My Nucleus+ is becoming increasing unreliable with frequent crashes for the past 1+ year. I thought the newer software updates would help, but it’s not improving.
The playback stops after some random period, and the Roon App screen goes blank for a while before it slowly reloaded. Sometimes the play queue gets wiped out after the crash. Resetting Roon Server usually helps. I have to reset Roon Server once or twice a week, some bad days I have to reset it multiple times a day. I thought it’s a Tidal issue, but it crashes also playing from the local library from the attached 4TB SSD.
There’s no change on my network, and none of the other streaming Apps are having problems. I have to go back to my legacy Meridian Sooloos library for playback many times as Roon keeps crashing, and it takes a long time to reboot Roon Server.
Another issue is I cannot add Tidal albums to the library using the iOS or iPadOS Roon App. It looks like it’s added to the library for at first, but reverts back to unchecked after a while. I have to add the albums using the iOS Tidal App.
I’d appreciate it very much if you could look into the issues.
Best Regards,
David
Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)
Roon Nucleus+, Serial Serial #54B203F68A49, 4TB SSD
Roon OS 1.0 (259), Server 2.66 (build 1658)
Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)
All devices are on the same network.
Netgear Cable Modem (Cox Gigablast up to 1Gb/s)
Netgear Orbi WiFi6 Router
Peakedge SE26 24 port GigE Switch
Netgear 16 port GigE Switch
Linksys 4 port GigE Switch
Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.) Endpoints
Devialet D250 PRO v.13.1
Meridian: 218 (3u), MS600, Control 15
AppleTV 4K (2u)
iMac Studio
Other Devices
Meridian Core on QNAP
Crestron Pro2 Controller
Crestron CNX-PAD8 (Audio Matrix Switch)
Crestron MT-MC2W Controller
Thank you for the detailed report, and I apologize for the ongoing frustration. Dealing with frequent crashes and interruptions to your music is certainly not the experience we want you to have.
To be completely transparent with you regarding the crashes: something specific within your library’s data or structure is triggering a process that consumes almost all of the available memory (RAM) on your Nucleus+. When the memory maxes out, the Roon OS is forced to kill the process to protect the system, which results in the blank screens, wiped play queues, and the need for frequent restarts.
Our R&D team is actively investigating these specific memory allocation issues, and we are working hard on optimizations to handle these triggers more efficiently. You will see stability improvements designed to address this in our upcoming software releases. We highly recommend keeping an eye on the Roon Software Discussion > Software Release Notes section of the Community forum as we deploy these updates.
Regarding the issue with adding Tidal albums from your iOS device: this is actually a direct symptom of the server struggling with its memory limits. When the Nucleus+ is bogged down or silently freezing in the background, it cannot properly save the “add to library” command to your database or sync it with the Roon cloud, which is why the app eventually reverts the checkmark.
Please keep your Nucleus updated as new builds are released. If you find that the system is still experiencing these memory crashes after the next few updates, please reach out and report back here so we can take another diagnostic look.
Thank you for your patience and understanding while our engineering team works on these improvements!
Is this memory limits issue “specific” to my library’s data / structure or it’s a common Nucleus issue?
My library contains music files on the local SSD and Tidal tracks, nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve been diligently cleaning my library removing “Deleted Files”.
I’m running the latest version Roon. It’s always a bit scary to update Roon. This is my 3rd Nucleus+, the last 2 bricked after a Roon software update and could not be repaired.
A couple of data points for you:
Playing from Roon’s “Daily Mixes” almost always crash, usually after 1 or 2 tracks; sometimes it’ll work OK if I pause for a while and retart the queue again.
Roon Radio is the second most prone to crashes.
Roon crashes repeatedly sometimes, it boots up and crashes immediately when I hit Play, have to reset Roon Server before it works again.
Most of my friends are running Roon Core on Mac Mini, and they’re not experiencing frequent crashes as I do. I believe most newer Mac Mini’s have at least 16GB RAM. I was hoping Nucleus+ would be optimized for the Roon OS.
