Running Roon Server on iMac w/ Ethernet connection to internet
Controlling Roon from iMac or iPhone
As a new user, I’ve been doing a lot of grooming to get my library in shape. But I’ve also been playing a lot of tracks to test everything. Upon start of Roon (and Tidal) user interface response seems good for a time, but eventually I start seeing error messages (“This track is not currently available from Tidal”, or “No audio devices found”) and tracks won’t play without repeated taps on the play button. They DO always play eventually, but it is like Roon loses control for a second and has to re-establish connection before proceeding.
I got curious about this behavior so I fired up Activity Monitor to try to gain some insight as to what was happening. I’m no expert, but It seems like Roon is using A LOT of memory, and the amount of memory used seems to grow steadily over time. Attached are two screen shots - one right after restarting Roon, and one from a later time when memory usage has increased.
Eventually, the system locks up with error message: “Your system has run out of application memory.” Restarting the system fixes everything, and Roon proceeds again from low memory usage to high with error messages and glitches becoming more prevalent as runtime increases. This SEEMS like a memory leak to my untrained eye.
Hi @Michael_Loomis,
Thanks for reaching out to us about this issue. I think the next step here is to enable some diagnostics on your account so our technical staff can get some more insight into what’s going on here.
However, before I enable this feature, I’d like to ask for your help ensuring we gather the right information.
First, can you please reproduce the issue once more and note the time at which the error occurs. Then respond here with that time, and I’ll make sure we review the diagnostics related to that timestamp.
OK. I restarted my system sometime on Thursday (8/29) and ran Roon in my normal routine (some listening, some new music exploration, and some library grooming).
Smooth sailing until sometime the following evening (8/30) when the first of several error messages started to appear. These errors were of 3 types: “Failed to initialize the audio device.” “No audio devices found.” And “This track is not currently available in Tidal.” The errors would happen seemingly at random, but usually when pressing a PLAY button. In all cases, the error message would either disappear on its own, or re-clicking PLAY would clear it and the track would start playing. I’d say these errors happened maybe a dozen times over the course of two days - but more frequently as time went on.
I was running Activity Monitor as well and watched the memory for the process “Roon” gradually, but steadily increase until 6:06 PM tonight, Saturday (8/31) when the system crashed with an out of application memory message. Roon is showing just shy of 60 Gb of memory.
Thanks for sharing the update! We were able to take a closer look, and are curious - are you able to reproduce the issue while staying logged out of Tidal?
I realize not having access to your Tidal account/content is tedious, but it would be a very useful step in troubleshooting to see if memory continues to increase. We’ll be on standby for your results!
OK, so at your request, I am running Roon now while logged out of Tidal. Playback consists of Roon continuously looping over my old collection of ripped AAC and MP3 files. Occasionally, I will visit genre or artist write-ups and read some of the text provided. So far, I’m seeing very similar behavior in Activity Monitor with steadily increasing memory use for the Roon process. The primary difference being that memory use is building more slowly than before. Activity Monitor is currently showing ~34 Gb after running for about 3 days.
I’m going to try to hold out to see if the system eventually runs out of memory like before, but I’m already missing my Tidal subscription! Hopefully, we might learn something from all this.
OK, I let Roon run for over 5 days without Tidal. Symptoms were the same but they occurred more slowly and less frequently. Occasional error messages “No audio devices found” etc. until the eventual crash because the system had run out of application memory. The crash happened at 5:48 PM on 9/8 (today) with the Roon process showing 60.21 Gb (compared to 59.99 Gb in the other case running Tidal). Screen shot below…
Also, I don’t know how relevant it is, but Activity Monitor was showing CPU at 14 - 20% as the crash neared. Otherwise, during this experiment, CPU for Roon was typically at 3 - 4%.
