Roon on macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 using 100% of CPU

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Now the issue is happening. Roon radio has been playing for about 24 hrs. I put about 9 hrs of music in the queue last night before I went to sleep. After the queue was exhausted Roon radio started.

When switching to the next track the CPU jumps from about 13% to 100% and stays there for a while going as high as 103%. Then the album artwork is finally updated on the screen and the CPU utilization drops back down.

I’ll be awake for about 3 more hours if there is any more info you want tonight.

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Thank you for the update, @JOHN_WILLS.

I have enabled diagnostics on your account once more so I can get a new diagnostics report over to the technical team to aid in their investigation.

I had a long chat with the technical team about their investigation and I have a couple of questions for you that should give them additional insight into what may be occurring.

  • Are you doing any upsampling?
  • Can you set the “On-Demand Audio Analysis Speed” to Throttled and see if you experience any change in behavior?
  • When this occurs, is it always playing to the same audio zone? If you use a different zone does this still occur?
  • Using terminal, can you get details on your process consumption and send it over to me?

Thanks again for your continued patience and cooperation as we continue to investigate here. I’ll be sure to get the latest report to the technical team and I will let you know ASAP when I hear back from them.

Regards,
Dylan

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A post was split to a new topic: CPU usage high on Mac OS

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No upsampling I’m aware of. How would I verify this?
I tried setting the “In-Demand audio Analysis Speed” to Throttled and it made no difference. In fact I think I’ve left it set to Throttled but I can’t check it now. I will explain why below.

Yes, I’m always using the same audio zone, The Spectra USB DAC driving a Bose SoundLink Mini. I tried messing with the Audio zone and it seemed to temporarily clear up the issue.

I found the audio zone/device selection kind of confusing. I wanted to switch to a different zone to see if it would have any effect. I tried the zone selection but there was no other zone to select so I found the audio device enable settings. Only the Spectra was enabled so I enabled the MacBook internal speakers and gave them a zone name. Then I returned to the zone selection and switched to the new zone (internal speakers). The radio immediately stopped playing and the queue was completely empty. This was not at all what I was expecting. Then I switched back to the Spectra audio zone and the radio resumed right where it left off and the queue of music reappeared but the high CPU utilization issue was gone!

I have a question completely unrelated to the issue I’m having. Is there a way to switch audio output devices without losing everything in the queue?

Toggling zones seemed to clear up the issue so I let radio continue to play. Eventually the issue returned. I didn’t try the zone toggle again and let radio play for 4+ days. When I came home from work tonight I found the issue had become much worse. Now Roon is permanently using over 100% of the CPU. The user interface is only briefly updated every 10 to 15 minutes but the music keeps streaming fine and sounding great!

I can’t try toggling zones at the moment because the user interface is effectively gone.

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Thank you for the details, @JOHN_WILLS.

If you right-click on the zone currently in use you will see some options for that zone. Selecting Transfer Zone will allow you to move your current queue to a new zone.

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Good to know, thank you. It would be a great data point for the team’s investigation to know if the same behavior occurs for other audio zones. This will give us great information about just exactly where the issue is occurring (for example, communication between the DAC and your Core). If you can, try restarting Roon and testing out using the System Output and see if the same behavior comes back for you.

You can verify this by viewing the signal path and looking for Sample Rate Conversion.

I’ll be passing along all of the above information to the technical team for their continuing investigation. Thank you for all of your patience and assistance here!

-Dylan

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Dylan described how to transfer a queue from one device to another. But, I wanted to give some background as it can be confusing. Each output device has its own queue (unless you transfer one). So when you switch devices you didn’t loose what was happening in the old queue, you are now looking at that device’s queue; which, since it was new, was empty. You can play different things to both devices simultaneously. Send Sinatra to the DAC and at the same time send Van Halen to your MacBook speakers. While, it doesn’t sound like you would use this feature, it is an effect of Roon being a multi user, multi output audio server system.

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I rebooted, started Roon, disabled the Spectra output, enabled the system output (built in speakers), then created a queue and let radio take over when the queue was depleted.

After a couple of days I hit the same issue. So it appears unrelated to the Spectra USB DAC output. It doesn’t appear I have any upsampling enabled.

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Thanks, @JOHN_WILLS.

I’ve passed this information along to the technical team so they can use it to continue their investigation. I’ll be sure to update you ASAP when I hear back from them regarding this.

Thank you for your patience as we continue our investigation.

