· I'm noticing slowness when using the Roon App or Roon ARC
Describe the issue
The system is extremely slow. Sometimes it takes a minute or more to load an album page. I have a Nucleus+. I've used 48% of the disc space available, with 1607 albums. In the morning when I access Roon on my MacBook Pro, or my Mac Studio to build a playlist usually the first 1 or 2 selections come up right away. Then the slowness starts, and subsequent albums can take more than a minute to appear. After that happens a few times things get fast again. It's just too damned slow. iTunes used to load faster 20 years ago. My network is gigabit ethernet and is healthy. I have other media servers on the network that all work fine. That includes a video server that puts a far greater load on the network. This issue started a few updates ago. I have rebooted the Nucleus + but it does not solve the problem. When this happens Roon is unusable. I just can't sit and state at a screen that is doing nothing. I just give up[ and put a CD on. I wrote to you about this many months ago and got a message to take several steps, which I tried without result. It's not my network, and I don't think it is the hardware. Also, many days as I scroll down my list of music album covers are missing. This can also last for a minute or two until they fill in. At any rate, I'd love a solution. Roon replaced a Bluesound solution with an equal amount of music and it never slowed down or failed to display album art. Any help appreciated. I have a lifetime subscription, but I'm beginning to think about other solutions. Which would be a shame, because when it is working Roon is a dream.
Describe your network setup
Don't use Wifi on any of my Roon ready devices. It's gigabit ethernet, with an Araknis router.. model AN-110-SW-R-16. Whatever this problem is, it's not the network which is running fine.
Hi @Mel_Martin,
Thanks for reaching out to us to ask about this. This ticket will need to be brought to our development team. Before I do can you please record and upload a video of the slowness and loading delays happening? You can upload it here. Thank you in advance for your cooperation!
We’ve noticed the slow loading in your video (and in the accompanying logs) is related to a Various Artists/compilation album. Do the same album objects always trigger this slowdown in your Nucleus?
Can you reproduce the issue with Tidal albums? What about compilation albums (or albums with various artists credits) from Tidal in particular?
Here’s what we can see: there’s no specific Roon background process spinning when you encounter the error, or at least not a process that logs activity.
However, upstream requests to Tidal and metadata servers are continually timing out during the logged period. This isn’t causal, but it’s exacerbating loading delays as information and images are constantly re-requested.
Thanks for getting back to me… no it’s random. Some days it works OK, but most days it hangs… could be any album, the albums I’ve seen the hangs on are not in the various folder, which I guess is a catch all that may be an artifact from importing some of my Buesound albums, or something roon does on it’s own.
One day an album will be slow to load, the next day it will load fine.
I tend to notice this in the AM when Roon has been idle. Usually after an album takes forever to load, the rest of the albums load fine, but I have seen cases where another album will hang. It’s really frustrated and makes we want to go play a CD instead.
As an experiment I logged out of Tidal on Roon and still had the delays. I have never seen these delays loading Tidal music. What are the next steps here?
Now in reverse order, what happens if you resync with Tidal, and then temporarily disable your local watched folders? Do you notice an improvement in performance?
The issue with Various Artists is long-standing, and something our team is continually working on improving. Let us know!
I am still logged out of Tidal… still have delays. Not sure what you mean by re-syncing to Tidal.
I have no watched local folders. Only connected to Nucleus +. So I don’t think there is anything I can do in that regard.
I’m open to suggestions.
Hi @Mel_Martin,
You can resync Tidal by going to Roon settings → Services and clicking edit button next to Tidal. Sign back in and you will see an option that says sync library now. Please let us know if this helps.
I’ve been sighed out of Tidal for a couple of weeks. It did not hurt. When I looged back in it seems to automatically be syncing. I really doubt this will help. This issue seemed to start with a Roon software update some back. I’ve been hopeful every update it will get fixed. so far, it hasn’t worked. Will let you know if the tidal gambit works. There’s no reason it should. The slow performance is fairly recent. Roon has been perfect for years. I have made no changes.
I have to admit the last 2 days no slowdowns. This does not make sense to me. I logged out of tidal and still had slowdowns. Tried the sync and so far it seems to have fixed it. I’m puzzled by the mechanism. Bug in Tidal? Bug in Roon code? I don’t think I did anything to trigger this. And it suddenly just appeared. Any thoughts appreciated. Want to understand what is going on. Thanks…
I spoke too soon… this AM after loading 5 albums to a playlist it hung again for a minute or so before loading album 6. So not sure what to do now. The few days it worked was good. One note, Comcast is working on their network in my neighborhood today, but Roon is mostly a local network with my collection on the server, so they all should have loaded. Nothing selected from a streaming service. Will try again tomorrow after internet service returns… perhaps the internet was needed for something. But all my streaming services were turned off.
I believe there is some confusion here. Based on your account information, you do have a local library, which includes watched folders. My follow-up reply was to test if disabling these locally watched folders, and only relying on Tidal would affect performance.
Let me know if this is something you’d be able test
All the watched folders are turned off. I had some when I firt set up Roon. I I use tidal very little. As I said, to help with your experiment I logged out of Tidal for a couple of weeks, which did not solve the problem. What do you think the problem is? I’ve never seen a delay trying to load anything from Tidal.
A bit more info… last two mornings I was able to add many albums without delay. (Hooray) But this morning I am getting an error message (Metadata improver) at the top of the Roon app saying there is an issue with my connection to the Roon servers which will interfere with my metadata updates. My internet connection is solid. All my devices (including other servers) are working fine. so it’s an error I don’t understand. I still am logged out from my Tidal account, but will log back in tomorrow and see if that changes anything.
Metadata Improver errors are usually tied to some form of network instability, I wonder if there could be an issue with your ISP’s DNS configuration?
We have seen users have a better experience in the past if they change their Router’s DNS servers from the ISP provided ones to Cloudflare DNS, Quad9 or Google DNS. Can you please give this a try and let us know if it helps?
Also, in the video you sent it looks like the slowness was happening on a Mac Remote. Can you confirm if you see slowness on your other Roon Remotes (controllers), and if the slowness occurs on multiple remotes at the same time?
The error cleared when I rebooted my Nucleus+. I will check other remotes, but I’m Mac only with an iPad and an iPhone. I have some Roon ready playback hardware, like a Wim Ultra. I can try that as well. Crazy that this happens. Sometimes the delay in loading an aalbum can be one minute or more.
