Roon on Synology-Performance Issues

Roon Software Discussion QNAP/Synology NAS
1

A while back I ran a Roon server on my Synology 918+ with full NAS HDDs in it (but no SSD).
My ~2500 song FLAC collection is also stored on the Synology.

My end points consisted of:
Trinnov Altitude 16 (media room)
Sonos Amp (back porch)
Sonos Play 5s (family room)
iPhone

I had eventually given up using Roon due to two issues:

  1. Didn’t want to pay for an extra streaming sub as whole family is on Spotify and has no interest in Tidal
  2. The Roon app on my iPhone and macos would lag and often just crash when I used it as a controller for playback. Most of these crashes would occur when I was playing back to the Sonos end points.

I understand for my media room (Trinnov) I would get much better sound using Roon, so I’m considering implementing it again and going back to Tidal.

How much of my performance issues do you think can be attributed to the fact I was running it on my Synology?
What do you think I would gain in performance (or other features) if I invested in a Roon Nucleus (or Intel NUC Nucleus clone I’d build)?

2

I’m running Roon on a Synology 918+ (no SSD) and I have 0 perf issues (±40K tracks) (also running Plex server and lots of other stuff)

3

Interesting - I’m going to give it another whirl on the NAS and see how it goes with the performance.

1 Like
4

Are you using your Sonos endpoints with WiFi. If so then a not optimal WiFi connection could probably be the cause of your performance issues.

5

Happy to report so far Roon on NAS has not had the same issues I had before - will keep monitoring.

I have a few other unrelated questions/issues though:

  1. ios app to trinnov - when pressing volume up or down it only goes down in volume

  2. When using “play radio”, how can I see what songs are coming next (or even see them like in the pop-up that happens when I’m playing music from an album that has ended and Roon is feeding related tracks)?

  3. How to make volume about the same between tracks without compromising sound quality (there are up to 10dB swings at times between tracks)?

6

Same here. 2TB collection, 42,000 tracks on DS918+.

7

Hello,

I run ROON on a Synology DS420+ with extended RAM 10GB > approx. 2600 albums, Flac (16/24 bit) and DSD without any problems. I was using an HDD at the time, the operation was too sluggish for me, the conversion to SSD made it noticeably smoother and faster.

Basically it works but with 0 problems.

Kind regards

8

4 posts were split to a new topic: Synology Core Port forwarding setup issues

9

I set my modem to bridge mode (basically turned on DMZ and added 3rd party router device to list) and it worked perfectly.

Thank you so much!

10

I just migrated from a DS918+ (Roon Core) to a new Synology DS923+ (and the latest DSM 7.2 software)

1.- CPU: the switch from Intel Celeron (DS918) to AMR Ryzen (DS923) => greatly improved processing power (for example, the DSD64>PCM transcoding which was just passing now has a “processing speed” measured by Roon ±equal to that of a Nuc I3), so there is no longer any limitation to do transcoding, DSP, etc. for common uses)

2.- memory: with AMD Ryzen, we go to PCI Gen3 x times faster (even the DS920+ was still Gen 2) and since DSM 7.2, we can use Synology NVMe M.2 SSDs to create a volume ( before AMD and DSM7.2, M2s could only be used for Read/Write Cache)

11

  1. CPU speed is not really a matter of ´Celeron vs. Ryzen´ but merely the CPU´s generation. I agree, the Celeron in DS918+ is both outdated and disadvantageous in performance so it might slow down some Roon features significantly.

  2. HDD vs. SSD is a more complex phenomenon as according to my experience neither RAM nor the storage type of the music files are a problem with smaller libraries. The most important thing seems to be roon´s access to its internal database and whether this one is running on an HDD (sluggish with unpredictable delays) or SSD (fast). As Joe was mentioning he is running everything on HDD this might be an idea to add an SSD partition for the database. Can be even a fast flash drive via USB3. 64GB would do the job. The important part is to make roon use it as a database cache.

12

yes…
Roon Knowledge Base specifies that :
“We strongly recommend … an SSD for the Roon databases”
and
“If your NAS does not have a free slot for an SSD, you can use an SSD via … USB 3.0.”

error - correction - this statement is not correct >> (but…
the new DSM.7 no longer supports this USB feature)

13

Are you saying that Synology does not support USB drives as of DSM7? Their online help suggests differently:

Or do you mean that you cannot install an application on an external drive? In which case I will not question your statement as I simply don’t know :smiley:

I do believe that Synology no longer supports connecting a DAC to the NAS.

14

As far as I know, Synology still allows USB flash memory as an external drive. The question is if there is a chance to select that one as the path for roon´s database if the core itself is started from an internal HDD. I guess only some user with Roon on Synology could answer this question.

If this is not possible there should be a workaround. As far as I remember these Synology models do offer both eSATA and additional M.2 slots? That’s 2 more options for getting some SSD onboard running the core and its database…

15

I ask the question because I am not an expert !

  • Roon on a HDD, it works (DSM6 and DSM 7.2)
  • Roon on USB: it worked on my old DS918+ and DSM 6
  • Roon on USB: I can’t install it on DS923+ and DSM 7.2
    there may be something I don’t understand… I have a problem at the step “create a RoonServer shared folder” on the USB

===========
Edit: I’m wrong! DS923+ and Roon/USB, it works perfectly!!

16

Is this a new SSD? How was it formatted?

17

And what problem exactly?

18

Do you by any chance have an existing RoonServer shared folder?

19

SvenM, sorry for the inconvenience … I was wrong, I was too fast… Roon works via USB

1 Like
20

No need to apologize. Good to hear that you’ve got things working!