I’d appreciate it very much if you’re aware of any specific issues with my library.
Thanks for the additional details. We released a new Roon update today that should help with memory management, particularly on large libraries like yours, so please update and let us know how it’s looking on your end. Please report back once you’ve had a chance to try it.
I’ve updated to the latest Roon Version 2.67 (build 1661) production.
It seems to run smoother, but there are still a few issues:
Still cannot add Tidal albums using the Roon App. I tried to add album from New Release For You. It showed the album was added to my Roon library, but disappeared after a few seconds. I had to add the title using the Tidal App.
Opening the Roon App on another iOS device caused the playback to stop sometimes.
Roon and ARC page loading is extremely slow from time to time, especially ARC. ARC was having trouble loading the Album page one day, had to restart Roon Server.
Roon App was left opened one night and it lost contact with Nucleus+ suddenly, unable to connect after multiple attempts; but the N+ is still connected to the network; had to use the N+ web interface to restart Roon Server before Roon App could reconnect.
Roon was extremely sluggish this morning (May 31, 10am PST). It took minutes to load the Roon App. Opening the iOS App on another device caused playback to stop.
Playing the Daily Mixes was problematic, took a long time to load the playlist and cue the track. It kept having dropouts, random pauses and skipping issues.
Playing from my Library using Roon Radio worked better but also very sluggish and having random pauses and dropouts.
It seems preloading the entire playlist made the problem worse vs. Roon Radio cueing one track at a time.
I restarted Roon Server and tried a couple of hours later. It’s working much better after the reboot. It seems Nucleus+ is still having memory resource issues, unless there’s some BW / resources limitations on your remote server side.
I’d appreciate it very much if you could look into the matter.
Sorry to report that the new update didn’t fix the problem. Roon stopped playback suddenly this afternoon in the middle of streaming (Jun 1, 3PM PST). The zone disappeared for a while. When the zone came back I hit play and it immediately crashed again. I tried many times and Roon crashed immediately each time.
I did notice that Roon sync’d with Tidal and added 2 albums before it crashed.
Had to restart Roon Server before it can resume playback properly.
Thanks for the updates, and I’m sorry to hear your issues persist. A quick question for you - have you performed a full reboot of your Nucleus at all recently? If not, please safely stop Roon Server from running, and completely power down and reboot the Nucleus.
I’d also consider setting a static IP for the Nucleus via the webUI as well, if not already.
Can you confirm the amount of RAM on your Nucleus+?
From a fresh Roon Server diagnostic report, we can see that when the Jun 1 session started, the update metadata queue had 116,065 tracks pending. The current Jun 3 session started with ~33,000 still remaining, meaning it’s been grinding through this for days. Your library has 171,089 tracks and 12,444 albums, which is very large. Every daily refresh triggers a full re-queue of your entire library, keeping the Nucleus+ CPU and memory saturated continuously.
The pattern you described, “Roon synced with Tidal and added 2 albums before it crashed” is exactly what the logs show. The Tidal sync triggered library mutations that pushed already-stressed memory and CPU over the edge.
Let’s see if any of the below may help:
Stop the background metadata churn while you’re actively listening:
In Roon Settings → Library, set "Background Audio Analysis" to Off (or Low) while actively using Roon.
Perform a hard reboot as mentioned above.
Additionally, the connection failed to 10.0.1.58 pattern repeating on your Meridian zone suggests the Meridian device (at that IP) is going to sleep or losing its network presence intermittently. Check:
Power management / sleep settings on the Meridian device
I believe the Nucleus Plus comes with 8Gb of RAM, I’ve not made any modifications.
Per your advise I did a full power reboot, set static IP, and set “Background Audio Analysis” to Throttled (looks like the number of Cores option is gone, only Fast, Throttled and Off now). All the background tasks are scheduled when the device is not used.
