Roon loses all audio zones, music pauses then rediscovers zones

Support
1

Computer:
mac Mini (mid 2011)
2.5 Ghz i5
8gB ram
OS: Sierra 10.12.6
Internal Drive: 500gB - Roon Core installed here
External Drive: Western Digital 6Tb RAID connected via thunderbolt

Audio Zone 1:
SimAudio by Moon 350p connected to macMini via USB

Audio Zone 2
Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ running 1.21 (latest) firmware, connected to macMini via USB

I have been running this setup for several months now (the Mytec is 2 months old, the Moon is 8 months old). In the last two or three days I noticed that the music would stop playing. This would happen intermittently, for example the music could play for 1 minute and pause, or for 30 minutes then pause.

Today, while playing music, I connected to the macMini via Apples Share Screen option (this is how I always connect to the macMini), and I noticed that when the music would pause the Roon screen would show a message that said either (select a zone, or no zones - I am being vague because I cannot recall the exact language). Then a few seconds later the screen would refresh, and the zone that i had been playing to appeared, and the music was paused.

Like I said - this is an absolutely new issue that has just started. I have rebooted the mac, I have run the hard drive utility (nothing came up), I deleted the Roon library and rebuilt it, all to no avail.

One last thing, this happens on both DACs I confirmed that today. Any ideas? Thank you.

2

Hello @PCM,

Do you always control playback of your Roon Core with Apple Screen Sharing? I’m curious to find out because we have seen issues in the past with Screen Sharing applications causing audio zone dropouts. This is due to the way the screen sharing apps attempt to relay the sound coming from the device to your remote screen sharing computer, it can cause instability with the audio driver.

-John

3

Thanks for responding. I have always used the screen share to control Roon, nothing new has been introduced. I can say that this all started after doing a forced backup. Could be a red herring, but it is the only thing I can think of that has changed.

I have crappy wi-if in my office where all the audio lives, and so it was easier to use screen share since that was all over Ethernet.

4

Hello @PCM,

Based on the symptoms that you are describing, my first thought is that your RAATServer installation has somehow worked itself into a bad state. RAATServer is the process that runs in the background when Roon is open that handles the audio stack on the local computer. Let’s try this

  • Before anything, please create a backup of your current Roon database.

  • Once you’ve created the back up of your Roon database please close all active instances of the application and reboot the machine hosting your Roon core.

  • When the machine hosting your core is powered back up I would like you to please test with a new RAATServer folder.

    • Your “RAATServer” folder will be in the same directory as your Roon database
    • Rename the entire RAATServer folder to RAATServer_old

  • Once you have renamed your “RAATServer” folder to “RAATServer_Old”, please relaunch the application, and confirm if you are still experiencing the issue.

-John

5

as I am reading this Roon paused again. I will give this a try and let you know. Thanks!

6

Followed all the instructions…

51 seconds into playing a song and it did it again

7

I moved a few albums off my attached storage onto the internal hard drive, and added the location to Roon. Playing them now, and will let you know what happens

8

Nope, still happens

9

Hello @PCM,

I’m going to enable diagnostic logging on your account. The next time your Roon Core contacts the Roon servers for an update, the change should be registered by your Roon Core. What should happen next is that the next time you are playing music and see this behavior, you should report back in this thread what the time was you saw it (local) and wether it was a local, NAS, or Tidal track. Once we have this information, I’ll be able to request the logs from your Core for that period of time and we can investigate further what’s going on here.

-John

10

1:23 EST paused then resumed playing the next song - playing file from attached storage
1:29 EST paused then resumed playing the next song - playing file from attached storage
1:35 EST paused then resumed playing the next song - playing file from attached storage
1:58 EST Stopped playing - playing file from attached storage

11

any ideas? It is quite annoying and at this point I consider roon unusable. thanks.

12

Hello @PCM,

I had the tech team look over the diagnostic logs from your Mac Mini. Unfortunately, while they were able to see the dropping of the zones as you describe, the logs did not identify what the source of this behavior was.

For the next steps in the troubleshooting process, they recommended the following steps

  1. Disable the Screen Sharing service on the Mac Mini. While it may be possible to successfully run the Screen Sharing service with Roon concurrently, it should be eliminated as a variable while we try to diagnose what is happening on the machine
  2. Reboot the Mac Mini and restart Roon
  3. Try playback to a local zone

What device are you using Screen Sharing from to connect to the Mac Mini? You should be able to install Roon or Roon Remote from the app store on that device to control playback on the Mac Mini for this test.

