Mac Mini (Late 2014), 8GB RAM, 2.8GHz i5 Proc, MacOS Catalina 10.15.6
Installed Uptone LPS Conversion and JS-2 Linear Power Supply
Roon for Mac V1.7 (Build 571)
Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)
Wired Ethernet only, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled
Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)
USB connected to 2GB SANDISK External SSD
USB connected to SingXer SU-6, then SPDIF to Mytek Manhattan II
DisplayPort to HDMI Output cable to monitor
Description Of Issue
When I start Roon, I can see all of the Audio devices connected to my Mac Mini, including the internal ones. These are the devices such as CoreAudio, HDMI Out, and (USB)SingXer SU-6. I can enable any of those devices, and select them if I want. After some period of time (usually 24 - 48 hours, but sometimes much shorter), all of these devices disappear from the list of Audio devices.
When I listen to my main DAC, I select the USB output to SingXer SU-6 as my audio output device. However, this device frequently stops working, and I cannot reselect it as a device. That’s when I go to look at the available devices in the Audio Setup, and can see that ALL of the Mac Mini audio out devices have disappeared. If I simply quit and relaunch Roon on the Mac Mini, then all the Mac Mini audio devices are back present, and I can select my (USB)SingXer SU-6 as my output.
Any guesses as to why Roon keeps losing my Mac Mini audio outputs? Thanks.
Welcome to the forum! It sounds like there could be an issue with your RAATServer cache, I would suggest we try to clear this out.
You can generate a new RAATServer instance on your device by following these instructions, but please be aware that this will reset your Roon Settings -> Audio Tab to factory settings and I would advise making a backup of any custom DSP settings you have first:
Thanks Noris. Ironically, I sort of did that this morning, and it is working fine. More specifically, I read through a lot of threads and realized that I probably don’t need to be running the full version of Roon on my Mac Mini which is mostly a headless server. So, I did a Roon DB backup, disconnected and shut down the Roon App, installed Roon Server, and then restored the DB to the new Roon Server instance. That all worked out by the book without any issues, and I am up and running well now on the new Roon Server.
I expect that running just the Roon Server is going to be more efficient on resources, and should be more stable since I am not using any of the client/control services. I’ve had some odd memory leaks from the Roon App since the 1.7 upgrade, so I am hoping that this sorts that out as well. TBH, for my needs I am better off running Roon Server regardless, so I think I am on the right path. I will monitor this for a few days, and then follow up with feedback on whether I had any further issues. Thanks.
Well, I am on Day 2 of Roon Server now, and the situation is improved. When I opened Roon Remote on my iPad this morning, all of the Mac Mini interfaces were listed correctly under the “Connected to Core” section of the Audio Devices. About 5 hours later, when I opened the Roon Remote on the same iPad, my “(USB) SingXer SU-6” device had disappeared in the same way generally symptom as before. When I went to Settings-Audio, all of the Mac Mini local interfaces were initially gone. However, about 5 seconds after opening that Settings-Audio page, it seemed to do a “refresh” and all of the missing interfaces came back. If that is normal, then that is much better than what I had before when the Mac Mini local interfaces would not come back without fully resetting Roon.
Another symptom I noticed is that my Mac Mini DisplayPort-HDMI interface is randomly dropping in Roon, which I know is due to some HDMI sync issues I am troubleshooting. I am wondering if that interface going up and down every few minutes all day long might be affecting the RAATServer’s view on the state of the Mac Mini interfaces. Considering that, I manually disconnected the DisplayPort cable so that interface is not active, and Roon Server should now see very high stability on the Mac Mini interfaces.
Anyway, I want to share all of those details as they may be partial factors that are affecting the stability. Performance is not perfect, but much better today, so I feel like we are on the right track. If this stays stable now, I will check in to validate this issue as resolved. Otherwise, I will try to do the specific RAATServer cache cleanup you recommend. Thanks.
Thanks Noris. I am on day 4, and still stable. I haven’t had this level of stability in a very long time. I’ve also had some past random memory leaks when keeping open the full version of Roon for long periods of time. Running Roon Server instead seems to have eliminated that issue as well.
So far, so good. I’ll check in with more feedback next week. Assuming the Roon Server is stable for a few more days, I would consider this issue as resolved. Thanks…
For follow up, I am on Day 9 now since switching from full Roon to Roon Server, and it is still rock solid stable compared to before. It makes sense to me that there may have been a RAATServer corruption, that we coincidentally resolved when I switched to Roon Server. Additionally, though, the Roon Server is much more responsive to my iPad Roon Clients, and there appear to be no memory leaks or other issues. I am fine with closing this issue as solved. Also, for anyone else who reads this thread, I have found Roon Server to be a much better music server solution than the full Roon application when my intent is to control Roon through client devices. Thanks for your help, Noris…