The Meridian 218 has no network connectivity issues, it’s hardwired, Sleep timer is set on Roon. I have another 218 next to it running Meridian Sooloos, and it has no issues.
It ran OK for a while, but the problems recurred the next morning (Jun 4, ~11am PST). Roon page loading started to run sluggishly, and crashed after about an hour of streaming KCRW radio on the 218, the zone disappeared. When it came back, it keeps crashing immediately after I hit Play, had to reboot Roon Server before it’ll play normally again. The issue seems to happen more with the 218 than the Devialet 250PRO maybe because it’s performing volume leveling for the 218 zone?
It looks like some users of the latest Titan experienced the same issues. The Titan also has 8Gb RAM, seems marginal compared to latest devices.
Another issue is full Power Reboot of the Nucleus Plus is always problematic and stressful. This is my 3rd Nucleus Plus board, Roon updates bricked 2 of my Nucleus Plus before. The Nucleus Plus always has problem reconnecting to the network after a power reboot. I got an error rebooting the it using the web interface, had to manually power it off and on. It took me over 30min and multiple power reboots before it’d reconnect to the network.
There’s another intermittent issue is that after cueing the track or Radio, the track or station would show up on “Now Playing” but Roon won’t play the selection. Have to reboot Roon Server before Roon will play normally.
Thanks for those details. We just released another set of memory improvements to our Early Access group, and those changes should reach Production after some time. When they do, please try the new build on your end.
I just looked over your latest diagnostics, and I am not seeing any Critical traces or issues with the SSD that would explain this behavior, so this is most likley a software interaction with the large library size.
Additionally, if the issue is related to the 218, I have heard that Meridian released a new firmware. I am not certain if it is only for ID40 cards, but if it is available for your 218 as well, please consider updating the firmware.
Thanks, will be looking out for the new Roon update.
I’ve been having recurring issues past few days, and it’s pretty repeatable:
I had Roon playing on one zone using the iPad App. Opening the Roon App on the iPhone set to a different zone would cause the iPad Roon App to crash, the queue and zone went blank for several minutes before it reloads.
It didn’t appear to affect the Roon App on the iPhone initially, the graphics and zone loaded completely, but would become unresponsive until the iPad App was restored.
Roon also had trouble loading certain tracks repeatedly after using the Radio for a while, and wiped out the zone and the queue for several minutes. Sometimes by swapping the queue and play a different track first before the problematic track would fix the problem.
I don’t think the memory issues are related to the endpoints. My 218’s are running the latest version based on info from the Meridian forum. I saw some users mentioning a new s/w update, but can’t find anything on Meridian’s website. I’m not sure if the 218 updates automatically or needs dealer supports to update the s/w.
Thank you for the detailed updates. The behavior you are describing — crashes that are resolved by a reboot but return over time — is consistent with a known memory management issue that our engineering team is actively working on.
The fix is currently in Early Access and will reach Production in the next release. Please keep an eye on the Software Release Notes and update as soon as the new build is available. Once you have had a chance to test it, please report back here and let us know if things have improved.
One other thing to throw into the mix - I notice that you have a static IP address of 10.0.1.65 set on your Nucleus.
This could be in the range of addresses that the DHCP server in your router will allocate to devices in your home network that use the DHCP service.
If so, it’s possible that there might be an address clash - another device gets allocated the same address as you’ve set on the Nucleus.
I’m not saying that this is actually happening in your current setup, just advising you that if you use a static address on the network, make sure that it does not lie within the address range used by the DHCP server - that’s best practice for using static addresses on devices.
The alternative approach would be to use DHCP on your Nucleus and reserve its address in your router so that it is always allocated the same address.
I’ve been using DHCP when the crashes happened. Per @benjamin’s suggestion above I changed to Static IP. It didn’t make a difference, so I doubt that’s the root cause of the problem. I don’t believe there’s a conflict in the IP address, I just made the DHCP address Static.
So what’s the Best Practice for Nucleus+ Roon Core, DHCP or Static IP?
