NUC12 WHSi7, 16 x 2 3200 RAM, SAM SSD 970 EVO 1T NVMe drive
Networking Gear & Setup Details
Your networking gear (model of routers/switches/etc), connection types (Wifi/Ethernet), and any firewalls, antivirus, or VPN software.
ISP provide 1000M Fiber Boardband.
Netgear RAX120 Router
Switch - Ediscreation Silent OCOX switch
Cat7/Cat8 ethernet connection to/from the switch/router
No VPN
Connected Audio Devices
Specify what devices you’re using and their connection types, like USB/HDMI/Chromecast, etc.
NUC - ifi Zen Stream - coaxial - Anthem AVM70
Number of Tracks in Library
According to the front page of the roon web page - about 1.5M tracks.
All my songs are stored in my QNAP NAS.
No streaming services are using.
Description of Issue
Joined the Roon just over 3 months.
Started the OS at QNAP. Then went to Win 10 i5. Thought they are not powerful enough to run Roon.
Bought a new NUC 12 with all new hardware to build a new Roon core about a month ago. Freshly install Roon and created new Data base file. Have done all the latest updates. Also, the latest Bios for the NUC12.
Rather disappointed as still cannot use the Roon services smoothly.
The wheel keep running. Searching is very difficult. It is hit and miss. Not sure it is due to the number of tracks ?
Mainly use the Live Radio since end of Jan 23. Have totally give up the Roon about 2 weeks ago after the OS 256 and Server Software 1211.
The searching of the stored live radio station take over 10 mins and finally given up.
Have now use another app to stream my songs using minimserver via ifi Zen stream. Using ifi app for the internet radio.
In additions, Rock cannot detect the HDMI nor USB audio from the NUC.
It is really frustrated after spending a sum of both time + money (hardware, subscription…) and had to give up.
Have discussed with friend and he also have the same issue with his Nculeus. He have also given up. He paid life time subscription.
As Suedkiez mentioned, there is a point (and personally I’d put that at 1 Mil tracks), where the user should be thinking about a full desktop CPU ( 13th gen i9) and a lot of RAM.
Is the NAS potentially the bottleneck? That’s a lot of tracks to index and I’d imagine that hosting them on a local NVMe drive might yield a better result.
No need to host them on NVMe drives… but yes, with that big a collection of local files, my approach would be to assemble a decent server computer, with the fastest desktop CPU I could afford, 64 GB RAM, NVMe drive for OS and Roon, and spinning hard drives to hold my music files. I would back up the music files to the NAS, but not consume them from the NAS over the network. I would use a minimal Linux server installation as OS, because this system undoubtedly will need some serious monitoring and fine-tuning, so Roon OS I consider not adequate for the task, and Windows/Mac bring unnecessary overhead with them, and generally remote monitoring is much easier on Linux than Windows or Mac…
I’ll add my pennies worth. With that many tracks you’re not going to get a good experience at all on a NuC they don’t have the grunt to handle such a large database. Also having the music files on a NAS won’t help the situation local discs will help speed things up. You definitely need to invest in a very beefy desktop pc for that size of library if you plan to use Roon it likely take days to weeks to index that on a nuc and during that process it will run like a dogs dinner. It’s alway going to be working hard with all that metadata to retrieve and keep on top of at the best of times.
Many thanks and appreciated for all the above experience users advice.
I have been using the Minimserver with other streaming apps and am ok with it. They read my NAS stored music files effectively. Despite the fact that my NUC 12 may not have sufficient power to fully support Roon to analyze my library. I have been running the software on this set up for a month now. When should I expect it will finish the analysis ? Can I use the Roon smoothly after the analysis completed ? Does the hardware configuration affect the Live Radio operation ? It is obvious that the Live Radio is much slower since the last update 256/1211.
Until you analysis is complete , it s impossible to comment on the speed an performance of the NUC the background processes are unknown.
As a wild guess , 100k tracks a day on 16/44.1 so maybe 2 weeks , this is a really monster library .
Maybe isolate parts of it and let Roon import a portion then see how the NUC behaves , then progressively add more Storage folders in “bite size chunks” rather than whole lot at once . Do it overnight with all cores allocated then stop analysis in the morning so that you get to use the NUC during the day ?
If you don’t mind hearing the fan blow, you could go to Settings->Library and adjust “Background audio analysis speed”. Set it to “Fast (N cores)” for how ever long it takes to index.
Ben here with the support team, thanks for your patience while we work through each thread. Following up here, a good next step would be to first make a fresh backup of your database.
From there, could you test out removing the recently added snapshot folder that falls under your watched folder in your Roon settings? That could certainly cause things to act oddly. Make sure to clean up your library after editing your watched folder.
If your issue persists after the above, the next step would be to again disable your watched folder, and test out adding smaller bits of your library back into your account. Be sure to clean up your library to activate the changes made throughout the process.
This will make big changes to your library as you go, so definitely make sure you made a recent backup prior to any next steps.
Thanks for your support feedback. Have plan to send an email to Roon ask about any termination arrangement. As do not able to play any music from my library nor through Live Radio.
I am not very good in computer. Would you please send me step by step instructions/procedure base on your suggestion above ? Hope it can be operable after the adjustment.
Many thanks.
P.S. My Data base is stored locally on the M2 Samsung SSD. Back up is at one of the dedicated folder in QNAP NAS.
Dear Ben,
Thank you very much for your advice.
I have update to build 1234 and reboot the Rock server.
Have been running for 2 days. Seems not much differences. Attached are some screen shot from my ipad for your references.
Many thanks.
Dear Ben,
I have tried Roon again today.
Was not able to use it. Not able to play any music files nor Live Radio.
Attached photos show the status at various timeline.
Is it possible to stop any background analysis work so that can at least play the Live Radio ?
Many thanks.
It took about 40 mins to show the ‘Live Radio’ page. I tried to play one of them. Waited for 5 mins and still no sign of success even I have selected the Audio zone.
Thanks for the update. As a few other members have mentioned, the size of your library here is the culprit behind the slowness you experience. With a library that size, @Rugby made a good point in starting to potentially consider an upgrade to a more beefier desktop CPU with a good amount of RAM (or something of similar stature).
Per the article shared above, it is true - with libraries this large, we expect the right hardware will work, but it’s definitely not something we’re able to test in-house.
All of this said, that is an impressive library you have, and I’m sure it’s taken quite a while to grow to such a collection! Nice work there, and I’m sorry things are running as smoothly as you’d like.
Personally, I think you’re going to continue to struggle with the NUC. It has a laptop-class CPU, when what is being suggested is to use a high-end desktop class CPU, such as an Intel Core i9. Here’s a comparison between the two:
