I use iTunes on a Macbook to rip my CDs and add them to the internal storage folder on a NUC running ROCK via smb over an ethernet cable. When I add a new album this way, then open Roon on the Macbook, I see the spinning circle processing new files, however it is adding thousands of phantom tracks (approximately 900,000 according to the progress bar screen), but not the 1 or 2 albums I just added to the NUC. The track and album count on the overview screen start ticking over - mysteriously adding these thousands of phantom tracks and albums.
A reboot of ROCK will stop the phantom importing and drop the track and album count rapidly back down to its usual values (around 1460 albums / 18000 tracks) and reveal the new album I actually added. I can then use the Library Maintenance tool in settings to clean up the library and remove the thousands of deleted files. It all works normally again… until I add another new album rip via SMB and thousands of tracks start importing mysteriously again.
I have a Tidal account with only a few albums that I’ve so far chosen to add to my library. Not sure if this is affecting the process.
On a side note, when all is running normally, my overview screen indicates 1461 albums. However when I click on this to show my albums, the count changes to 1452. I’m not sure if this discrepancy is from the handful of albums that I have multiple versions of - or something else.
Any ideas for what i can do to stop the phantom track importing?
Thanks for contacting us regarding this issue. It does indeed seem strange and unexpected for 900,000 files to populate that field. I would try @ged_hickman1’s suggestion and disable TIDAL and clear the cache using these instructions to see if it helps:
Move the contents of the /Cache folder elsewhere, like your desktop
Try restarting Roon and verify if the issue still occurs
If the issue still occurs even with TIDAL temporarily disabled, please let me know the exact local time in your country (ex. 12:34PM) that you are able to reproduce this behavior and then I can go ahead and enable diagnostics mode for your account and ask QA to take a look.
Thanks Ged and Noris for your prompt suggestions which I tried this evening.
I logged out of the Tidal account, moved then deleted the original cache folders from their location on the NUC and rebooted ROON.
I was still able to recreate the same mysterious track importing behaviour after manually copying a new album to the internal storage folder. i.e. thousands of tracks being imported and apparently being identified. A fresh reboot of roon server on the NUC and all back to normal. Just with thousands of new files once again ready to be deleted using the library maintenance - clean up library function.
Deleting an album from the internal storage triggered the importing behaviour again, so it seems any change to my watched folder starts this behaviour.
Thanks for performing those tests and for providing a timestamp. I have enabled diagnostics mode and just checked our server but I do not see any reports from your account.
Can I please ask you to manually send us the logs from your machine using these instructions? If you do not have a Dropbox or Google Drive account just let me know and I can provide an alternate upload method.
Thanks for sending those logs over. I have started a case for you with our QA team and will be sure to let you know once this reaches their queue and they have had a chance to review. I appreciate your patience until then.
QA has taken a look over this issue but we would need to enable some additional debugging tools for your account to see what’s going on. We have just tried to do that on our end but to confirm if the debug mode is enabled successfully, can you please try rebooting your ROCK and then let me know if you are able to reproduce this issue and note the exact local time? I will then confirm with QA if they received the info they need for the investigation.
Thanks for investigating. I’ve rebooted the ROCK and reproduced the phantom importing issue which was initiated at 8:13pm. I’ve taken a screen shot (a minute later) that shows the progress bar counting up the tracks. It just keeps getting higher until I restart. See screen shot where I used an Icehouse album as a test.
I did this a few times and noticed that I can trigger the issue by navigating to the internal storage folder via SMB (ethernet or Wifi) and expanding the folder structure. i.e. revealing the album folders with the artist folder. No need to copy or delete anything. Closing the folder structure seems to activate it as well. Note that I can navigate through ROCK’s data folders, logs etc. but it only gets triggered when I expand a folder nested within the watched internal storage folder. Hopefully this observation may point to something.
I usually put the NUC in sleep mode when not in use, but I’ll leave it on for the moment. Please let me know if this is necessary for the debugging.
Apologies for the inconvenience, but I’m seeing that the deeper debugging tools were not enabled properly for your account the fist time around. We have just re-enabled this feature and it looks like Roon accepted the command this time around.
Can you please reproduce once more and let me know the timestamp again? I would leave your machine powered on and connected after reproducing again to ensure that the diagnostics reach our servers.
As requested, I activated the issue again this morning, by simply expanding the folder structure in the internal storage folder of the NUC. I let is do its phantom import for a while then restarted ROCK so it could reanalyse again and settle back to the true track count. A screen grab of the importing and of the cleaning up deleted files after rebooting for your reference.
Thank you for re-running that test and providing new timestamps. I can confirm that our systems have received the logs from your machine and I have submitted them to QA for analysis, I will let you know what they say once I hear back. Feel free to continue using your system as usual and you can go ahead and place the system in sleep mode now, I will inform you if we need another set of diagnostics later on.
I have been using a workaround for this issue. i.e. disabling the watched “Internal Storage” folder whenever I copy new tracks to it, then re enabling it. If I forgot to disable it then a reboot would sort it out. However with the upgrade to 1.7 a reboot didn’t fix the problem. It persisted with the phantom import of tracks, no matter what I did.
FYI, with a recent backup in hand, I reformatted the internal storage hdd, and copied back all the tracks. Now Roon 1.7 seems to be working perfectly as it should. Issues aside I am now enjoying all the new discovery features.
By the way, when my phantom track import occurred, my log files would fill (to what seemed their maximum size of 8.4Mb) one after the other. The text in the log showed the strange" internal storage" within “internal storage” folder hierarchy repeatedly before each track name. I’ve noticed a couple of forum threads with a similar occurrence, so hopefully this info can help.
Thank you for the update here and glad to hear that the issue is resolved since re-formatting the Internal Storage SSD! We have been investigating this issue internally and I have added your report to the investigation for tracking purposes. If you notice any further issues please do let me know, but since you have re-formatted the drive I will go ahead and mark this thread as [solved]. Thanks!
