What’s happening?
· Other
Describe the issue
Playlists In Roon Have Been Emptied Of Content
Describe your network setup
Virgin media hub in modem mode connected to Asus RT-AC86U Router
To expand on the issue above, I have a Nucleus, and connected to it are two Samsung T5 SSD external drives. Both drives have a Roon Backup folder and a folder containing a copy of my iTunes library. The iTunes folder in Drive 1 is the source folder for my Roon library (I also stream from Qobuz).
I had noticed that Drive 1 was not always backing up as scheduled - sometimes it would only do it every second or third day, sometimes I had to force a backup - so yesterday I disconnected Drive 1 from the Nucleus and connected it to my Mac, and ran Disk Utility First Aid on it, to see if there were any issues with the drive. First Aid ran, and the outcome was it said that there were no issues with the disk.
I reconnected it to the Nucleus, and did a Force Rescan of Drive 1, but instead of doing a straightforward scan it seemed to start importing all of the music in the iTunes folder once again, which was 27578 tracks, so this took quite some time. At the end of this process I noticed that a number of playlists I had created in Roon were either empty, or only had a handful of tracks left in them, despite there being tens or sometimes hundreds of tracks in them before this fresh import was initiated. A screenshot of these playlists can be seen in my initial post.
The Roon playlists that were emptied contained tracks from my local library that are not available to stream on Qobuz, and it took me a considerable amount of time to curate these, so I am obviously distraught that they have ended up empty or nearly empty.
I went to Roon backups, and performed a restore from the last backup before I disconnected Drive 1, thinking that this would reinstate the playlists as they had been, but this did not have the desired effect, and the playlists are still as seen in the screenshot.
I have to confess to having very limited knowledge when it comes to IT, so I have no idea what has happened really, but the source folder for my iTunes music has not changed, so why have the playlists ended up like this? Is there any way I can get my playlists back to the way they were?
Also, despite there being a current Library XML file for my iTunes library in the source folder, I still cannot see iTunes playlists in my playlists menu, despite the settings being as they should be (see screenshot below).
Any assistance would be very much appreciated, and I’d be grateful if you could keep in mind my IT limitations when passing on any advice. Many thanks.
Best regards
Alan
Hey @Alan_Meldrum,
Thanks for taking the time to write in!
You are correct in thinking this, restoring a backup with no changes to your library structure or library location should restore things to the same state they were in when the backup was made.
Can you confirm that the storage path under Roon Settings>Storage hasn’t changed or been updated since you made the backup you were restoring from?
Sometimes, even after restoring, you may need to edit/update the storage path within your settings. Are you able to share a screenshot of your Roon Settings>Storage?
It may be worth stopping Roon Server from running, and then power down both your server machine as well as your router, and then reboot both.
Make sure you have a direct ethernet connection from your Nuclues to your router as well.
We’ll be on standby for your reply, thank you! 
It is the same storage path, as shown in the screenshot below. The only change I made was to add a current iTunes Library XML file to the iTunes music folder in order to be able to access iTunes playlists (which I now can - the iTunes playlists icon appeared in Roon>Playlists after rebooting).
Sometimes, even after restoring, you may need to edit/update the storage path within your settings.
I am not quite sure what you mean by this.
It may be worth stopping Roon Server from running, and then power down both your server machine as well as your router, and then reboot both.
By this, do you mean selecting ‘Stop’ in the Roon OS management page shown below, and then switch off/restart both Nucleus and Router?
If you could advise further I would really appreciate it. Apologies for the gaps in my knowledge.
Best regards
Alan
Been waiting a few days now for a response, I’d appreciate being able to get some assistance, as I am avoiding using Roon until I get some sort of definitive answer from you about what has happened. I’m obviously very concerned that the content of several Roon-generated playlists has disappeared, and I’m keen to get some advice, do I really need to wait four days for a reply?
Best regards
Alan
Five days?
Or six days?
Hi @Alan_Meldrum,
Click the three dots next to your storage path > Edit and edit to reflect the updated path
Yes, exactly.
