When checking that Roon was getting slower with my QNAP TS-853A, I decided to expand the RAM from 4 Gb to 8 Gb.
At first, the access speed increased considerably, but in a few days Roon went back slowly, taking almost a minute to open a disc once selected.
So I decided to move my entire library from the NAS to a 2 TB SSD, specifically a Crucial MX500, connected to the USB 3.0 socket of the QNAP.
The same thing happened when changing RAM: faster access and speed when searching and selecting songs and albums.
After two days, the speed again became noticeably reduced, until it almost became the same as before buying the RAM and the SSD.
My question is: what is happening? Do I need a superNAS or a supercomputer to access the songs and albums?
Why with the apps of Qobuz and TIDAL the access speed is infinitely superior to the one I get with Roon, having the library in my own home and server?
Personally, I think that Roon consumes too much processor power and its speed when accessing the disc on which the music is located is very slow.
It is true that I have 36,000 imported tracks, but I think that is not a reason for what is happening to me.
Can you help me?
Is your Roon Core running on a spinning hard disk (i.e. one of the drives making up your 64 TB of storage)? If so, that’s probably the cause of the issue. The Roon database should be running on an SSD. Moving your music files to an SSD will make no difference. Having the Roon database on an SSD certainly will.
In the scheme of things, the CPU on the QNAP TS-853 is not very powerful. For example, the minimum Intel i3 processor for a smaller library is about 3X faster than the CN3150 in your NAS. An Intel i7 processor recommended for large libraries and heavy duty DSP is about 5-6X faster. The QNAP listed at the lower-end of performance for Roon is roughly 2X faster in the CPU, but it may have other performance advantages too. So your NAS works, but it’s performance properties are limited.
The answer here is simply that Roon is doing a lot more than Qobuz and Tidal. It is managing a large database, managing a lot of graphics, and talks to a variety of endpoints. It also streams music, like Qobuz and Tidal do. It is pretty computer intensive as a result.
I don’t know why you are seeing progressively slower performance, and I won’t speculate.
Thanks for the answers.
I am aware that the QNAP 853 does not have a very fast processor, but I am very surprised that when I put the SSD last week, the speed of access to the albums, songs, tec, was very fast.
In only about three days, the speed dropped to levels of boredom due to the fact that I have to wait more than 30 seconds to find an interpreter, song, etc.
Personally, I think there is a problem because the wait is excessive.
I’m going to move the core to my Intel i7 7700 computer and check the operation.
One question: is it possible that the speed of the music library and the database is lower in the same SSD?
Would it be better to have the database in another SSD?
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
17
Sorry to interject here. I think the speed issue is very dependent on how Roon is used.
While I did perceive a speed improvement with Roon’s last release, I still notice dramatic slowdowns after repeated searches. If I search for something just to play a song and don’t search again for the duration of the song or longer, then usually it is fine. But if I hit Roon with 10 searches in 5 minutes, the processing speed goes to 1/3-1/4 its normal value and the searches slow down, the time it takes to load artist pages (album thumbnails on artist page), and the time it takes to load a page of tags becomes very slow and sometimes unusable.
I suspect there is some sort of hangover from repeated use of certain features that Roon doesn’t clean up. Maybe it is extraneous results still coming back from the web side of things that the core is processing, or maybe it’s that the thread doesn’t close when completed – it has a similar feel to a memory leak even if memory usage doesn’t look to be high.
Increasing Roon’s back end processing capacity may be a stopgap. But I think at some point they’re going to have to look at whether Roon “cleans up after itself” with certain tasks.
I changed the core to my PC with Intel i7 and the speed of import and later access to the albums is very fast, much more than in the NAS.
Can someone explain to me how I can use my library’s database on my computer?
Before the database was in the NAS QNAP. Is it possible to use the same NAS database on the Windows computer? They are compatible?
Thank you
Yes they are compatible. https://kb.roonlabs.com/Migration
Basically you back up your old database and restore it to your new install. Pretty simple.
Glad to hear you are seeing nice performance now.
Thanks for reaching out here and thank you to everyone who chimed in to help!
Yes, you can use Scott’s instructions to migrate the database over, if you want to make sure that all the files transfer over properly, I would create a new backup with a flash drive attached to the QNAP and then have Roon’s backup manager point to the drive directly (instead of copying and pasting a previously made backup to the drive).
The Celeron CPU on the NAS is a bit under-powered, so I suspect that it is partially related to the behavior you saw, although I can’t say for sure. If you obverse this behavior on a properly spec-d Core, such as your i7, it would be interesting to note and look into further.
