Roon setup related issues (pain?)

Roon Core Machine

Intel NUC10i5FNH 32GB RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD, Windows11. Using wired GBit Ethernet. I have a NUC11i7 on the way to set up ROCK, not sure if that’s going to help.
Library resides on NAS on GBit Ethernet.

Connected Audio Devices

USB RME ADI-2 FS R BE.

Number of Tracks in Library

Over 350K

Description of Issue

  1. Over 10 days and it still have not finished scanning the library.
    As a comparison, using JRiver finish scanning the library in 1-2 hours.
    There is no apparent way to stop/pause library scan.

  2. Playback stutter or drop out sometimes, either locally or remotely using iOS app. Especially dealing with high bit rate files (e.g. 192kHz or DSD).

  3. iOS app (wireless but on same network) intermittently report cannot connect to server. Sometimes searching an artist will just fail.

  4. Roon ARC reports “syncing with Roon Core for the first time…” and stuck there forever. I have not been able to try out Roon ARC function at all.

All the above may have to do with Roon Core is still busy scanning the library. It would be nice to be able to pause that process such that I could test proper functionality of the overall system.

You have a lot of tracks, scanning will take a while. Roon is probably doing more analysis than JRiver.
Most likely your new NUC with ROCK will cope better, but will also need a long time to scan. If you are going to set up the new NUC anyway and just want to verify that it works in principle with the old NUC, probably this setting will help, you can switch it to OFF (or to faster with more cores):

The stuttering and slow ARC syncing may well have to do with the NUC being very busy with analysis. I’d wait until the analysis is done (or OFF) before diving into that

Probably.

Analysis is not identification., btw.

I run with my library unanalyzed. The audio analysis that it is doing is for volume leveling and to create the waveform image that is used as the timeline on playback. I have mine set to do audio analysis on demand when I play a track.

You can set it up to do on demand, and then when you are not using the system, set analysis to happen.

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If what you described is indeed the case, that highlights a problem with Roon Core. It should always prioritize playback functions over scanning library or audio analysis. Any of these background task should not interfere with the fundamental operation requirement, which is music playback - properly.

Well, it was mostly a guess for what might be causing it. One could argue that one should first finish setup before using it, and I would consider adding 350K tracks in bulk to be a part of setup. In particular as 350K is scratching the upper end of or is beyond what Roonlabs recommend for a NUC.

FWIW I never experienced this problem with my Rock, but I also never added this amount of tracks in one go

I wasn’t aware of Roonlabs have a recommendation beyond a NUC with i7, even the nucleus+ is based on the same hardware. However, I don’t see how number of tracks has to do with Processor requirement, probably need more memory and storage.

So what would be the recommendation for a huge library?

I have disabled background audio analysis and see if it can finish today. Or else I would need a few more days for my evaluation.

Question, If I start my subscription and then switch to lifetime, would I get a credit towards the lifetime subscription?

Within the 30 day money back period, you could get a refund and then purchase lifetime.

Note lifetime cost will increase significantly next year to avoid this you need to purchase it before January 1st 2023 or whilst your Roon trial is still active.

Let me tag @accounts for you, they may be willing to grant you an extension on your trial.

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On the ROCK page, there are two categories given. The larger one is:

ROCK For Large Libraries (12k+ albums) or DSP Use

We recommend the NUC11TNHi7 with 8GB RAM and 256GB M.2 SSD for large libraries (12k+ albums) or heavy DSP use.

It says “12+ albums”, but obviously the “plus” is not infinity. With 350K tracks, I’d guess something like 35K albums? That’s three times as much. And you have in 10i5, not an 11i7.

Beyond that, the following quote is from Roon Core and Remote specification recommendations. Yours is in the “largest libraries” category :slight_smile:

Largest Libraries

If you have over 250K+ tracks in your library, consider us impressed! You’re among the top .01% of Roon users, and you have a library most of us could only dream of.

With libraries this large, we expect the right hardware will work, but it’s definitely not something that we test with in-house. Your best bet will be to get a beefy Roon OS or Windows setup (we do not recommend standard Linux or macOS Cores for this) with a fast new CPU and plenty of RAM.

Probably your are right for playback and I would expect your setup to probably play fine when it is done with the ingestion.

However, Roon is not just a music player, it is a huge database. in particular with 350K tracks. Searching this database and more so finding and setting up all the cross links takes CPU. It’s a database theory problem and my math is weak, but if you have 35K nodes (albums) and each nodes has 10 connections (e.g., credit links) to other albums, the number of connections probably grows with some power function. In any case, lots. They all have to be looked up online, found, connected, and so on.