Have you gone through the troubleshooting steps listed in our iTunes KB article? Please run through these as well to see if they help:
If you still run into issues after testing out the above, I’d suggest restoring an older backup to load your prior playlists, and export them separately, then restore your newer backup, and re-import the playlists you’ve exported. Using a third-party app like soundiz can make this process quite simple!
1 Like
Point 1 above:
The storage paths are as they always were - Nucleus to two separate Samsung SSD drives. I made this clear in posts 3 and 4 above.
It was the fact that SSD 1 was regularly not completing a backup that made me remove it from the Nucleus and connect it to my Mac to run Disk Utility First Aid on the disk, but that showed no problems. When I re-connected SSD1 to the Nucleus - re-establishing the path that had earlier existed - the problem I described in my earlier post, shown below, emerged.
I reconnected it to the Nucleus, and did a Force Rescan of Drive 1, but instead of doing a straightforward scan it seemed to start importing all of the music in the iTunes folder once again, which was 27578 tracks, so this took quite some time. At the end of this process I noticed that a number of playlists I had created in Roon were either empty, or only had a handful of tracks left in them, despite there being tens or sometimes hundreds of tracks in them before this fresh import was initiated.
It would seem as if a new library has been established, which has superseded the old library, and I am not sure why this has happened, and you offer me no advice as to why it has.
Point 2 above:
I followed your advice about restarting the Nucleus and the Router, but it made no difference.
Point 3 above:
As I pointed out in my earlier post, shown below, restoring from an earlier backup made no difference.
I went to Roon backups, and performed a restore from the last backup before I disconnected Drive 1, thinking that this would reinstate the playlists as they had been, but this did not have the desired effect, and the playlists are still as seen in the screenshot.
I feel really aggrieved for a number of reasons. You do not seem able to diagnose the problem I have experienced, and have not provided any advice that has made a difference to the situation I find myself in, so my trust in Roon, which was not great as a result of earlier issues I have brought to your attention, is pretty low. Also, it is incredibly frustrating and disappointing to wait the best part of a week for a response, only to find that points I made in earlier posts seem to have been ignored.
Why does it take so long for Roon support to get back to a customer? Are you dealing with a particularly high volume of support queries, or do you just not have many staff? To say I find the level of support pretty dismal would be a massive understatement, and the fact that you don’t even offer an apology for taking so long to get back to me suggests that you think your service is ok, which from the customer’s point of view I would have to say it most definitely is not.
I would hope that you can reply to this message in a reasonable time scale, and offer some assistance that takes into consideration the fact that the advice offered to date has made no difference whatsoever. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Best regards
Alan
Here we go again. Why is it so difficult to get a reply from you people in a reasonable time frame? Your customer service standards are pretty low, and that’s me being polite. Is this the best I can hope for with a lifetime subscription?
A
Six days now since I responded to your last message. Honestly, you guys wouldn’t get a red face at a bonfire. Why is your level of customer service so lamentable?
A
Could I PLEASE be offered the courtesy of a reply to post 9/11 above, which was posted NINE days ago. Is this really the best you can do?
A
Please read the note posted at the top of every screen. Roon is off for Thanksgiving until Monday.
Sorry mate, I’ve foolishly been focused on the bottom of the page, thinking that this might be the day that they actually respond to my post from NINE days ago, which was obviously a long time before Thanksgiving (giving thanks, anyone else notice the irony there?). I notice however, that even though it is Thanksgiving they are still willing to sell you a Nucleus Titan at a discounted price, going by the banner at the top of the page, so it would seem that there are still some Roon staff in the building.
[moderated]
Hi Alan, For any volunteers attempting to lend a hand would you be kind enough to post screenshots of the paths to your backups as well as what version of macOS you are currently running.
Hopefully I don’t offend you with my next statement/request but this thread has become extremely muddy. I was reading over it in the hope that I might be able to assist you but it requires to much interpretation from section to section as well as filtering.
