Roon looses connectivity. I have to reboot Roon to get it back working

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

Mac Mini 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5 8 GB RAM. Sierra 10.13.6. Roon 1.7 (build 511) stable. This is a dedicated machine for Roon.

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

Roon Core (Mac Mini), QNAP NAS, PS Audio DirectStream Bridge II all wired to Meraki Switch.

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

PS Audio Bridge II

Description Of Issue

Roon will lose connectivity. I will be playing music from Tidal, Qobuz, or my NAS and the music will stop. I then will get a lost connectivity message on my tablet. Sometimes it will come back but most of the time I get a message saying it can not find the core. When I go to the core machine I don’t see my PS Audio DAC as a zone. When I restart Roon the PS Audio DAC is back in zones and I can start back playing until it stops again.

Hi @Bryan_Stewart,

What kind of router are you using in this setup? Is it Meraki gear as well? Is this a new issue after the setup was existing fora while or is this a new setup?

We have sometimes seen more complicated configuration needed for managed switches, as mentioned in our Networking Best Practices:

Managed Switches

Managed switches can be very robust, but they are often designed for professional installation, so in many cases the out-of-box configuration is not right. If your switch has a “flow control” setting, please make sure that it is enabled. Also, make sure that the switch is not performing any sort of throttling that might impact communication between cores, storage, remotes, and/or audio endpoints. Finally, ensure that the switch is configured to pass multicast and broadcast traffic. If in doubt about any of this, try temporarily replacing your managed switch with a “dumb” switch to see if things improve.

This sounds like it could be a multicast issue to me, can you confirm if multicast is enabled on your networking gear?

This is a brand new issue. I have had my Meraki gear in my network for about 6 months. My Meraki (Home) network is all L2 (No Routing). My ISP Router is from Spectrum. I do have Multicast enabled on my Spectrum router. I’m a network guy is real life so I feel pretty good about my network setup.

I will continue to test things on my end. Right now the only fix is to restart Roon on my Mac.

Hi @Bryan_Stewart,

Can you let me know the exact local time + date in you country when you next experience this behavior and then send me a copy of your Roon logs by using these instructions? I’m wondering if logs contain some further clues.

Logs have been sent via email reply. I’m in the US and the problem is not time specific. I was listening last night 12/25 around 1 AM and the problem happen again. I fell asleep and when I woke up around 3 AM Roon lost connectivity again. My fix is to close roon and restart on the core.

Roon Core back down. Looks like I might have a memory issue. On my Mac Mini I have 8 GB and Roon was using 5.55 GB. When I tried to connect to Roon I got the screen asking me to “Choose your Roon Core”. When I went to my Mac Mini Core it was up but I could not play anything (Tidal, Qobuz, NAS) from here. I clicked on the About button in Settings and nothing would come up. The Roon emblem was just spinning.

After I closed Roon and started it back everything came back up. Roon is using 955 MB of memory and I can play music again.

I uploaded screenshots to the dropbox.

Hi @Bryan_Stewart,

Thank you for sending the logs over. I am looking through them and I am seeing a lot of MDNS activity in the logs, looks like it’s specifically related to one of your Airplay zones. Are you using any Airplay zones? As a test, can you please try temporarily disabling your Airplay zones in Roon Settings -> Audio and let me know if that changes the behavior?

No I am not using Airplay Zone (that I know of). I have disabled all zones except my PS Audio. Now I do have a bunch of Roku devices in my home and my son dose do a ton of streaming from his iPhone.

Roon just failed again. I have uploaded new logs to the dropbox folder. Time is 11:45 PM on December 26th

Here is the size of my library. Do I have a resource issue?

Hi @Bryan_Stewart,

The amount of tracks you have looks acceptable, I don’t believe you have a resource issue.

It’s strange that you mention you have no airplay zones in Roon since there are quite a few Airplay traces.

I will escalate your report + new log traces to our QA staff to get a fresh set of eyes on this, I appreciate your patience until I hear back from them.

@noris I restarted Roon without any zones active. I was trying to see if it was an issue with my DAC. But even with no active zones Roon crashed on me. When I try to connect via my tablet I get the Remote Connection - Waiting for Remote Core… message.

H @Bryan_Stewart,

Thanks for trying Roon with no active zones. I spoke to our technical team regarding this behavior and I have a few follow-up suggestions:

  1. Are there any firewalls present on the current Core or network-shaping apps that are active?

  2. It looks like you have another Mac that the current Core is also losing connection to. Can I please request that you make a Backup of the current database and then transfer the Core to the other Mac you have?
    You can do so by installing/opening the Roon app on the other Mac and when prompted to connect to an existing core, choose “Use this PC” as the Roon Core. If you temporarily host the Roon Core on the other Mac, do you still experience this issue?

@noris I’m doing a restore currently but after 5 hours I’m only at 37%. I did a backup and then copied the directory to an USB stick. Should I have done the backup directly to the USB stick? I did a search on slow restores but couldn’t find a resolution to why it is slow. I will let it run all night and hopefully try the new core tomorrow.

@noris I restored to the new Core and am still having issues. I uploaded new logs to the dropbox. The time is Dec 28th 10:20 AM.

Things I have noticed:

  1. When I restart Roon everything is working great
  2. I lose the ability to play Tidal/Qobuz. I can play music from my NAS (Network)
  3. I then lose the ability to play music from my NAS (Network)
  4. I try to connect from my tablet and get error where I can not find Core. When I try to connect to different core it shows my Core is initializing
  5. I shutdown and restart Roon on Core and everything comes back

Hi @Bryan_Stewart,

Thanks for sending the new logs over, I will request some feedback from the technical team.

Ideally, it would be best if we perform this test with a fresh database, can you please try setting the database you restored on the other Mac aside by using these instructions?

  • Make a Backup of your current Roon Database
  • Exit out of Roon
  • Navigate to your Roon’s Database Location
  • Find the folder that says “Roon”
  • Rename the “Roon” folder to “Roon_old”
  • Restart/Reinstall the Roon App to generate a new Roon folder

If this behavior is database-related, that would give us a good data point. Thank you!

@noris I moved my Core back to my normal Mac Mini and had it create a new database. I have been running without issue for 9 hours at this point.

@noris Well I thought it was fixed. After 16 hours of playing non stop my Core crashed. I started getting errors saying Tidal and Qobuz music could not be accessed. Then I get an error saying Lost Connection!. I could not access the Core. Then the Core came back and my PS Audio DAC endpoint wasn’t showing up in Roon. I had not rebooted the Core at this point.

I uploaded additional logs (Time 1:00 AM Dec 30th) to Dropbox.

As soon as I shutdown Roon and restart it everything comes back.

@noris Should I try and restore to an earlier build? I have backups of Version 1.7 (build 505) and see what happens?