Regards,
Dylan

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Roon%20CPU%20at%20200
Roon CPU at 200.png1472×190 33.6 KB

Music is still playing fine but the CPU usage just keeps climbing.

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Hey @JOHN_WILLS,

Thanks for the update!

I just had a chat with the team regarding their investigation. They are still trying to see what they can come up with in-house with for this, but they were hoping they might be able to get a little more information about what exactly is happening on your end. A snapshot of process consumption when you’re experiencing this should give the team some greater insight here. Please see instructions below:

  • Open Activity Monitor, make sure the CPU tab is selected.
  • Select the Roon application from the list.
  • Click the Action pop-up menu (looks like a gear) in the toolbar, then select Sample Process.
  • A new window will open to display the sample. When Activity Monitor finishes sampling, click Save and save the result as a text file.

Please share that text file with us here and I’ll get it over to the team for analysis.

Thank you!
Dylan

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I tried to paste the text from the process sample file but it exceeds the limits for a post. Is there a way to attach the file or upload it instead of directly pasting the text?

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@JOHN_WILLS,

PM sent with instructions.

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I’ve uploaded the file Sample of Roon.txt

Thanks!

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Spinning disk on mac

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Hey @JOHN_WILLS,

Thanks for your patience as we continue our investigation into this report. The team had a long discussion about this, and I wanted to give you an update. The team has been looking into reproducing this in house and they are hoping to gather a little more information about this.

First, you mentioned previously that changing zones seemed to temporarily resolve the issue. Is this always the case? Whenever this occurs does switching zones “reset” the CPU usage?

Next, a question came up during the discussion that would help give the team greater insight into what is happening. Currently you are using your Mac device as an “all-in-one” Roon install, meaning you are using the Mac as a Core and as the UI controller.

In order to narrow down where the issue is occurring, the team has proposed a test that will help determine where this is occurring:

  1. Make a backup of your Roon database.
  2. Uninstall the Roon application only (don’t delete the Roon database).
  3. Install RoonServer in place of Roon.
  4. Test using RoonServer on the Mac and using another device as a remote to control Roon.

Listen as you normally would, just using the Remote device to control everything. Do you still end up getting the high CPU usage?

Let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,
Dylan

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I installed Roon server in place of Roon on my MacBook as you suggested. My old Nexus 5 phone, which I really liked, died last week. Since I’m in Taiwan I went and bought a Samsung Galaxy S9 to replace it. I installed Roon remote on the S9. Using this setup I ran Roon radio for 3 days and saw no issues with high, or ever increasing, CPU utilization on the MacBook.

Activity monitor shows RoonAppliance using about 3-4% of the CPU most of the time. If I mess with Roon remote on my phone or the radio is changing tracks the server may momentarily go up to 10%.

I checked my phone in the morning after the first night I let Roon radio play all night. The Samsung OS had an alert that said Roon was using to much CPU and asked if I wanted to put the App to sleep when I wasn’t using it. I agreed, and have been using it that way since.

The remote app seems to work fine and seems pretty quick to respond to any inputs but I’ve only played with it a little bit. I’ve mostly been letting the radio play rocksteady/roots reggae for 3 days without any operator intervention.

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Thank you for the update @JOHN_WILLS!

That’s definitely a great data point for the team’s investigation. I’m going to pass this along to them and will be sure to update you when I get feedback from them!

Regards,
Dylan

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Rock Steady and roots reggae! :heart_eyes:

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Hey @JOHN_WILLS,

I just wanted to check in and confirm that everything is still working as expected when using RoonServer instead of the Roon UI.

I was also hoping to get some additional information regarding the behavior you were previously seeing. Since we have narrowed down this behavior to the Roon UI only, we are hoping to next get a better idea of what part of the UI was being used the most.

  • What were the most repeated actions in Roon? Were you frequently switching tracks? Giving thumbs up/thumbs down? Navigating albums?
  • When you were not actively using the Roon UI, what screen did you typically leave running?
  • Were there any noticeable patterns or actions that would cause the behavior more quickly?

Thank you,
Dylan

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Using RoonServer everything is working fine.

It requires very little interaction to reproduce the issue using Roon UI. Add a couple of albums to the queue, enable radio, press play, enjoy the music and wait. After 2 days Roon will likely be using more CPU than it should. Let radio play for a couple of more days and Roon will begin using even more CPU.

I would generally leave Roon displaying the album art work for whatever was currently playing.