Is there any possible way that you might consider writing an outline solely of the issues concerning Roon’s performance? That way if any of us in the community have a thought or an idea or even possibly that a member of the support team might have overlooked we can send a recommendation your way.
Alternatively the support team is going to be equally as lost sorting trough the thread on Monday and slowed by an extra 5 pounds from a holiday dinner. What do you say? You might consider starting a new thread using the support form. The support team can later decide whether to combine the two or what have you.
Hi Singleton
Thanks for your input. Sorry for being a grumpy bear, but it is extremely frustrating waiting for a reply for days on end - a period of time which predates the public holiday in America - and hearing nothing from Roon.
Screenshots of the paths to my backups is shown below, Mac OS is Monterey 12.7.6, all Mac and Roon software is up to date.
You can see in the screenshot that the upper of the two SSD’s (which contains my iTunes library), did not automatically back up this morning at the scheduled time, but the lower one did. Both SSD’s have recently been failing to complete backups when scheduled, despite not missing a beat for years prior to this.
I was obviously concerned about the possibility of the SSD’s failing, and the initial problem occurred when I disconnected the SSD containing my library to run Mac Disk Utility First Aid on it, which diagnosed no problems. On reconnecting this SSD to the Nucleus and then doing a force re-scan (I had updated my iTunes Library XML when I had it connected to the Mac), it seemed to import the whole library again, because it stated on the storage screen that it was ‘importing’ instead of just ‘scanning’.
The outcome is that several playlists I created in Roon seem to have either emptied or nearly emptied, and I have been unable to re-establish these playlists by doing a backup restore, so it would seem to me that a new library has been created which has superseded the old one, and my playlists have been decimated as a result.
I am keen to find out why things went so spectacularly wrong, when as far as I could tell I was following the correct steps. These particular playlists took a long time to curate, and they contained all of the tracks in my collection which are not available on my streaming platform, Qobuz, so it has been very dispiriting to lose them.
I realise my posts can be a bit long-winded, but my IT knowledge is pretty basic, and I am just trying to describe the issue as best I can, even though I don’t fully understand the processes that are in operation. I have followed all of the advice I have received from Roon to date, and the problem still exists, so it would seem that - regrettably - my playlists are gonzo.
All I want to do is have someone from the company who sold me the software explain to me - having considered my description of the scenario - just what went wrong, but time is dragging on (and on) and I am none the wiser. I have encountered Roon’s inability to respond to posts in what I would consider a reasonable time frame many times in the past, and frankly I find their level of customer support pretty dire, but that is my opinion.
Respectfully, I think I will keep everything together in this thread, so that all the relevant information is in one place, but if you have any thoughts that you might wish to share with me I would be more than happy to hear them.
Best regards
Alan
Maybe I’m missing something, but you cannot/should not backup to a watched folder (drive). Use one drive as watched folder containing music files. Use another drive for your Roon database backups.
Well, the Nucleus only has two USB ports for connecting the external drives, and I was following their advice below:
We recommend configuring Scheduled Backups to more than one location. For example, backup to your NAS and Dropbox, or to a local hard drive and your NAS.
I was backing up to each of the two SSD’s attached to the Nucleus. One SSD contains the Database Backup folder and the Watched Folder, the other SSD contains only the Database Backup folder.
Roon also says:
We strongly recommend that you do not set the location of Database Backups to be within any Watched Folders because Roon will try to scan that directory and scan the Database Backup itself. This can cause issues, so please keep the locations separate.
My watched folder containing my iTunes library does not have the Database Backup folder within it, so I thought I was OK, as the Database Backup folder is not being scanned by Roon. Is there still some risk in what I am doing?
Best regards
Alan
Also, please accept my apologies for my earlier posts in response to yourself. I realise that you were only trying to help, but unfortunately I let my frustration and anger boil over. I was out of order and I’m truly sorry.
Best regards
Alan
Put your music in one drive and make that your watched drive. Backup to the other, not a watched drive. Keep them separate. You can also do backups to another computer via your network, etc. Of course, you can install an internal drive for your music files.