Roon Core is a NUC 10 Roon ROCK installation running Roon 970.
The problem is with Roon 970 client running on my 2021 Macbook Pro with M1 Pro processor and 32 Gb RAM.
The only software that ever has a problem on my computer is Roon. It’s been a disaster for months.
Networking Gear & Setup Details
The Roon ROCK server and MacBook Pro are connected by 1Gb ethernet to the same 24-port Ubiquiti switch. The switch is connected by a fiber line to a Ubiquiti Gateway connected to FiOS 1 Gb internet. Everything on the network gets a solid, reliable internet connection.
Connected Audio Devices
There is no problem playing audio, but the Roon ROCK server is connected by USB to a Holo May DAC.
Number of Tracks in Library
39,077 tracks
Description of Issue
Whenever I click the artist’s name to get artist information, Roon shows the throbbing ball and says “Loading Artist…” and completely freezes at that step. It shows up as “Application Not Responding” on the Mac and the only option is to Force Quit Roon and restart it.
No. Roon has permission to send and receive for all outgoing and incoming connections. The system default firewall is on with Roon explicitly granted permissions.
Also, this just started with 970. The last few version have been nearly unusable, but they have not had this problem freezing when accessing artist info.
The problem with Roon quitting when accessing Settings seems to be fixed with 970 but now artist info can’t be accessed.
The software has been a disaster for months. It’s not clear what the benefit of a subscription is. It seems that it creates a captive audience. The developer does not have to earn the user’s purchase of an upgrade. They just get their money no matter what and experiment on their users by turning them into beta testers.
I just used App Delete to clean my system of the Roon installation and reinstalled it from the disk image downloaded from the Roon website. For the moment that resolve the issue, but this app is to fragile and buggy that I do not have any trust that issues won’t return.
There is no app on my computer that I have had to completely purge from the system and reinstall in the last 5 years.
Roon remains the worst app that I have used on my system in the past decade, and if I did not have to rely on it for music playback it would have been deleted long ago.
I have four Macs, a Windows workstation that I built myself, three Raspberry Pis running various Linux installations, and the Roon ROCK server that I built myself as well. I used to specify IT equipment allocations for a university. Roon is the worst app that I have ever used. It is a train wreck that abuses its users by forcing them to beta test because their music playback depends on it and Roon gets its money regardless of quality and performance of the app. They should be deeply ashamed of themselves and should apologize to their users.
1 Like
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
8
While I can sympathize with your continued problems and the frustration it is obviously causing you I would appreciate it if you would tone down the rhetoric here.
Obviously it does not affect everyone as it has yourself so your statements are just your opinions right now.
And in all honesty, continuing in that vein is not really going to help you get this all resolved.
Let’s see what @support have to say and what assistance they can give.
Thank you for your patience and understanding
Um… I’m not support, but Here’s what happened to me.
I’m on Linux not Apple silicon but a day or 2 after I updated to 970 I had a similar issue. But mine initially just went to there was an issue loading your library. From there I had to restore from a backup. After the restore Everything was doing a similar behavior to what you’re having. I’d restart the computer it’d work a little then it show the jelly fish and get stuck… I’d reboot again, same behavior again until I got another corrupted database screen… there was a bunch if reboots and brainstorming in and around all that but that’s the gist of it…
To sum it up, I ended up deleting the roonserver database folder. Rebooted. Logged into roon server with my iPad. It created a new fresh empty database. From there I restored my backup, redirected a few storage paths and, fingers crossed, it’s been good the last 16hrs.
It just kills me that I’ve never, I stress never, had a database failure or even a restore failure. Could be a coincidence, but all I changed since the crashes and funny behavior started was the 970 update.
So… do you have a backup you can restore a fresh database from?
The 970 release apparently fixed a lot of Apple issues, maybe your database got weird in the update. Just a thought.
So are you employed by Roon? Is there some route to directly receive a reply from someone in technical support at Roon?
