Mac Mini Slowing Down After Few Days of Uptime

Support
22

I have a 2012 i5 iMac running Roon Server with 14k albums (over half is Tidal these days).

Roon database is on HDD and I’ve never had any performance issues at all, with albums loading slowly.

I would say Roon database on HDD is a big no no for a new Roon Server purchase (i.e. spending new money on a Roon Core). But for trying/using existing gear for Roon Server, it can definitely work fine (at present).

I’m not speaking from any expertise here - just personal experience…

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23

I believe database relies on binary tree algo with a scheme called indexing. That translates into logarithmic speed up. Unless roon tries linear or even exponential speed down algo granted today’s hardware is fast enough, HDD technology is still fine for this large database (I have not worked out all the fine details.). This is not a claim. Just a wild guess. Somewhat an(un) educated one. If the difference between SSD vs HDD is instantaneous vs 0.5s, then I can just live with HDD technologies for now. Perhaps a roon engineer can step in and give us an idea how far off I am from the 0.5s figure for database size of, say, 10~20k albums.

24

I don’t know the maths but I also have a NUC7i7DNHE with a Samsung NVMe SSD 960 EVO running Roon OS to compare with…

At least for a >14k album library size and not doing any DSP at all, the iMac experience works fine for me. There’s nothing about the iMac Roon Server experience that frustrates me… yet. Maybe future Roon updates will change that. At that point I can upgrade the iMac.

Anyway, just sharing one personal experience. I hope you can find out the cause/s.

25

Thank you for sharing your experience. @noris I changed DNS server settings to the Cloudflare’s. Cloudflare DNS servers rock. Now my roon flies. Lightening quick. CPU util is now rarely over 50%, that is, half of a core. New track additions, identifications are now a few seconds affair. Cool. SQ got better (very early, very subjective. couldn’t resist^^). Even tidal streaming is snappier. No more patrolling progress bar. roon must be making lots and lots of DNS calls + use lots of resource to wait for the response and CONSTANTLY. I wonder why. I will give a longer-term report soon.

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26

Glad to hear that changing DNS has helped @shinyc. My guess would be the same as yours that too many DNS calls were happening in the background and not being delivered, causing the slowness but it is too early to say conclusively. Please let me know if everything still seems stable after a few more days.

Thanks,
Noris

27

I will report back to you in a few days. Thank you for your support.

1 Like
28

is the instruction to change DNS on the core, on the remote, or both? all machines on the network?

29

@woodford - This would be a setting in your Router, for example if you have TP-Link you would follow these instructions: https://www.tp-link.com/us/faq-1710.html

Thanks,
Noris

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30

Just to add, I switched to Cloudflare DNS (1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1) several months (years?) ago and have never looked back. Highly recommended.

31

Hi Noris,

Things got slow again. Reporting a timestamp. Might be because tidal is slow.

32

Just re-launched roon server. Everything is back to normal speed again. So the good behavior lasted 4 days. Something is happening here inside the roon.

33

Yeah, is Roon Server slowing down, or your ISP?

34

I think it is the roon server that is slowing down because after re-launching the roon server, speed picked up again.

35

Hello @shinyc,

Can you please provide some more timestamps of when this issue occurs?

Thanks,
Noris

36

Hi Noris,

I just want to make sure I understand what is meant by a timestamp before trying to answer your question. I am supposing that a timestamp in this context means time at which trouble is detected. And by way of sending you a timestamp, I am sending you a notice via the roon community message which entails a timestamp. If I am misunderstanding your definition of timestamp, please let me know in return. Otherwise, I am not sure what you meant by sending you more timestamps. Isn’t one more than enough?

37

Hello @shinyc,

Since you have changed to the new DNS the diagnostics would be different than before.

This “timestamp” I am asking for is you saying something like:
“Roon was slow at 7:05PM EST on January 13th and I then rebooted Roon at 7:14PM EST and everything is back to normal”.

This should be the local time and date in your city and then the QA team can cross-reference that exact time in the diagnostics to see if there was any unusual behavior.

Thanks,
Noris

38

Hi noris,

Is it possible to check the timestamp on the post above on your end? It is post 31 on topic 56238. That is when trouble occurred.

39

Hi @shinyc - Yes, I can check the timestamp based on your post time. I have just checked our diagnostics server though and I do not see any new reports from your Core, is the machine still powered on and online?

– Noris

40

hi noris, my machine has been on all the time. Anything else I should check?

41

Hi noris,

It got slow again. It is 11:28pm 2019/01/15 GMT+9.