If I leave Roon paused for around 10-15 minutes it completely freezes (not sure exactly how long on pause before the freeze occurs). Quitting Roon and restarting does nothing to resolve the issue. I am required to reboot the Mac itself and then reopen Roon for normal performance. I’ve found that if listening to Roon/Qobuz and need to pause, I put on a “Live Radio” station and my system does not freeze up even hours after leaving the session for an indefinite period. Yesterday I was told this was a known issue and to upgrade to newest Roon release. I did so with no improvement at all.
Pausing for 10 to 15 minutes and then having Roon lock up, especially when switching to Live Radio avoids it, makes me think we should look at the playback state and the Mac itself a little more closely.
To narrow this down, a few things would help:
What is your Roon Server running on in this setup, is it the Mac itself or a separate machine?
How is that machine connected to the network, and are there any switches, mesh nodes, VPNs, or other network devices in between?
When the freeze happens, does Roon become unresponsive only on the Mac, or do other Roon Remotes still respond?
Did this start after a macOS update, a Roon update, or any change to your Qobuz or audio device setup?
In the meantime, please try one simple test: after pausing, leave Roon open on the Mac and see whether the freeze still happens if the system display sleeps, or only when the app itself has been idle. If you can reproduce it again, we’d also like the exact local time and date, because we can enable diagnostics on your account and review the window around the next occurrence.
If you’re able to share a short screen recording or a Console log from macOS showing what happens around the freeze, we can use that too.
When this occurs, do you have any Zones available in Roon? Are you able to browse at all?
Logs show Roon and RAAT responding as the machine’s sleep cycle takes over, but they’re not reengaging when the Mac appears to come back online from sleep/hibernation.
Do you have your screensaver or lock screen settings configured to either 10/20 minutes?
It sounds like you’ve had the same listening habits and this particular sleep/wake issue started occurring only with build 1680. This isn’t the symptom for which we released a hotfix (that was a complete failure for 1680 to even launch on Intel Macs), but we’re going to investigate it with development to see what’s happening.
If you’re able to, please share a screenshot of the condition Roon is in when you encounter the hang/freeze after waking.
I’m very non technical. The screen froze just now. I’m able to navigate to any screen. They all respond. I can switch from the Qobuz stream (the frozen one) to a Live Radio station. The logo comes up. Whether it’s the Qobuz stream or the Live Radio station screen, the Arrow point to my right to start/continue the stream is locked/frozen. If I give you a screen shot it would be impossible to know if it was working or frozen as it is a snapshot in time and both scenarios would look identical. My WIIM Pro in the other room no longer appears on the list of audio devices (but it’s been a long time since I used it, so that situation may not be related).
Hey there. Any more thoughts on fixing? By the way, when using my WiimPro as an end point if I switch the toggle for Roon off and then on (from within WiimPro app), it briefly appears on the Roon Audio device list, but is frozen and disappears after about 2-3 seconds… Appreciate any trouble shooting tips..
Wanted to follow up on this. We sent you instructions for setting up diagnostics so we could pinpoint what’s happening, have you had a chance to try those steps or look for the results yet? If you ran into anything while configuring them, reply with what you saw and we can take it from there.
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Hello! I’ve been out of town for awhile and just returned this morning. I hope to setup your diagnostics as described later today or early tomorrow. I appreciate both your help and patience. Thanks for the follow-up!
I set up the special build as requested. I rebooted the computer and it now reflects the special build when I look at “About”. I left Roon paused and went to another room for about 25 minutes. I’ve returned to find that the same thing has occurred. I need to shut down the computer and reboot it in order to unfreeze it. I notice a new build release to update (not the special freeze release). Should I install that or wait? Again, appreciate your help.
Yes, that update was still our special build, so installing it was the right move. Stay on it and skip any other updates for now.
The build is working, and we can see what’s jamming. There’s one last piece we need, and it has to be grabbed while it’s actually stuck, so leave everything as it is and let it happen one more time.
When it does, three things, in this order.
1. Grab a file for us. Before you restart anything:
Command + Space, type Activity Monitor, hit Return
In the search box at the top right, type: RoonAppliance
Click the RoonAppliance row once to select it
In the menu bar: View → Run Spindump
Give it half a minute. A window fills up with text — that’s what we want
It’ll probably ask for your Mac password. That’s normal.
2. Now try this instead of restarting the computer.
Back in Activity Monitor, with that same RoonAppliance row still selected, click the stop button (the X in an octagon) at the top left and choose Quit. If it’s still in the list after a few seconds, do it again and choose Force Quit.
Leave Roon app itself alone - don’t close it. RoonAppliance should come back on its own after a few seconds, and playback should start working again.
If that does it, you don’t need to shut the machine down for this any more - just that one step. Let us know either way, it tells us something useful.
3. When it’s stuck, is it just the play control that’s dead like you described before, or does the whole window stop responding?
Just sat down for some late night listening and expecting to reboot, but it appears it started as I would expect. Did you guys do something? Regardless, let’s see how it looks tomorrow.
We did not change anything at our end, and the special build does not fix anything either, it only records more detail. So a good session is just a good session, and this will likely come back.
How has it been since?
When it does freeze again, please still do the three things from our last message, starting with the spindump before you restart anything. And please stay on the special build and skip any other updates.
I’ll send the log in a bit. I connected a Roon ready device yesterday (Wiim Pro) and perhaps having it in a state of connection stops the Roon server from freezing? I woke this morning and again no freeze. If you didn’t do anything, then the only change was me connecting the Wiim Pro. Stay tuned for the file (I’ll disconnect the Roon ready device and see if we freeze up again)
Not sure what is happening. I disabled the Roon Ready endpoint but it didn’t freeze. I unplugged the Roon Ready device so that it wasn’t recognized by the Roon Server. It still didn’t freeze. I’ll be leaving later today for a couple hours and that will be the real test. I’ll get back to you around 4PM EST.
Hey @Leo_Senn, thanks for the test. I believe we now understand where the problem is, and we will try to include a fix into upcoming production release ( depending on how testing goes).
Thanks so much for your understanding and guidance. To be honest, I was shocked to receive the support I did. You guys seem to care and are committed. Best of luck to all of you!
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