I have a large number of apps that I paid for two or three years ago, and I can just e-mail the developer and get a reply the same day. For an app that gets paid every month, why is customer support so poor? It seems to me that the claim that the subscription model gives the developer steady income to do better work is specious.
Thank you for the suggestion. Before I take major steps, I would like to hear from Roon Support. For this problem, rebuilding the database might make it worse or do nothing.
I don’t know what is involved in retrieving artist info. The artist was one that I had never retrieved info about previously, so nothing would have been cached on the Roon Core. Info would have had to be pulled from online. Internet connectivity was working beautifully for everything on the computer and elsewhere on the network and the Roon Core was visible via the browser and running normally. I even restarted the Roon ROCK NUC and the Roon client on the Mac continued to freeze up when querying artist info. I mean a hard freeze – “Application not responding”
I have nightly backups of the library. Given the disasters that people have reported over the last year with every update, I turned that on a long while ago.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
16
Oh no, just a fellow member like yourself.
All I can say is you are not being ignored but I am not privy to anything much more I’m afraid.
Your unsername is labeled “Community: Moderator,” and you are speaking as if you have some formal role with Roon. That is misleading and counterproductive.
On public forums I am well familiar with volunteer moderators, but on company-sponsored boards the moderators are universally company employees, even if just in a “social media engagement” role and not technical support.
Lesson learned, the moderators here are doing free work on behalf of a for-profit business. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I’m glad I asked.
AceRimmer
(Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!)
18
Not at all, I was just trying to let you know that you were not actually being ignored.
Nothing more or less.
All mods here are unpaid volunteers but essentially fellow members like yourself.
However as you seem to not desire any communication apart from an official Roon employee I will leave it at that.
There are just 26 new posts in the last day to the Support board.
Roon might consider having someone from Roon send a reply to each one acknowledging that they are in fact reading them. Just triage, perhaps with a few templates at hand for the support staff covering the usual scenarios within an hour of someone posting.
“Thank you. We are looking into the issue. You’ve provided the basic information needed about your setup, and we will follow up as soon as possible.”
If the issue is one that has been given at least some attention in the FAQs on Roon’s webisite, the reply could be extended with “In the meantime there is some discussion of similar issues in the FAQs on our website [URL for potentially relevant page] if you’d like to look into it on your own.”
Or if someone doesn’t supply the essential information, then the acknowledging post could also say “For us to best assess what could be happening, could you provide the essential information about your setup [copy the form here]?”
Averaging just over 1 support request per hour (and even if that increased by an order of magnitude), a quick acknowledging reply seems well within the range of feasibility.
Is there a commitment by Roon to responding to technical support requests within a nominal timeframe? Given the low volume of requests, some form of substantive response within 24 hours doesn’t sound onerous. Stating that timely response commitment to customers, whatever it is, and building that into internal job accountability would be a good step.
Thank you for getting in touch, we’re sorry to hear that you’re having problems retrieving artist info in Roon. We’ve pulled logs from your ROCK and are looking into those to see if we can locate the cause of your problem.
I’m also using Build 970 on Apple Silicon but haven’t experienced the problems you’ve described. I just tried to query a few artists that I’m sure I haven’t accessed in the past and everything went smoothly for me.
Are you having issues with any other remotes or just the 2021 Macbook Pro? Have you installed any Apply Updates on that machine around the time you installed Build 970?
As @AceRimmer indicated we care about your issue and are investigating. We’ll be back in touch once we have more details and apologize for the inconvenience you’ve experienced. Thanks
Ok. If nothing comes to mind then I think I will just AppDelete Roon from the Mac and reinstall it. The Roon ROCK server is visible in my browser and Roon on iOS pulls up artist info just fine (same artist as I’ve been trying on the Mac, so not artist-specific.
If the server and iOS apps seem fine then the 970 update must have corrupted something in the Mac client.
Yes, if iOS is working fine, then the issue is likely specific to your Mac. Can you please access the Mac logs by using these instructions and upload a set here and let us know?
Yes, after sending logs, then reinstalling the Mac client would be a good step, you can use the below instructions to set the current Roon database on the Mac aside and start fresh:
