Thank you, Martin. I’ll give this a shot in a little while: I have a bunch of things to do, including washing a very dirty dog! I really appreciate all the help you’ve been in this. It’s a very helpless feeling to be looking at two – for present purposes – inert blocks of metal and not knowing what to do. You’ve been a sympathetic and supportive ear, and you’ve given me hope that there’s a solution.
One last thought – for you or for whomever else might be picking up on this. Might Apple be working on a fix to Catalina that might resolve these problems? I ask only because that would be a simpler approach than switching out the one computer for the other. But if not, then that is (I hope) another possibility. That said, I’ll try the new patch you’ve proposed and see hat happens.
I had a similar problem with my Cocktail X50D a couple months ago. In my case I also could not access the drive directly from/within cocktail audio X50D either. It gave me the drive unavailable error from the novatron app or directly using the X50D remote and menus.
Hmm. Well . . . progress, but no improvement. That last patch meant that the finder now sees the x 45, but when I tried to open the folder I got a “connection failed” message. And Roon still can’t see the folders. But this does seem to be an improvement of sorts, no? It’s giving me hope anyway. Any thoughts on what I can do from here? Dog now clean, by the way.
Hi Shawn. Yes, I can still play music directly from the x 45. it lacks Roon’s elegance and finding capabilities, but I can do it at a pinch.
Yes, I think we’re getting closer. Not knowing what version of Samba the X45 supports doesn’t help and means I guessing.
It maybe worthwhile trying this: open Finder and press ⌘K. Then type cifs://x45 and press Enter. Does this connect and open a window with the two shares? If you then click on the LocalStorages folder can you browse the files?
If this works then it’s likely that the X45 used Samba version 1.
No, it didn’t produce any result. It opened up a window, to be sure, but there was nothing in it-- no local storages folder. I’m hoping failure is also productive and informative?
I think that we can rule out Samba 1.0 on the X45. But I’m still not sure how this can be fixed.
I’m traveling tomorrow for a couple of days but will have another look when I return.
It may be worthwhile dropping a line to Cocktail as this affects their Samba implementation, Also, if there’s a way of copying some of your music onto the Mac we could get you running again while a fix is identified.
Do you mind sharing a screenshot of what you see when you open this folder in Finder?
Also, how is your network setup like? Can you let me know the model/manufacturer of your networking gear and if the Core is connected via Ethernet or WiFi?
Sure, here it is. For completeness’ sake, I also took a screenshot of what I now see when I go to Finder/Network. As you can see, it shows several folders. But when I attempt to open them I get the same “connection failed” message.
The networking router is a Netgear C3200 and the Core is connected through Ethernet.
We did not experience this kind of file storage missing issue with Roon with any customers.
The Samba version of X45 is “V4.7.4”.
However you are recommended to re-scan(Browse) the files of X45 storage at the ‘Settings>Storage’ menu of Roon, just in case.
If you have any question feel free contact me please.
Best regards,
Inho Kim
NOVATRON CO., LTD
I hope the Samba information is of some help. I’ll try the re-scanning of files this evening when I get back from work. There are nearly 4,000 files, so it might take a while.
Thanks for reaching out to Cocktail and for posting those screenshots. I’m going to reach out to our hardware team to see if we have an x45 in-house and if this behavior is the same on our end.
While I inquire on my end - since you are unable to access the x45 through finder though, this suggests either some kind of firewall blocking the connection on the Macbook or something related to the x45 hardware/software.
I would double check to make sure you are running on the newest firmware version for your x45 and check to see if the share is accessible from another PC on the same network if you happen to have another one around.
Thanks Noris. I’ll do all of this, although probably not until Wednesday or maybe Thursday: it’s election day in the USA and I’m a candidate in my little town, so I’m concentrating on that this evening to see how many votes I lose by!!
Sorry to hear that the election didn’t work out favorably . Do let me know when you have had a chance to check the behavior from another PC and the firmware aspect, I spoke to our hardware team today and they have been unable to reproduce this behavior with the X45 and Catalina setup they have in the lab.
Well, no luck finding the Cocktail on my MacBook Pro. I had another thought that didn’t work out: I tried to find the Cocktail app that i have installed on my iPhone (I’m too Apple-centric, I fear). I couldn’t find it on the App store that my MacBook finds, although hit is still on the App store for the phone. My thought was that if I could use the app to control the Cocktail on the MacBook, that would at least suggest that the Mac could find the Cocktail. But . . . no app. The phone still finds and controls the Cocktail, though, in case that’s of any help.
