Until now I’ve used my trusty 2017 MacBook Air running on macOS 12.6.3 as my Roon Core. In general it ran ok-ish. However gaps between tracks became longer and longer. AirPlay would stop after awhile, and the performance towards the remotes was pretty lackluster. Reboots after a few days would temporarily solve the issues.
So I’ve decided to promote my Lenovo S530 laptop which is running on Zorin Linux Pro as my new Roon Core. Installed Roon Server on it, which turned out to be a very easy thing to do. Not much of Terminal guy myself, but I’ve got it working pretty quickly.
Roon ARC worked right away, and the Lenovo makes using the remotes a snappy experience. Time will tell if the gaps between tracks and AirPlay dropouts return.
Well after 4 days I had to reboot the Lenovo, ARC suddenly went “Poor Connection” and AirPlay stopped during playback.
Noticed that RAM usage was at 13.6/15.8 gb and 1.8/2.0 gb of swap space used. Fresh reboot and RAM usage was down to 3.2 gb and 0 swap space used. ARC works again…
It seems that Roonserver eats RAM like there is no tomorrow. I’m now running into the same issues that I had with my MacBook Air as server. Dropping AirPlay and ARC quitting. But instead of having to restart after 2 days, it now lasts 4. Which seems to makes sense to me. As my Lenovo has twice the amount of RAM (8 gb VS 16 gb).
On my mini with 16gb I had the same impression. I did not watch the ram but with Roon app I had to restart after 2 days. Now with Roon Server app I have to restart after 4 or 5 days and that looks like with your Lenovo. I did not notice ARC as I use it rarely, but I did notice the airplay dropping and longer times to start playing. And hanging database updates, the blue circle spinning non stop and when click on it roon is analysing the tracks to be added to library (from tidal). After restart the tracks are added so looks more like the gui it was freezing.
I didn’t watch the RAM usage on my MacBook Air. As I was suspecting that its 8 gb of RAM or the not that great dual core i5 CPU were the limiting factors. But now the same thing happens with my 8th gen quad core i7 and 16 gb of RAM. Heck. Even got an USB Ethernet dongle as I was suspecting the AirPlay drops to be wifi related. Now I’m not so sure about that anymore.
On the Air I was using the normal Roon app (with GUI), on the Lenovo just the Roonserver as Linux doesn’t have the full app available.
One thing I did not test. I’m usually adding to my library 5 or 15 albums per day, I should try to have a couple of days with nothing added to see if that makes a difference
Moving from Roon (app with gui) to Roon Server was a big upgrade
I did not expect airplay dropping, or very long gaps between track as the Yamaha that plays from roon using airplay is ethernet connected.
