New to Roon .. a couple of crashes, slow and resource hungry

Support
1

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

MacBookPro 2.8GHz Dual Core 16GB/1TB running Big Sur 11.1
Roon V1.8 Build 710

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

Netgear and Ubuquiti mixed (large and complex spanning 20+ acre property - very stable)
Immediate Roon network area mix of cabled Ethernet and Wifi through Netgear Wifi Router (also very stable).

Music library on Synology DS1817 (8x10TB + 2x512GB SSD caches) Music library is huge … Almost 3TB

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

Digital Audio - Sonos and Devialet with various peripherals …

Devialet - Phantom Gold x2, Dialog
Sonos - Sound Bar, Sub, P1 x2, P3 x2, Boost
Project - Turntable, Pre-Amp
Oppo - Blu-ray
Apple TV
Various - PC’s, Mbox’s, KRK monitors, etc

Project turntable -analog- Project valve pre-amp -analog- Sonos Connect
Sonos Connect -optical- Phantom Gold (Left)
Oppo Blu-ray -optical- Phantom Gold (Right)
Netgear Router -cable ethernet- Synology NAS
Netgear Router -cable ethernet- Devialet Dialog
Netgear Router -cable ethernet- Sonos Boost
Apple TV -HDMI- Sony 4K TV
Opportunity Blu-ray -HDMI- Sony 4K TV
Mac mini -HDMI- Sony 4K TV
Sony 4K TV -analog- Sonos Sound Bar

Everything else is local single zone Netgear Wifi or the specific Sonos and Devialet wireless device optimised protocols.

Description Of Issue

Am I asking too much of Roon? Is it crashing and thrashing the PC because of my library or should it cope?

Sorry for the vague query … but on my current projections Roon will be rescanning and continually analysing for the next 80 days before I know whether it’ll work ok for me.

cheers,

Kev.

Some background info:

I’m on day 4 of my trial and Roon has crashed twice while trying to index my library hosted on the Synology NAS. It seems to have taken close to 3 days to index the full library but subsequent scans seem to “find” a few more tracks even though the library hasn’t been altered.

Note: The NAS runs as a media server and is also running Plex.

Background analysis is crawling along … thus far only covering ~5% of the library (I’ve just switched from throttled to 1 core, noting resource and fan speed warning but resources were already being heavily consumed by Roon when scanning and the fan was already on full).

This MacBook Pro is dedicated to media. Aside from Roon there’s Tidal, Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, Sonos, Vox … but these are not typically active in parallel with Roon now.

Subscriptions: Apple, Tidal, Deezer, Spotify, Youtube, etc. But only Tidal is relevant to Roon.

Library: Approx 350K+ tracks … I’m a hoarder and the library has dumps of old portable music players, old iTunes libraries, rips of all of my CDs and a lot of painstakingly converted vinyl. So it’s a mess with lots of duplication (possibly triplication) and would take forever to manually rationalise. No doubt 90% of the library is available in Tidal!

Roon was suggested to me by my Hifi guy when I was complaining that the Devialet app “upgrade” dropped streaming support for Tidal and I didn’t have a good option for playing high definition music on the Phantom Golds. I’d tried Vox and didn’t like it and trying to find a music library management option for my massive collection has been fruitless.

2

Hi @Kev_Punter and welcome to the Roon forum. One of Roon’s first missions is to perform an analysis of all of your tracks for volume levelling/ dynamic range data. This means analysing the tracks themselves, so that’s 3TB through a single core. The available bandwidth between the NAS and the Mac core is also a factor. A beefier core would suit for this task at least and perhaps that library also.

Good luck,
Carl

3

You might consider turning the analysis off while you are using the system. Turn it back on at night.
The analysis gives you features like track loudness and the visual waveform while music is playing. It’s sort of a fringe benefit, but in your case you are paying a heavy price for it. You should be able to use Roon fine without that. If you like Roon, that function can get completed eventually.
You don’t mention how the MacBook is connected to your network. Is it ethernet too? That’s probably one of the most important factors for satisfactory use.

1 Like
4

From yours and killdozer’s response I’m feeling the weight of my sins … The price of 20+ years of moving a folder called “Music” from one storage device to another and dumping everything audio in there (including my horrific guitar attempts) is coming home to roost!

Connection to the NAS from the MBP is Wifi as you’ve probably suspected and I’m guessing that a high speed cabled ethernet connection and a dedicated multi core processor PC as a Roon Core is the smart option for my situation.

Thanks … looks like I’ll be sticking with Roon but addressing my kit.