-John

13

I have been using the Roon client on a remote computer - a macbook pro, I turned off screen sharing, rebooted, and restarted Roon. I have always been playing to a local zone. My MacMini is directly connected to the Mytek and Moon DACs. Is there a way to COMPLETELY uninstall Roon and the try t reinstall it? I know on the Mac you drag the app to the trash bin to uninstall, but I have seen apps leave artifacts.

14

Any updates on this?

15

Hi @PCM ---- I saw you posts in this thread and wanted to chime in here.

After having re-read through your report I want to make sure that you are not possible feeling the affects of a performance issue with the mentioned core machine (i.e mac Mini - mid 2011). I did some research into that model and it looks like that device does not come with an SSD installed, if it does not then the unit would be falling below our minimum requirements

Additionally, it seems like most of your testing has been performed with locally stored content, can you verify for me how TIDAL based content is performing? My assumption is the same but please do confirm.

-Eric

16

Thanks for reaching out to me. I don’t use Tidal so I cannot comment on this. As far as performance this issue started very recently. I have been using Roon on this setup for several months with no issues. The problem did start immediately after doing a backup, but I fail to see a connection between backups and intermittent loses of audio zones.

17

Thank you for touching base with me @PCM, I am always glad to lend a hand.

Continuing forward, I want to be absolutely certain that this behavior is not isolated to the MacMini currently hosting your core and would like to propose temporarily hosting your core on another device, preferable one that has an SSD installed on it. This way we can isolate some variables and determine what the behavior is like elsewhere.

When setting up for this test exercise…

  • Please make sure to create a back up of your Roon database before anything.
  • Copy a handful of albums to the internal storage on the device you are going to use as the temporary core.
  • Once the test core is setup please confirm if the device is exhibiting the same behavior.

Looking forward to your observations Peter, thanks again!
-Eric

18

The problem is Roon loses the Audio Zone - not the music. When it loses the Audio Zone the music pauses, and then when the Audio Zone is found, the music picks up from the spot it paused. Can you explain why an SSD versus a spinning disk would prevent Roon from losing the Audio Zone? I can see (almost) why an SSD would be better at streaming music, but a high-res file is what? a 100 mgb in size - any disk/computer should easily be able to handle that. I use the same mac mini as my iTunes server (not at the same time as using Roon) and stream hi-def video over ethernet across the house to an AppleTV in a rack in my basement, that sends the image to a TV in the living room - and zero drop outs, and I can move between videos (100’s) very quickly.

1 Like
19

@eric I setup a Tidal account and linked it to Roon. I can confirm that Tidal also drops out. The only difference is that unlike local songs, the song did not continue playing after the Audio Zone was found. As I stated initially, I have two audio zones and the dropout happens on both.

20

I think Eric is trying to eliminate variables here.

Roon has reasonably steep requirements, and you can read about the reasons for those requirements here. The point is that the system you’re running is a bit older, and in general running the Core off an SSD (versus a spinning disk) is probably the single biggest factor for performance of Roon.

Now to be clear, it’s not clear yet that you’re dealing with a performance problem. From what I can see possible causes are:

  • Driver interaction with Screen Sharing (unlikely because you’ve already tested without using Screen Sharing, right?)

  • Audio device issue (unlikely because you’re seeing this with two different audio devices, right?)

  • A networking or firewall problem

  • A storage issue (unlikely because you’re seeing this issue with TIDAL, but still possible because the symptoms were different and there could be 2 issues at play here)

  • A bad cable or environmental issue

  • A performance issue with the Core

The last three are all things that can change out from under you – cables and hard drives go bad, other apps can get updated and affect the performance of the system, and so on.

Point being, the reason Eric is asking you to try running Roon on the Macbook Pro with a few local files is that if you’re still experiencing those symptoms with a different Core and storage device, we can pretty much rule out those last three causes and focus elsewhere, like on the audio devices or network.

We know troubleshooting these cases is frustrating, but there’s a lot of places things can go wrong. Rest assured that Eric and our support team will work with you until we find the problem @PCM. We appreciate your patience.

Also:

You can find your database using these instructions and rename the Roon folder to Roon_main or similar.

Then, just launch Roon like normal, sign in, and see how it goes.

Later, if you want to switch back, just quit Roon, delete the interim database, and rename the original database back to Roon. Any questions, let us know.