / if needed.

16

Now that you have more precisely defined a request for Feedback > Feature Suggestions, you can do that. To gain traction, vote and explain why others in the community should support the suggestion.

However, hypothesis or not, if you have an issue with Roon, you should open a Support ticket as described earlier.

Roon does not monitor this category.

17

Maybe you can consider switching to use ‘Listen Later’ iso adding all these new releases to your library.
Or do you really want to add them to your library?

May I ask you what is the value of having 50k (mostly streaming I assume) albums in your library.

I experience so many changes at the streaming service(s) - Qobuz in my case - that library management becomes more a hurdle than an asset.
Now I am still old school, and still buy albums ( downloads) that I really like. Al though the number is schrinking every year.

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18

I used to run Roon on a very similar system (5950x with 128GB RAM on Windows) and somehow it was never fully stable. Devices dropping out, new albums not recognised etc.

I don’t recall any RAM issues (I have 50k tracks, not albums), but I got fed up and installed Roon on the same PC on a virtualised DietPI (through Hyper-V). That worked absolutely fine without any issues or glitches.

1 Like
19

I agree.

I am definitely seeing the advantages of just working with a single playlist – the one I am listening to at the moment – and not maintain any library at all.