I have made a transition from a PC based Roon server to an M4 Mac Mini. The software runs fine (and sounds terrific), but I am having trouble adding new albums. On the PC, when I added a new album, it appeared under “Recently Added” almost immediately, and with no effort on my part. Roon simply picked it up after being added to the Music folder in that artists subfolder. The Mac doesn’t do this. I have to ‘Force Scan’ to get it to read the file.
It works fine when I do the force scan, picks up the albums and all metadata, but the server on the PC did this automatically. Is it possible to have the Mac do the same automatic response? If so, please advise on what settings I may have wrong.
I have Roon set to scan my NAS-based Music folder and all subfolders under Settings → Storage.
The system works, it was just easier when it picked them up automatically. I keep thinking I must have a setting wrong.
MY SETUP:
M4 Mac Mini, running the latest OS (MacOS 26.5), 24G RAM with a 10GB port.
Roon version 2.67 (build 1661)
Music files are stored on a UGreen 4800 NAS attached through the 10GB port to a 10GB switch. The same for the NAS, through the 10GB port to the same switch.
The NAS was the same one that was used for the PC. The music files did not change, only the ‘head’. If this is a common issue, is there anyway to address it? Improve the back-and-forth?
Perhaps the UGreen’s SMb implementation is better at communicating file changes to a Windows client than a Mac client. Perhaps best addressed to UGreen support as a first step at least.
Agreed. It looks like it might be a UGreen/Mac issue. Oh well. I don’t add all that often. I just have to force rescan when i do it. That force rescan is VERY slow on the Mac. Likely related to the same issue. Thanks.
Have been on QNAP and MAC since the start and their OS has changed several times but has always been like this for me. At times, it’s been a laboriously slow scan and re-starting the NAS has helped but since the new ROON OS update it’s been pretty good.
I run Roon in a nearly similar configuration on a Mac Mini M2 and the music files stored on a Synology DS225+ NAS. Just yesterday I copied a bunch of new Music files to the shared music drive on my NAS and Roon added them automatically to my catalog. Connection is also made by SMB, so there seems to be no general issue with the protocol. How is SMB configured on the UGreen NAS? Here SMB is configured as shown - hope you can translate it. Maybe that helps.
Turn on “Opportunistic Locking” (Oplocks) on the UGREEN NAS
Oplocks allow your Mac mini to cache files locally on its incredibly fast M4 architecture rather than asking the UGREEN NAS for permission for every single track during a scan.
Open your UGREEN NAS Control Panel > File Services > SMB.
Click on Advanced Settings.
Look for Enable Oplocks (Opportunistic Locking) and ensure it is ticked.
Look for Enable SMB2/SMB3 Lease (if visible) and enable it. This significantly accelerates directory browsing and reading speeds for macOS clients.
Bypass the macOS Finder (Critical for Roon)
If you see a network drive icon on your Mac desktop and you pointed Roon to /Volumes/YourNAS, macOS acts as a middleman. Every Roon request gets filtered through the macOS file system, throttling the scan speed. [1, 2]
Open Roon > Settings > Storage.
Remove the current local folder path pointing to your NAS.
Click Add Folder > Add Network Share.
Use the direct SMB string using your NAS’s static IP address (e.g., smb://192.168.1.50/Music).
Input your UGREEN NAS credentials right there inside Roon. This lets Roon’s internal Linux-based engine talk directly to the NAS over the network, completely bypassing the slow macOS Finder layer. [1, 2]
Thanks. This turned out to be VERY helpful. My version of the UGreen software doesn’t allow Oplocks setting (it’s turned on by default), but your suggestion to use the static IP for the network connection in Roon led me down the right path. It turned out I had the network connection settings wrong, in both the Mac and Roon.
I have two ethernet connections to the NAS. The M4 Mac is connected directly to the 10G port on the NAS through its native 10G port. This was done to enable faster connection between the Roon server and the NAS. But to get access to the wider network, the NAS is then connected to my ethernet switch through its slower 2.5G port. That’s OK since I only have a gigabit network anyway.
Trying to change the static port made me aware that I have two ports on the NAS with different IP addresses. I was using the slower port’s IP in Roon, not the 10G port I should have been. This forced the software to transit through the NAS and out to the switch, then back to make the connection. Bad idea! When I changed the IP address to the direct 10G connection in Roon, the file reading happened very quickly. A simple change.
Unfortunately, changing the IP location caused Roon to reimport the entire database, eliminating most of my playlist connections. Luckily, I had backed up the playlists before I made the move to the Mac! The new speed is worth it.
I’m not that much of a technology person. Without Grok, I wouldn’t have been able to do much of what I’ve accomplished so far. As a result, I can’t explain to you why directly connecting is so much faster. Misconfigured switch? Bad cables? Not sure… I only know that it is at least multiples faster. Connecting both 10G ports on the Mac and NAS through a 10G UniFi 10G switch was the original configuration. It was incredibly slow.
And, even now, I’m still not getting automatic ‘pickup’ like I used to do when I hosted on the PC server. I have to ‘Force Scan’ to make it see the new albums or to import a playlist. Though now, that force scan pickup happens in a few minutes, rather than the hour-plus it took when I first adopted the Mac.
Cables can be an issue. I would check if all the patch cables are Cat. 6 or 7 compliant (usually it is printed on the cable). Older Cat. 5 cables may not be able to handle the transfer rates needed for 10 MBit/s devices. If so, replace them all with new ones which can be found for little money at Amazon.
Regarding the automatic scan of your music folder I’d open a support ticket here in the forum. The staff at Roon can check your log files and will probably find the problem and help you to fix it.
Luckily, I had backed up the playlists before I made the move to the Mac! The new speed is worth it.