Roon experiencing severe slowness and lag across multiple endpoints (ref#9AX9NH)

Support
1

What app are you having the slowness issue with?

· Roon

What kind of performance/speed issue are you experiencing?

· The app takes a long time to respond to commands

Please try to reboot your Roon Server

· Yes, rebooting helps, but the issue returns after some time

Please try to reboot your networking gear (Router/Switches/etc.)

· No, the issue is still the same even after a reboot

Is there any change in behavior if you try to navigate to Roon Settings -> Library and set both Background and On-Demand Audio Analysis to Throttled or Off?

· No, the issue is still the same

Does the issue happen on multiple Roon Remotes (controllers) or just one?

· Issue happens on multiple remotes

Router Domain Name System (DNS) change

· I don't know how to do this

What is the operating system of your Roon Server host machine?

· Nucleus

Which model Nucleus do you have?

· Nucleus+ Rev A

Timestamp of issue occurrences

· It is all the time lately. I have not had this working smooth for quite a long time at this point. I have noticed updates have improved things and I usually just shrug off and don't use it when it's behaving badly but now it's gotten to where it's almost worthless. When playing Roon radio it can go for minutes at a time of silence then will play again

Describe the issue

Roon is very slow. It can take 30 or more seconds to say open up an artist or start playback. Often if I have a queue of songs to play it can randomly take a very long time to start the next track. Just very slow and laggy overall. A reboot seems to help for a short time. I've had this same experience many times over the years and usually it clears itself up. It's been very bad for a long time now. I have multiple Roon end points and they are all a similar experience. So much so that I rarely choose to use it at this point. ARC is a nightmare as well.

Describe your network setup

Comcast modem, and AMPLIFI mesh router. main streamer Hifi Rose RS130 connected direct via ethernet cable. I have no issues when playing back tidal, Spotify, Qobuz YouTube etc.

1 Like
5

Hello, @ryan_stratton,

Thanks for reaching out to our support.

We have reviewed the diangostics report from your machine and could have spotted that your machine is constantly busy with background work.

In order to cope with it, can you please try to go to “Library” settings in Roon and set following settings like this:

Let us know please if that improves the situation for you.

Thanks.

7

I set the settings like you showed. They were already like that except one was set at throttled instead of fast. At this current moment. I can’t use Roon at all. It won’t open a thing or play anything.

8

I turned the Nucleus plus off and back on and reset my router. It’s working fast and normal at the moment. I’ll check back in if it slows down again. Seems like it usually works if I turn off the nucleus and back on but then shortly reverts back to slow again

9

@ryan_stratton ,

Thanks for confirming.

Let us know please if it keeps working fine sustainably.

Thanks.

10

Hey @ryan_stratton,

Thank you for the reply and additional info! We were able to review a fresh diagnosic report from your Nucleus, and observed the following:

The metadata queue, the background process that syncs artwork, track info, etc. with Roon’s servers, is enormous and never fully drains:

  • In the oldest log (log 20, dated March 30): queue starts at 39,809 items
  • In log 01 (most recent, April 1): queue is still at 13,180 items
It's steadily working down, but this queue has been enormous for an extended period. Every 2–3 seconds the server is firing off HTTP requests to metadataserver.roonlabs.net with batches of 50–60 track IDs. This constant background I/O competes with the foreground work of responding to UI interactions and streaming audio — which explains perfectly why things feel sluggish but "work" after a reboot temporarily (the queue counter likely resets or the background throttling relaxes).

With that, we see a single Qobuz track (qo/6E14A9E5) is stuck in an UnrecoverableError state and has been sitting in the file cache buffer for the entire log period — appearing 315 times across all log files, always assigned to zoneplayer:544. This track is queued up in position 191 of that zone’s playback buffer and Roon keeps attempting to recover it every time the buffer is inspected. Each failed attempt wastes cycles and potentially stalls the buffer management loop for that zone.

Next troubleshooting steps:

  1. If you temporarily disable Qobuz, how do things perform?
  2. With that, let the metadata queue fully drain. The queue was at ~40k on March 30 and is down to ~13k by April 1. It's actively working. Avoid rebooting the Nucleus+ while this is happening, every reboot restarts the scheduler and may re-enqueue items. Leave it running for 24–48 hours uninterrupted. You can check progress by watching the Roon logs or seeing if UI responsiveness gradually improves.
  3. In Roon, go to your play queue and clear it completely, then restart playback fresh. See if that helps.
  4. The Kitchen Mu-so is disconnecting and failing RAAT re-initialization repeatedly. Check that its firmware is current, then in Roon's Audio settings try disabling and re-enabling it. If it's on WiFi, consider assigning it a static DHCP IP on the AmpliFi to prevent address changes that break the persistent RAAT connection.
[quote="ryan_stratton, post:1, topic:317840"] ARC is a nightmare as well. [/quote]

The likely reason behind your Arc issues is you’re facing a Multi-NAT situation with your local network setup. Your Comcast modem is operating in router mode (with its own NAT at 10.0.0.y), and the AmpliFi is also acting as a router (192.168.183.z). This means Roon is behind two layers of NAT.

To fix this: Put your Comcast modem/gateway into Bridge Mode so it passes the public IP directly to your AmpliFi. This eliminates the 10.0.0.1 hop and lets Roon’s UPnP work correctly. Log into your Comcast/Xfinity gateway admin interface and look for “Bridge Mode” or “IP Passthrough.” This is the single most impactful network change you can make and is a known issue with AmpliFi behind ISP gateways.

I hope the above helps, Ryan! We’ll be monitoring for your reply and results. :+1:

11

Hi. Thank you for all that info. I’ll try those things.

This morning I got back to Roon and it was on the slow side. It wouldn’t even play. I hit play a number of times and nothing. I could navigate albums but they would not play. I doing another restart and I’ll have to try the things you suggested.

12

Seems like disabling Qobuz has really helped. My library had some weird things going on. I keep track of my music by date added and there had been some random additions at the top that were not recently added. After disabling Qobuz the order of music added has returned to normal. Seems like the response is pretty good as far as browsing and playing goes. Thank you for the help. I’ll try some of those other things to get ARC going hopefully. That would be amazing.

13

Hey @ryan_stratton,

Thanks for the status update! The date-added issue you’re suffering from is known and confirmed from Qobuz as well.

The good news here is that our team is working closely and directly with Qobuz as they urgently prepare a solution on the backend.

Here is the tracking thread for the date-added issue:

Thank you for your ongoing patience in the meantime, and let us know how things go with Arc. :folded_hands:

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