MiniMac 2011 with 16GB RAM and 500GB SSD running RoonServer
Networking Gear & Setup Details
Netgear Switches, GigaBit Ethernet
Connected Audio Devices
RoPiee via Ethernet
Number of Tracks in Library
around 120000
Description of Issue
I have merged lots of artists/composers. Today I merged another set of artists but I made a mistake. Therefore I wanted to “unmerge”. However, everytime I use Settings/Library/Un-mergeArtist the client works for a about 5 seconds and the crashes.
I tried using MacStudio-Client (M1), MacNotebook-Client (Intel) and also iPad-Client. All behave exactly the same.
I can restart the client all the time and use all other functions (e.g. Un-merge compositions) without a problem.
@Ralf_Karpa, what version of Roon are you running for your Core on the 2011 Mac mini, is it Roon 1.8 Build 1151? I believe that is the only version that can run on your mini. Do you know what version of Roon Remote you have on your other devices? They also need to be on 1.8 Build 1151 to communicate with the Core.
Thanks for writing in! It’s good to see you on the community again. You have an odd issue indeed, does the crash still only occur when attempting to unmerge this particular artist?
If you could re-create this issue, and share the specific date, time, and name of artist, that would be helpful!
When the crash occurs, do you get any sort of error message?
this happens always when I open the unmerge option. I don‘t get to any unmerge option at all. The screen with „you have no artist to unmerge“ message pops up, then it takes about 5s and the application quits.
Let me know what steps you need from my side and I can for sure provide you with logs or even an interactive session…
I did. the steps as you mentioned. When installing an empty database as server, I could get into the unmerge (although, as there was nothing in the database, nothing was shown). After restoring the backup, behaviour was as described, it crashes again.
One note: Due to the tremendous amount of duplicates and wrong spelled duplicates in the metadata provided, I did a lot of merges in the past. Several times also in multiple steps. With multiple I mean the following:
Three John Carter shown. Merged 2 on one day, and merged the previously merged John Carter to another one found to be the same person the next day. This is meant just as an example.
If Roon did not crash after testing on a fresh database, then the issue may potentially be linked to your database.
Had you done any metadata curation from a third-party software prior to importing it into Roon? Roon never modifies your track files, so many users make their edits prior to importing their library into Roon. Here are a few options to consider:
As a next step, do you have a backup that predates your issue? If yes, I would restore from that backup and test again.
yes, I am working on my metadata since 2 years adding composers, record-labels and such stuff into the files to ensure that the underlying data is already correct. I use a free software called KID for this. All files are already imported to roon and once I edited, I rescan the album to have this imported. As said, I am doing this since a long time and never had any issues with this until a few weeks ago, when I reported this. Until then I was able to unmerge compositions and artists (the latter one wasn‘t used that often, but here and there).
I run nightly backups with 10 copies automatically. So, no, I do not have a „working backup from before“ as I don‘t know exactly since when this does not work anymore.
I have been through a similar experience in the past - frequent crashes when maintaining the library, or even looking at metadata. I went through quite a few support hoops before resolving it. In the end, the answer was simple. It came down to two questions:
Is your Roon Core sufficiently capable? 120,000 tracks is quite a challenge for a Mac Mini 2011, even with 16GB RAM. You may be on the edge of the operating envelope from a reliability perspective. I ended up upgrading to a more modern Core machine, and repurposed my old Mac Mini as an endpoint…
Even if you have a modern Core (I now have a NUC10 running ROCK), is it spec’d for your rapidly growing library (most of us keep adding albums)? I have 180,000 tracks and upgraded to 32MB RAM - problem solved instantly.
Thanks for the comment, Anthony. Yes, I can believe that the Mini comes to the end of his usage for roon server. However, unlike most others, I am more deleting stuff than adding. I am wondering whether my heavily performed changes to the metadata may cause this. I don’t know which database is behind the scenes and whether it can cope with such a number of additions/merges/changes plus the enormous adding of images to the people (meanwhile I guess I have added about 2000 images to the data).
Our QA team was not able to restore the zipped database folder you sent over. Another oddity is that Roon 1277 is recognizing your backups as outdated, back to Roon 1.6 (2019) :
If possible, could you try to resend your exact Roon backup directory folder and we’ll try it again? With that, can you confirm the issue is still present on the newest production build?
oh my God… Yes, I have sent you an old zip of a previous backup for an older issue I had. I was just VERY scared whether my backups do work at all… However, they do and I could send you the corrected one…
Although, as you asked for, I tried with the latest roon version and the issue is gone. I was able to unmerge the artist and everything seems to be working correctly now. Also it seems that the latest version has sped up things when going into one of the unmerge options. In the past I had to wait about 20s before the “unmerge compositions” showed the list, now it takes about 5s; great!
Btw.: What would be very nice, if roon could list the “composer(s)” underneath the merged compositions entries.
Thank you for getting it solved and let me know whether you still like to receive my backup.