I am trying to ascertain the Roon core system requirement because I just purchased a NUC11i7 with 32GB of memory and 512GB of SSD to run Rock, which is the highest spec machine on the approved list of hardware. If that is not sufficient, I would like to know now and get something with a higher spec. However, Rock will not be recommended for it then, so what’s the option?

There are many threads about huge libraries. This may be an option:

This thread has lots of information:

In essence, if you are going toward these library sizes, for good performance you may have to set up a full-size machine with lots of CPU power and RAM, then install Roon Server on it.

It might have got stuck on a bad file, if the importer is still spinning on the top bar, try rebooting. If that doesn’t help, click the wheel and find/remove the file it’s stuck on. With huge libraries, it might help to import small sections at a time, depending how you’ve split it up into sub-folders. From the FAQ:

In rare cases, Roon encounters a file it thinks can be imported successfully, but it actually causes instability for the importing process. Generally, this happens with files that are particularly corrupt. If your importing process seems stuck, it’s often worth searching your music folder for files that are tiny, meaning less than 5kb.

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If I’m reading the posts you referred to correctly, basically for “outliers” with huge library, ROCK is NOT recommended. Instead, we should run Windows and Roon server? Is there a more definitive answer?

It appears that Roon is still making progress importing as new album artworks keep being updated in the “Recent Activity”-“ADDED” window. Monitoring the system resources shows that it is using about 40% of CPU and some bursting of network activities. So it doesn’t seem to be stuck…yet.

From the 10th post of the second linked thread:

There are no hard and fast rules at this level, I think. Just experience reports. Get the fastest CPU you can afford and at least 16, I would say better 32 GB RAM or more. Since the above quote, some things have improved: Roon 2.0 has removed the performance limitations on macOS, however, fast Mac servers are very expensive. Windows makes sense if you are familiar with it, though some people, at least in their specific situations, reported better support with Linux, in case this is an option.

On the other hand, who knows, your NUC may work well enough once the painful ingestion is over.

ROCK is, as such, very good for the purpose and all performance is used for Roon, not for Windows background processes. The problem is that super fast NUCs don’t exist (as mentioned, maybe the SonicTransporter i9 is an option). However, this does not necessarily mean that ROCK cannot be installed on non-NUCs, there is just no guarantee. ROCK installs on non-supported hardware are called MOCK. There is a thread about it :slight_smile:

Going through your linked thread, some people are reporting running Nucleus+ fine with 700K+ tracks, which I understand is essentially a NUC11i7 with ROCK.
I’m trying to avoid running Windows if possible, hence I’m sticking with the list of hardware recommendation of using ROCK. If ROCK is out of the question and Windows is required, then certainly there are much more powerful machines that can be had. I’m trying to clarify if Windows is a requirement for huge library, or ROCK can still support it.

See my additional edit in the last paragraph of the previous post regarding ROCK on other hardware.

Sure some people are indeed reporting success, but are they saying how long the initial ingestion took? I also wrote above,

The other people have an i7 too, I don’t know why you didn’t buy the fastest possible option for ROCK. NUC12 are now supported as well. Anyway, I am not saying it won’t work at all with yours, just that the import may be slow and the cause of your pain. And search performance might not be blazing, but maybe it’s good enough.

What I would do in your situation is, like @mikeb suggested above, not importing everything at once but in batches. Then wait until it has settled down, check that it works, and import the next batch.

Since we moved Roon to .NET 6.0, Linux is now our best performing platform.

I would use ROCK, and consider MOCK if you can’t get a NUC with the performance specs you are looking for.

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I am first trying it on a NUCi5 and reporting the problems above. I have since ordered the highest recommended ROCK hardware (NUC11i7 with 32GB RAM), which I will receive today. If that is not good enough for my configuration, I can return it and order something different, and that is what I’m trying to clarify.
I didn’t see NUC12 on the list yet.

I see, makes sense then. After the inclusion of UEFI boot support in ROCK with the latest RoonOS update, they have expanded the list first to some NUC11 and then with additional models including NUC12 after Intel delivered them. This was ongoing recently and I guess you looked before the latest additions. Here is the list as of now:

  • NUC11TNHi3

  • NUC11TNHi5

  • NUC11TNHi7

  • NUC11PAHi3

  • NUC11PAHi5

  • NUC11PAHi7

  • NUC12WSHi3

  • NUC12WSHi5

  • NUC12WSHi7