@support
I’m running Roon on an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, late 2015, 3.2GHz i5, 8GB RAM) sending to a number of Bluesound devices. They can all be discovered and the library is scanned etc, but music almost never plays (even on the mac o/p) - usually there might just be a brief noise. I think that the computer cannot handle the processing needs of Roon but this is tough for me to accept given the computer’s spec and the CPU and memory as follows.
Any ideas?
Cheers
Graeme
Can you give more details of the network connectivity and where your music is stored.
wifi endpoints can be impacted by playing multiple streams simultaneously and also any DSP features you have turned on.
screen shots of the audio paths too will help
Hi @Graeme_Harrison ---- Thank you for the post and sharing your feedback with us. The insight is greatly appreciated!
Moving forward, I agree with @wizardofoz in terms of needing some more details here regarding the issue itself and your setup. With this in mind may I very kindly ask you to please provide me with the following:
Has analysis completed on your library?
Any issues playing audio from the iMac outside of Roon? You mentioned that you have Bluesound devices. Can you play to the endpoints without issue via the BS app?
Please expand on your setup description using this link as a guide.
-Eric
The music is stored on a NAS in 2 locations (HD material and iTunes library) as well as a small music collection on the mac (see below). I also access Tidal. Tidal sometimes works from mac o/p but not from the Bluesound devices (same problem as described previously). Both import and analysis have completed (they took about 2 days to complete). BluOS on the mac and mobile devices plays faultlessly - stored music (accessing the same places as I’ve pointed Roon to), Tidal, Spotify, Qobuz - through any of the Bluesound devices (I’m listening to it as I type this). It doesn’t make any difference if I close the BluOS controller or not when using Roon.
I can’t even access one stream, let alone many (with BluOS I can run all 7 zones in the house from any source without any problems at all). As far as I know I’m not using any DSP functions.
Any other information that you need?
Thanks
Graeme
Thanks for the follow up @Graeme_Harrison, very appreciated!
May I kindly ask you to please confirm that you do not have any active firewalls or antivirus applications running on the iMac? If you do please temporarily disable these functions and confirm if this yields a change in behavior with playback.
Also, just so I am clear on the issue. What type of “noise” are you hearing when you mention:
“music almost never plays (even on the mac o/p) - usually there might just be a brief noise”
Additionally, you also not that music “almost never plays”, does that mean it plays sometimes and not others?
-Eric
Hi Eris
Thanks for your reply. I use Kaspersky anti virus, but it is disabled at the moment to see if this helped things (it didn’t). The mac firewall is off as it always is for me. The ‘noise’ is a fraction of a second of the music that I’m trying to play. Since I installed Roon about 10 days ago, it has always been really intermittent (meaning not working 95% of the time). There was a day when it worked both from the computer and from the mobile app, with all of my devices, and I really enjoyed this, but it was very temporary and I’m not sure what was different to allow it to work for that time. I’ve tried power-cycling my computer and quitting all of programs to see if this worked, but neither worked. This computer is on all of the time.
Cheers
Graeme
Thanks for giving that test a shot for and sharing your observations with me @Graeme_Harrison, appreciated!
Before we look into enable diagnostics/checking logs I would like to ask you to please try hosting your Roon core on another device just so we can confirm what the experience is like with Roon running elsewhere.
Many thanks!
-Eric
OK, I can do that but it will be an older and slower computer and I’ll have to wait another couple of days for all of the scanning and analysis to be done, won’t I?
Cheers
Graeme
Thanks @Graeme_Harrison, I appreciate you giving this a shot for me. Here is what I would recommend to expedite this process…
Before anything make a backup of your current Roon database on the iMac just so we have for safe keeping.
Make sure Roon is not active on the iMac when setting the application up on the other computer.
To avoid having to wait for the library to be analyzed why don’t you grab a handful of albums from you music collection, place them on an external storage device, attach it to the new core, and have Roon watch the albums. I wouldn’t log into TIDAL either I would just try to playback those handful of albums from the new computer.
-Eric
Even with the older slower computer, the change seems to have largely cured the problem. Still occasional dropouts with hi res files but basically solid now. Thanks. I’ll report back as things progress.
I appreciate the update @Graeme_Harrison! Thanks for sharing the results of the proposed test 
A few things moving forward…
I contacted our accounts manager to see if you were on a trial period and confirm how much time you had left. He confirmed that you were and in doing so I had him also extend your trial out to 10/18 while we try to work through this issue with the iMac.
Can you give me some details about the machine you performed the test on? Are there any difference between the test computer and the iMac (installed applications, etc)?
The iMac should be able to run Roon and playback audio as expected but something is clearly blocking playback on the device. I know you mentioned that you have closed all the apps on the iMac and tested Roon again but can you please confirm that absolutely nothing is running at the same time as Roon. Furthermore, I have definitely seen this type of behavior in the past when there are firewalls present OR antivirus applications are running on the device. We are 100% certain that the firewalls are off on the iMac and Kaspersky anti virus was not active on the iMac, correct? Kaspersky anti virus has caused other users issue in the past so I want to make sure that this is not the case here.
-Eric
Hi Eric
Thanks for extending the trial period. I’ve been experimenting with my main iMac and found that for some reason, one of the attached USB hard drives was slowing it down really dramatically (not just for Roon). I’ve left that hard drive disconnected and switched back to this computer and things again appear to be solid. I’ll continue my testing but I think that the issue is resolved. If so, I’ll sign up after the initial trial period. Thanks again for giving me the extra time to experiment.
Cheers
Graeme
My pleasure @Graeme_Harrison, glad to hear of the progress with the iMac! Please keep me in the loop and if things continue to remain stable with I will got ahead and mark this thread as resolved. Many thanks!
-Eric
