Roon is a bit slow in this large music library - a better HDD required?

Keep it simple. Well try to… we all try to keep cables neat and simple and they all become a rats nest in the end… lol

  1. SSD (or NVMe) for OS, roon server and the roon database.
    The quicker the the drive is with the roon database, which has all the metadata and the part that roon server actually seaches, the better. ••• Although I’m eating my own words as I’ve just done a temp install of ubuntu on a slower ssd and things seem better. •••

  2. One large 16 or 18tb enterprise sata drive for Audio file storage…
    connected directly to the motherboard, stay away from external enclosures. The new drives are quite fast for single drives (until they are about 80% full, but that applies to most hdd. For roon audio storage it’s probably a non issue). The larger Helium filled drives also run very cool too. If you need more storage, add another large drive.


My setup is performance wise is sort of comparible to yours.

  • Your board is newer, I’m on a Gigabyte Z390 Designaire
  • Ryzen 9 3900X is on par with a i9 9900k.
  • You have more RAM, 64gb vs my 16
  • 1TB ssd vs 1TB NVMe (but now I’m on a 256SSD so…)
  • 16TB EXOS X16 sata internal storage drive but only 1/3 the albums, alot hi-res as well)

I couldn’t sleep Monday and got a brilliant idea, it’s 2:30 in the morning… I already had made a bootable usb stick that had ubuntu 22.04 installer so why not try roonserver on a fresh, minimal install, of ubuntu desktop 22.04! :crazy_face: I disconnected my windows NVMe drive just to be safe during the install because windows is a bitch most of the time and then reconnected it after the install was completed…, I put the ubuntu install on a spare Samsung 850 PRO. Alot slower than the NVMe drive windows was on.

I setup the BIOS to boot from Ubuntu and installed the following:

  1. All prerequisites and RoonServer
  2. HQPlayer 4.19 (setup defaults and imported convolution files)
  3. nvidia drivers (for GTX TitanX)
  4. .NET 6
  • I keep my audio files on a separate internal sata EXOS X16 drive, (which is formatted NTFS), but is accessable from ubuntu. (Just had to create a mount point with fstab so it would auto mount at boot.)

Launched Roon app from another pc and restored database backup located on the windows NVMe drive. Fixed the mapping of the Audio storage location in Roon storage setup. And crossed my fingers. :slightly_smiling_face:

So…

I’ve only been messing with it less than a day but as of now switching RoonServer to ubuntu was an all around improvement from windows.

  • Library access seems improved, can’t put a finger on how much and/or what the improvement is, but it just seems better. I’ll use this for a week or 2 and bounce back to windows on the other drive and see if I still think it’s faster.

  • One thing that is a definite improvement for me is that I am now able to use HQP output to DSD512 using SincLI and several other favorites w/ASDM7ECv2 - pushing the TitanX, which was not possible at all for me on windows, previously I was booting my gaming pc into ubuntu and using hqplayer with a RTX3080ti, so i was unsure if the TitanX would be up to the task…

So in the end, I’m starting to think there’s more of a performance boost to be had hidden in the OS, processor and boot drive as a whole, than the storage drives of the audio files. Having just one large drive for your storage should be enough for performance with all those tracks. I bet even having multiple smaller sata drives for audio storage, so long as they are internal and connected directly to the motherboard, would be good if not better. But, there would be more noise, more heat, and more power usage.

Looking like another sleepless night :face_with_spiral_eyes:

1 Like

@ffk My experiences with Windows / Linux fast NVME SSD for the system and external HDD music box are congruent. I just prefer to work with Manjaro Linux and do not give up Windows for comparison (yet). The Linux people are more innovative and everyone who knows something about computers jumps on the new train. It is even made easier for beginners.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 45 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.