Asus Router connected by cable to NUC, no VPN for Roon ROCK
Number of Tracks in Library
around 9’000 tracks
Description of Issue
I have been using Roon since quite some time as well as Roon ARC since its release. I noticed the issues first with ARC. Randomly the next track is not being played and ARC stating poor connection. A reboot of the app did not help. By restarting the ROCK through my personal VPN the connection to the Roon core by ARC was again working. This happened randomly, sometimes once a week, sometimes multiple times.
Since this week’s update (2.0 build 1299) it now happened four times. On Wednesday after the update it worked for thirty minutes before I had to restart the core. During the day I had to restart again and today again two times.
This does not only affect Roon ARC though. While at home when this happens even the Roon app cannot display any of my library but a connection to the core seems still possible as I can browse in the About section of the settings.
I do not know if there is any way to access any software logs to find out further what is going on here. All I know is that this is very annoying and is getting worse.
Some things to try:
Reboot the network (modem, routers, switches, and clients). Lets the system get fresh IPs for all devices and clear cache.
Try cleaning the library and clearing image cache in Roon.
Settings\Library for “clean up Library” feature and Settings\setup for “clear Image cache” feature.
You might also try resetting arc, go to “settings” (gear icon) and scroll to the bottom in the ARC app for the red text “reset Roon arc”. It will reset it to “factory” so you will need to re-login and re-download tracks.
And barring Support coming asking you for logs (so you may wait to do this as a last resort?), you “could” try re-installing RoonOS from the Rock WebUI, make a current back-up before doing this. The dialog that pops up when you do this says “This will not modify any of your settings or databases.” But it does not hurt to have a backup…
All that being said, have you also check your network to see if there are any device issues? WiFi signal interference bad/faulty ethernet cables or other failing/faulty or bandwidth hogging devices.
Thanks for the reply. I use Rock with a static IP so the web interface is always accessible. My iPhone when I’m on the go obviously has different IP addresses.
I have cleaned up the library as per your suggestion. I will try to not do a reset of the ARC app for now as I do not want to re-download 40 something GB of music. As this issue also affects Roon proper in the home network I do not think the issue is isolated to ARC for that matter also.
I have also already reinstalled the operating system in the meantime. Maybe this has helped the problem already. I will test this and see if any of the above steps have resolved the issue.
To your last point. The network is pretty clean. The connection to the Rock interface is working flawlessly as do all other network devices. Only the connection from the Roon/ARC endpoints to the core is affected.
After re-installing RoonOS and the library clean-up in Roon the issue still persists. Music on ARC just stops after the current played track and the Roon endpoints cannot access my library anymore. But there is no error message that my core is not reachable or something. It just stuck at loading as you can see in the first picture of my initial post.
The ROCK system status webpage continues to be perfectly accessible during all this. To me meaning the Roon core is still online and accessible in my network.
After a forced restart from there the issue is temporarily resolved…
How are your remotes and endpoints connected to the network? Are these hard-wired or Wifi? Could be a Wifi issue in which case changing the channel could help. Of course this would not explain why ARC is not working reliably when on the go.
Also, you’ve mentioned an iPhone, maybe try turning airplane mode on and off or reboot the iPhone if you’ve not already done so.
To me it seems like my Roon endpoints (ARC included) cannot access the core anymore. This happens to my endpoints on my iPad, Mac and iPhone and happens inside my network (Wifi and LAN) and in ARC’s case outside of my network as well. As I said the ROCK web interface stays accessible on the network so technically all endpoints should be able to reach the core but don’t.
Is there any way to access some kind of logs to see what is going on in the background?
Also, after this week’s update (build 1299) this happens daily. Before it happened only once a week maybe if at all.
Is this a reserved IP address on your router, or have you set up the static address on the ROCK/NUC itself? If the latter, do the DNS and Gateway addresses match what the router uses?
Connect rock up to a monitor or tv boot it up and check if any error messages come up. Your ssd might be developing a fault. Roon tends to misbehave and have connection issues when the OS disc is failing. Arc will rely on caching which if a bad disc will affect badly, same with library stuff as it’s all on the OS disc that the dB is stored.
There is no error message or anything of that sort after connecting the ROCK to a display. I also did not find anything in the BIOS. The SSD is 4 months old so I would also doubt that its already developing faults but you never know.
I found Roon Arc simply didn’t work for me (Australia) with the default settings. I had to force it to its lowest quality - Bandwidth Optimized - and it worked.
Thanks for your comment but that is a different, not related issue. My problem and the problem discussed in this thread does not evolve around ARC bandwidth/connection issues to the core.
It is NOT an ARC only issue. The first picture I uploaded shows Roon not loading any of my music even though the core is accessible by the app. I just noticed the issue first by ARC stopping to play music.
I need to do a lot more testing but it seems to me the issue is somewhat linked to ARC streaming local music from the core. This morning I was able to stream one entire album of my local library with ARC, but after the two songs in a second album, also local, the music playback stopped and ARC showed the poor connection banner and failed to re-connect.
By accessing the core through my VPN I was able to restart the core and was able to resume music playback. It again failed after a couple more songs.
I restarted the core again and then tried to stream the Qobuz version of the album and it did so without hiccups. After the album finished I tried a third album but switched to the local version again and had no issues since.
I am now testing with local music streaming to Sonos in my network and this works without problems thus far (ca. 1.5 albums).
My current assumption from this very limited testing/experience is:
Maybe ARC streaming local music from the core somehow leads to the core becoming somewhat unresponsive.
Using the core only to create the link with Qobuz for music streaming might not create the same problems.
Using Roon in my network does not create this problem either. After ARC runs into these problems though, Roon is still affected by the core not loading any of my music.
I have the exact same issue and my observation is very similar. Using ARC somehow crashes or freezes the core and it can’t recover until a restart.
This is a very frustrating experience, and it is also very frustrating for family members who are less tech savvy. They just expect their music to work and are losing their trust in the platform with every freeze-up
Assumption 2 is incorrect: This morning I was able to clog up the Roon Core by streaming music from Qobuz to ARC. ARC still continues to play the next 2 to 3 songs in the queue but was unable to make a connection to the core. Last.fm scrobbles are also not transmitted as the Core and ARC cannot talk anymore.
All my Roon endpoints on Mac, iPhone and iPad again also lose any connection to the Core. The Core remains to be fully visible on the network and ROCK web interface remains accessible.
I do not know if time has anything to do with this issue. I was not able to reproduce the errors yesterday throughout the day but it happens consistently early in the day.