2 Likes
5

Great decision!

6

Also, there are programs that can go through that music for you to help clean things up. There is one app “SongKong” that can do things like this. The developer is on the forum and active here. That will be something you’d want to address at some point anyway, right?

1 Like
7

hi Kev,
besides having quite a lot of things connected to your network, all we’re really looking at to resolve your issue are 3 things: NAS, Network, PC running roon.

As you’ve just specified, the connection from your Mac to the NAS is Wifi. eeeek! There’s your problem right there. setup a cable connection stat.

I’m running a windows PC with similar spec to yours and don’t have any issues with a library about half the size.

Here’s would be my recommendations, in order:

  1. Cabled connection between MBP and NAS (your NAS has 10gbe capability to you could even invest in a 2.5/5gbe USB-C network adapter and a 2.5/5gbe switch to get some even faster speeds
    1.5. Change the HDD in the MBP to SSD (if it isn’t already)
  2. Add RAM to the NAS (unfortunately the CPU on the NAS is not very powerful but a new NAS is an expensive upgrade)
  3. try turning off plex and see if performance increases
  4. increase the cores used for analysis in roon to 2 (usually it’s 1 i think)
  5. Get a new roon machine with 4 cores (but 16GB RAM) should be fine
1 Like
8

Well … being a coder for the last 40+ years I’ve been tempted to crack open the workbench and crank out some Python code. Typical though … the plumber’s house always has the worst plumbing eh? :slight_smile:

Thanks, I’ll give it a close look!

1 Like
9

Perfect!

The NAS already has max RAM upgrade and the MBP has a 1TB SSD. Ironically I had a dedicated windows PC with cable ethernet to the LAN that just died … had I foreseen this I would have fixed it and loaded Roon there.

My very next action will be to order an adaptor for the MBP and get the library analysis knocked over. (yes, I’ll shut down all extraneous services on NAS and MBP to get through it quick and bump the cores to 2 for the duration).

Thanks for the advice.

Kev.

10

Quick comment… Roon creates a database and index at the Core (not on the NAS). Trying to database and index the 3TB of music is probably overwhelming the poor MBP. Additionally, as part of this analysis, Roon reads the entire file to create a spectrum for dynamic range, visual, volume leveling, I’m not sure what else. So, you’re trying to pull 3TB of files across Wifi… that will be slow… and delays may cause instability with Roon.

So, now that you have a better idea of what Roon is doing… I’d optimize the CPU and network to tackle this task in as an efficient way as possible.

1 Like
11

Thanks … getting the picture now that I’m seeing under the hood!

The Roon files in the Library on the MBP are just under 15GB too … which probably explains the slow startup when I launch Roon.

Though I’m most likely to stick with Roon I’m probably going to shift to a dedicated server and bring all of the media local (as well as rationalising the library with something like SongKong as suggested)

2 Likes
12

Hey @Kev_Punter,

It’s so great to see that even though you’ve just started using Roon during a free trial, you’re engaging on our community - welcome :wave:.

It looks like you’ve had a great conversation with some of our subscribers (thanks @killdozer, @grossmsj, @Andreas_kaestel and @ipeverywhere for all the valuable input!).

Is there anything else our technical team can help with?
Rebeka

PS: If you can have a dedicated device to run Roon, that would be amazing!

3 Likes
14

Thanks Rebeka,

I’m good muddling along for now. I’m likely to treat this initial install as a learning curve … I’ve already started pruning the dog’s breakfast of a music library I have and will build a fresh Roon index on a clean machine when I get a platform in place.

I’m looking forward to see what 1.8 brings!

Kev.

1 Like
15

One possible way is to split your library into folders and set each one in turn as the Watched folder, tat will give Roon bite sized chunks

Then at night, crank up the number of cores used. Stay Throttled while you’re using it then max cores as you go to bed.

It all sounds like the elephant is a big dinner at one go

16

Nice idea Mike …

I’m already organised at the top level directory as 0,A-Z … so that’ll be easy.

I’d be nice to have a schedule per directory for performance management relating to scanning and analysing … possibly with a default master schedule. Maybe that’ll be a 1.8+ feature :slight_smile:

Truthfully I’ve struggled to find a platform over the years that’ll manage and present the way I want and Roon is turning out to be a breath of fresh air!

Kev

17

Super, @Kev_Punter! I’m happy to hear you’re enjoying discovering Roon.

We’re here if you have questions along the way :smile:.

18

This topic was automatically closed 36 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.