The firmware for the Cocktail appears to be up to date. The automatic updating for firmware is turned on and the current firmware is X45-ca-1.0.0.r1454. As far as I can tell, and Novatron’s website is not the clearest, that’s the most recent version of the firmware.
I checked, and the MacMini’s Firewall is off.
So I’m in the same position as before. The MacMini finds the x 45 on the Network (under Finder-Go-network) but can’t open the folder (or any other folders it finds in the same place). Roon still sees the x 45 in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, but I’m guessing that’s not significant.
I’m encouraged, to an extent, by the fact that you can’t replicate the problem in your lab. That suggests that it’s something I’ve screwed up or, at least, that it’s a local setting problem that should be fixable. But how?! If there was a way to reboot, or start again on the Mac, I would, but when I even thought about adding a folder for Roon to look at, it wouldn’t give me the option of adding the “\x45” because it’s not available.
Please don’t give up on me! It’s a terrible feeling to not be able to access anything on Roon!
One small thing. I looked again on the PowerBook and this time (unlike before) it could see the x 45 under Finder-Go-Network. Same result – I couldn’t open the file because the Connection Failed. But I noticed that it lists the folder as belonging to a PC. Several other folders are also listed as PC ones, and I can’t open them either. The MacMino folder is correctly identified as a Mac folder, and that I can open. Is there some significance to the fact the the Mac appears to believe the X 45 is a PC folder?
It appears that you are not able to access the X45 share, even outside of Roon. I suggest that we address accessing this share outside of Roon first, as not being able to access it via two separate computers is not a good sign.
I realize you reached out to Cocktail Support earlier in the thread, but I believe they may have misunderstood the scope of the issue and believe this to be just Roon related.
I suggest that you reach out to them again and clarify that you can’t access the X45 share from two PCs, even outside of Roon. Once you provide this information, I am hopeful that they can provide instructions on resetting the SMB connection or clearing the SMB cache if possible.
As a starting point, I would check out page 54 of the Cocktail Audio X45 Manual to make sure that Samba is turned on in Cocktail X45 settings.
Well, i gave up. I changed out the MacMini I’d been using for Roon for my work MacMini, which was still running Mojave. I backed up Roon before I changed machines, restored the backup on the new machine, and everything came back like magic. A little panic resolving audio issues, and everything’s working as before. This isn’t an ideal situation – I have a lot of file management to do now so that I can get my work files on the computer that will now be my work machine, and I can’t get Apple TV on the Mac that’s now running Roon. I’m taking those as very much first world problems!
So I guess my issue is resolved, although not understood. My experience suggests that the Cocktail was not, and never was, the problem. The problem started when I upgraded Mojave to Catalina, and was solved by reverting back to Catalina. For me, that suggests that something in the interface between the Mac and Roon wasn’t working and was causing Roon to be unavailable to see the Cocktail. I realize it’s a problem you weren’t able to reproduce in the lab, but unless you can come up with a different narrative, my experience suggests that the Catalina/Roon interface is problematic, and whatever the fix built into the latest version of Roon was, it didn’t entirely resolve the problem. For purposes of information, my MacBook Pro, running Catalina, can now see the Roon core on the new computer running Mojave.
That suggests there might be more investigating to be done at you end, but for me my fingers are crossed that this problem is resolved. Many, many thanks for all your help and for not abandoning me when I sounded like the panicking techno-novice that I definitely am! You were a deeply appreciated lifeline. Thank you!!!
The problem started when I upgraded Mojave to Catalina, and was solved by reverting back to Catalina.
That should be Mojave.
For me, that suggests that something in the interface between the Mac and Roon wasn’t working and was causing Roon to be unavailable to see the Cocktail.
I don’t think this had anything to do with Roon since you couldn’t access the Cocktail X45 share from the Mac either. Most likely something broke between Catalina and the X45–Apple has made some changes that affect security and file access.
Did you get anything back from Cocktail support? I agree with @noris that they may have misunderstood your issue first time round.
. Do let me know when you have had a chance to check the behavior from another PC and the firmware aspect, I spoke to our hardware team today and they have been unable to reproduce this behavior with the X45 and Catalina setup they have in the lab.