Problems with Roon on QNAP

I’m running the trial version getting ready for my DirectStream Dac which will be Roon ready and arrives this coming week. I installed Roon server on a TS251+ 8GB Intel NAS with the database for Roon on a usb 3 flash drive. I’m having several issues:

  1. Some albums just don’t play back. Roon will indicate playback is about to start then nothing happens and the queue is empty. If I put the whole album in the playlist it will do that will all the songs, i.e cycle through them without playing them back. This happens with some albums and doesn’t seem to depend on file type. Sometimes lossless will play perfectly, DSD’s also play, and Tidal plays perfectly.
  2. DSD over PCM is very noisy. I’m doing DSD streaming for the first time since I used to only do SACD’s until I ripped them recently so I’m not sure what to expect. But it sounds like a scratchy record.
  3. The behaviors do not depend on the target device. I have a mac with a roon client, and Aries Mini, and a couple of apple TV’s where it behaves exactly the same.
  4. It also doesn’t depend on the client device. I used both an iPad and a mac to control the library and the behavior is the same.

I thought maybe my install was corrupt so I uninstalled Roon, deleted the database files and reinstalled the qpkg. The exact same behavior for seemingly the same files. I observed about 3 or 4 albums that had the exact same issue again and I cannot get them to play where others play perfectly.

Roon is also not able to find my iTunes library. I’ve checked that the XML sharing is enabled in iTunes. The iTunes library is scanned for music since all the music shows up in Roon ( including the ones that cause problems in my earlier post above ), but the XML file is not found.

I’m surprised there is no response to help a trial user given this is the only support route. Anyways I’ve returned the NAS above and snagged a used tvs471 for just slightly more which is the recommended qnap device even though there are reports on this forum that the 251 one works. In the meantime while I wait for it, I have roon running on a Mac talking to my new dac over Ethernet with no issues.

Hi vin_k,
I am sorry for the late reply.
I can’t say anything regarding your dsd issues, as I don’t have capable DSD hardware in my setup.
Your iTunes issue is probably the same as in this topic.
If you don’t need your playcounts and playlists, you could just add the music directory of iTunes as a watched folder.

Chris, thanks. It appears the dsd issue was the NAS device specifically since I now have perfect sound over a Mac with a lossless signal path. The same lossless signal path was noisy on the NAS, not just over PCM. I discovered this now that I have my roon ready dac.

And by “noisy sound” in combination with the NAS, you don’t mean any noise that could be caused by some kind of ground loop, right?

No it wasn’t a ground loop kind of noise. It was random and definitely caused by the NAS itself. My Mac is along the same ethernet and works perfectly so it isn’t the cabling. I tried both going into the Roon Ready DAC via ethernet. Along with the other issues I saw ( albums not playing etc ) I believe that the 251 is definitely not the right NAS for Roon, it is both lacking in performance and is very noisy. I have about 1800 albums.

Thanks for the iTunes link, that definitely looks like the issue.

BTW, any word on when 1.2 will be ready for QNAP?

AFAIK, Roon Server updates automatically in QNAP and Synology – just like it would on a regular computer system.

I didn’t see it in the release notes as a platform mentioned, so just assumed. But the notes do mention that there are improvements to NAS handling.

The installer grabs the latest version from the RoonLabs website. It updates automatically like any other Roon installation.
The 1.0 in the installation package refer to the version of the included package scripts to set up the environment on Synology/QNAP and the other files that are packed in the installer.

So that means I was mostly likely running 1.2 since I did see a request to upgrade and did click through it. Is there a way to show the Roon version since it would be more meaningful, and less confusing or at least show the Roon version in the information pane when clicking on the app in QNAP?

Don’t know about the QNAP, but you can see the version numbers of running instances of your Roon Core and Bridges in any of the clients (PC, Mac, Android, iOS): Settings > About.

Thanks - that makes sense

To update I now have the QNAP TVS471 and it works perfectly. The 251+ just doesn’t have the juice to power Roon, and the recommendation for having the 471 as a minimum config is spot on.

I have successfully migrated my Roon Database to my TVS-471 and have it currently stored on an external SSD drive. Works like a charm! :slight_smile:

Is it possible to create a share folder on my internal cache (here I have 2 256 GB Modules) and place the RoonServer DB there? I am guessing that the internal cache interface is quicker than USB 3.0 …

Thanks in advance!

When starting Roon Server on QNAP it will look for a share called “RoonServer” and use it for database storage.
So you can basically use every volume on which you can create shares on.
External volumes are special because they are automatically shared as their volume name and need to be initialized to be labeled as “RoonServer” (you probably did that for your current external ssd, I am just mentioning it for the sake of completeness…). :slight_smile:

If I understand you correctly, you have two M.2 modules set up for SSD caching on your qnap tvs-471. If you use your qnap to primarily to listen to music via Roon, then the Roon database and your music files should be automatically cached. I have Roon running on a TS-253a which doesn’t have any m.2 slots, but maybe you could use File Station to browse the folder structures on the M.2 modules to verify what is cached.

If all that pans out, you could probably reinstall Roon on your RAID volume and then use the SSD drive for something else or to backup the Roon database, then you would have fault tolerance if a drive fails which you do not get with the external SSD drive. Eventually as you use Roon more, the database and music files will ultimately be sitting in the cache for fast access. The only drawback I could see is that writes to the database will be slower during import and analysis, but that shouldn’t be a problem unless you import a lot of files in bulk.