It looks like you’re on your way here transferring the database over, but if you need any further help afterwards just do let us know.
After having tried the operation with the computer, I went back to using the QNAP as the core and to put the library in it.
Interestingly, the speed of access to returned to be very fast (almost equal to the computer with Intel i7), so I think the problem is not in the QNAP, but in Roon.
For some reason, as the days go by, the system becomes slower, either because of the integration of new albums to the library or because of continued use. I think it does not matter if the library is on an SSD or on the QNAP NAS.
I do not think it’s good that the solution you give is to increase the power of the team, etc., because that does not seem to be the solution if you take into account what I just explained.
I ask the Roon technicians to investigate this matter, as it is very strange what happens and, as James_I said, it is not something that only happens to me.
Thanks for letting me know that additional info. As mentioned previously, we should try to separate the issue as much as possible, and having the below minimum spec CPU may interfere with providing useful results.
One aspect that might be useful here would be to start tracking the exact local time + date when the QNAP gets into this state (e.g. 3:02PM on 6/14/19) and the albums are not properly loading. Can you start tracking a few of these timestamps and let me know this info?
I would next make sure that nothing is occurring in the background of Roon when you notice this behavior, and request clarification on what exact steps you are performing right before this issue occurs. If there are any patterns that you notice leading up to this issue it would be interesting to note.
There is also an “activity spinner” in the top right-hand corner that lets you know if there is any importing/analysis going on, I would make sure that this spinner is not present when this behavior is occurring as Roon may still be analyzing your library:
Do let me know if the above info is useful, and as I mentioned if this behavior occurs on the Core that meets our specifications with the same library, it would be an interesting data point to have.
Dear Noris,
After testing using an Intel i7 computer and then returning to the NAS, I have verified that, after importing the library back into QNAP, the access speed returns to normal and the eternal wait has disappeared.
I’ve added about 100 albums these days, I’ve organized the library by correctly identifying the albums and I’ve deleted about 80 albums.
I have verified that if I add the albums or modify them while a song is playing, the slowness returns. So I have decided not to use the Roon player while doing these functions.
Something that would be interesting to avoid the slowness would be that the library was not being updated continuously, but rather the user could choose when to do it, as in JRiver.
This would avoid processes that delay the search of the songs, albums, etc.
I will continue to test these days and I will keep you informed.
Sorry I have not responded before, but I’ve had a lot of work.
It seems to me that this “slowness” is actually due to Roon running out of resources on an under-powered Core, which I would expected to be the case here. As I mentioned a few times, it would be more interesting to see if this behavior carries over on your properly-spec’d i7 Core.
Roon is always updating metadata / checking for new content / performing analysis in the background. While you can turn some of these additional features off (see Audio Analysis Settings), keeping the metadata up to date is an important aspect.
Thank you for your response, but I am struck by the fact that you always insist on installing Roon on computers with very powerful (and expensive) processors.
Please, listen to me: try that your system does not consume so many resources of the processor of the equipment in which Roon is installed as the main source of management.
If Roon works well for a few days and then goes slow, it is not a problem of the processor or hard drive, it is Roon itself.
It is clear that if Roon is installed on a system with Intel i7 should not have that problem of slowness, but understand that not all users can spend so much money to make Roon work.
You know that the competition, in the case of JRiver, works much faster on computers with processors that are much inferior in performance to an i7. It is true that Roon has superior features to JRiver in some aspects, but that is no reason to have to use such powerful processors to work properly. There are functions in Roon that consume a lot of resources and that’s why it does not work at the speed that we would like in computers without an i7 processor. It’s a matter of your engineers working to solve that.
I think it’s more convenient for you to tell users to install Roon on a supercomputer or in a supercomputer with inaccessible prices.
I hope you heed my proposal so that users do not have to spend an important amount of money to enjoy Roon as we deserve.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
35
I agree a NAS is not optimal if you want performance.
BUT…I have been repeating this problem now very predictably. Try doing 25 searches for artists, and then click on the artist page, as fast as you can. Roon slows down considerably with each attempt at this. There is a performance issue with Roon…of that I am confident.
You can live with it for sure. I doubt people tend to pound Roon with searches that quickly. But verifying this is an issue could lead to fixing a number of potentially related issues.
We’re looking into these reports, James. Appreciate you flagging these for us.
1 Like
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
37
Sure no problem. I know you guys are. It’s not really a complaint actually since my use case of assembling playlists via searches is probably somewhat rare. But I assume that some issue like this that slows down even pretty powerful cores (like mine ) could manifest in many ways and looking into it could solve other slowness issues.
) could manifest in many ways and looking into it could solve other slowness issues.