Dear Support,
I need a little help:
I realized 3 weeks ago (did not use Roon on a daily basis and have a lifetime membership) that my 2 Airplay devices (Marantz MCR-611 Airplay; Bose Soundtouch 10 Airplay2) do not play music from Roon. Devices appear in “Settings/Audio” tab and are “Enabled” (also deleted and re-enabled them 2-3 times). Roon shows their IP address and could be selected as music zone/device when trying to play back. Does not play neither from Tidal nor from own Synology NAS music library. Both Marantz and Bose play Spotify Connect perfectly, so LAN connectivity hopefully has not become the issue. Roon server run on a dedicated Intel NUC with Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS natively, not in Docker. Intel NUC runs Plex and Immich with no issue too. Earlier Airplay devices were playing without a problem in this setup.
The Roon version on Ubuntu server is 2.56 (build 1582) production.
My NUC setup is:
Intel(R) Core™ i7-7567U CPU @ 3.50GHz
32 GB DDR3 RAM
Everything is connected by Ethernet through Synology MR2200ac router
My Samsung Ultra plays from Roon without a problem both Tidal or own library albums/songs. Also RoonArc is available and plays well on my Samsung from WAN, so Roon server seems to be working just fine.
What should I check in order to get Airplay devices working again with Roon? Sorry if a long-existing topic would already answered this question, I tried, but did not find a proper answer/solution for this.
Thanks for spending time for reading and sharing your insights, thoughts.
If this doesn’t help, please restore the backup you made before trying these steps.
After performing the cleanup, please let us know the exact timestamp of the playback for one of the devices and when you will enable the device again under Roon → Settings → Audio
Dear Benjamin and Vadim,
I deleted all files from the Core directory. I stopped and restarted Roonserver on Linux. It remained the same unfortunately. I needed to reconnect and rename the two Airplay devices. (Time: 23:13 GMT+1 timezone) Those can be selected, sometimes it plays starts counting the seconds played, but no sound is coming out of the Marantz. Same unfortunately with Bose Soundtouch. Sometimes it even did not start showing progress of the song. Strange thing that Marantz even displays “Airplay”, but absolutely silent. In the meantime Windows PC plays Tidal through Roon without delay and problem. Samsung phone plays Roon content easily. No real change except I needed to reconnect audio devices and rename those.
I restored the last backup, but unfortunately no change. Yet…
PS.: My Ipad works without a problem as a Roon player, but I suspect, it is not Airplay.
Can you please navigate to the Device Setup tab for the affected Airplay zone (right click zone name in Roon app, bottom right → Device Setup), then go to Advanced, and check to see if Compatability Mode makes any difference?
Hi Noris,
It was already on (Compatibility Mode) It still plays Spotify as an Airplay device with sound, but Roon first started playing (the counter moved), but without sound. Then after trying without Compatibility mode even it did not started and the Marantz display lost the Airplay sign (disappeared).
Roon still plays perfect on Windows PC.
Restarted the Linux machine, Roon is available, plays on Windows PC, but Airplay devices did not show up for 3 minutes. After 3 min, they re-appeared, playing started, but no sound again.
As another test, if you set one of the airplay devices as the system output of one of your Roon remotes, and then set your Roon playback zone to your system output - do you get proper playback?
I tested with my IPad and did what you suggested, it works that way with quite a responsive way. So the IPad Airplay output became the Mararantz MCR611 and started to play in Roon on the Ipad device, it works with sound both with Tidal and radio stations as well as with own NAS library songs. Even plays DSD media files converted to Airplay format.
That way Bose Soundtouch 10 works too.
I am checking now the Ubuntu media-server firewall, etc. 'll get back to you after that.
Does this mean that when you host the Roon Server on the PC, Airplay to the same affected devices works as expected?
I can’t specify the exact ports that Roon would require since they can change, but I would recommend looking over the Roon logs for clues, or looking at what other users have posted regarding ports:
Thank you for the update. Can we perform a quick test and start the Roon server on the Windows machine and check the behaviour with the Airplay devices?
Hi,
I’d try to do it over the weekend. Would this mean that I loose all my Library data (not the music files, but programmed radio station url-s, personal playlists, etc.) when I reconnect to my Linux based media-server after the Windows Roon trial?
The Roon database is tied to the device where the Roon Server is running.
You can safely disconnect your account from the current device, activate the subscription on another device, perform your tests there, and then return to your original server. As long as you are using the same Roon account, all metadata, listening history, and library information will remain intact on your original server. If you want to fully move the metadata to a different device, you will need to create a backup and restore it on the new server. But this is unnecessary for us you can just log in to the Roon on Windows, perform the testing, and get back to your original Roon instance.
Let us know if you have any questions along the way.
Thanks,
I installed Roon Server to Win11 laptop and it not only recognized the Bose Soundtouch and Marantz MCR611 devices, but played sound to those. On Marantz the display even showed the title which has been played.
So it looks like something went wrong with the Linux implementation.
Shall I delete and reinstall roonserver onto my Linux/Ubuntu media-server? Can I save the library, etc. settings and reload it after re-installation into the Linux instance? What Linux setup files need to be saved and re-called, when re-install?
If re-install should be the solution at all.
Thanks
Gabor
Hi,
I re-installed Roon on Ubuntu, it did not help unfortunately. Tested firewall, that was not the issue. What I found was that disabling IPv6 connection on my Linux/Ubuntu server solved the Airplay issue. Most probably Roon started to communicate through ipv6 on Airplay and with Linux it became unstable. On IPv4 it runs stable, Airplay works, songs start and can be read on the Airplay device (Marantz MCR611) display and there is sound coming out of the system when playing on Airplay.
I just wonder how extremely complex are Roon and the platforms we use, but finally it works. I’ll check Bose Soundtouch10 tomorrow, hence it is located in a bedroom, so it could not be tested without serious consequences throughout the night.
I wonder whether this was only related to my Linux setup or some other folks could benefit from this - if really this was the core of the issue.
Thanks for your help again,
Brgrds
Gabor
I had to switch back IPv6, because some other application needs it. Marantz or Bose Airplay does not work again. It shows up in Roon Player, can be selected as an audio zone, but music (even the counter) does not start. Seems like Airplay does not communicates well on IPv6 on Airplay, but tries to do that for some reason.
I don"t really see the solution. Do you have any idea?
Thanks
Gabor
Finally Airplay did resolve. It looks like that on my Linux (Ubuntu LTS 24.04.3) running Roon as “root” user somehow blocks Airplay. Multicast was active, needed ports were open, Roon was listening, but music play did not start. Now I created another user “roon” and it runs by that user and it works. Bose Soundtouch10 (Airplay2) still don’t, but I don’t mind, I’ve spent such a significant amount of time to resolve this issue, that I do not want to invest more energy into correcting that. It should be something related to Linux, hence on Windows-server Airplay2 worked too, but this is OK for me now.
Thanks for your care, wish you all the best.
Gabor
