Roon Skips to Next Track Midway Through Tracks On My Hard Drive

Joe, what is your best guess theory as to what the problem is?

As a first step I’d suggest simplifying your network, i.e. remove the EtherRegen and OpticalRendu and just use Cat 5 or Cat 6 ethernet cables. At this stage - i.e. before support weigh in - I think it makes sense to eliminate some of the possible causes. By swapping out the EtherRegen and OpticalRendu we can rule out (or make a move towards ruling out) your network as a possible cause of this problem.

From reading these threads for a few years the cause of ‘files loading slowly’ is nearly always network related. Roon requires a robust network to operate properly and, even when other programs are working well, Roon may stumble if your network isn’t solid.

Thanks for your reply Dave. I’m happy to try your suggestion, but I have a preliminary problem. The network doesn’t recognize the music hard drive now, so I can’t do anything until that problem is fixed. It’s weird. My server (SonicTransporter i5) clearly recognizes the hard drive attached to it, but the network does not. Without that step, I can’t get Roon to notice and scan the contents of the hard drive. Any thoughts about how to fix that problem?

I don’t know much about the SonicTransporters, but why do you need to identify the hard drive over the network? If the ST is running Roon, isn’t the hard drive locally attached? On my Mac, I can add local folders and network shares. What are you seeing in the Storage tab in settings?

This is what I’m seeing. If there’s a way to navigate to the music hard drive, I haven’t been able to figure it out

What happens if you click the ‘+ Add folder’ button? Are you able to navigate to the drive and re-add it?

I did that and it initially created a new version of the old folder with close to 80,000 tracks. When I tried to play something on the hard drive, it reacted with a message that essentially said it cant play the track because it’s loading too slowly. Then I noticed that the 80,00 track number started to decrease on its own and its down to zero tracks now. Not sure how to identify the exact name of the folder the music is in and get it to rescan those files

In which case, unless anyone else has any good ideas, I think you’ll need to wait for @support to take a look and see if they can work this out for you.

I agree and thank you, Dave.

What is the usual wait time for Roon support to respond to requests for help?

Jacob

I have not tested extensively yet. But I guess all is related to network, unfortunately

My setup is based on taking apart noisy stuff from audio equipment. The computer where Roon is placed is a silent one with solid HD, close to the stereo

The NAS with the big noisy HD is in another room to be sure when I am listening there will be no noise.

I am reluctant to put NAS close to the stereo equipment. Even for testing purposes (I can be little lazy sometimes)

See if we can found a solution somewhere else / somehow else

and that is a fundamental design flaw. Streaming music is an absurdly light network load outdone by several fold by even the lightest video streams. The fact that roon does not allow for a larger buffer option or even just allow you to turn off the skip the song instead of loading it “feature” is a design choice not some technological limitation. Want to know the best way to know that? Use literally any other music player in existence. Even pandora (much the less proper players or audiophile streaming service apps) lets you change streamed buffer size and set delays between songs.

And if that was all that Roon was doing I’d agree with your conclusion that there is some sort of flaw with Roon, but that’s not how Roon works. Take a look at this thread for some good explanations as to why Roon requires a robust network.

Hi @Jacob_Ofman1 ,

Thanks for reaching out and for your patience here while your case has reached the queue!

With our latest release, we made a few changes as to how storage works on Linux systems. Can you please confirm if you have an update available for the SonicTransporter OS? You can do this by going to sonicorbiter.com → manage → apps → software manager → update

Note: You may have to upgrade even if you have the latest 2.8 installed

Does the issue occur on any other zones, or just on the OpticalRendu? If you try to play music to a Roon Remote (iOS/Android device), do you ahve any playback issues for that zone?

Are you using an Orbi router here? As per our Networking Best Practices Guide, we suggest the following change for Orbi:

Netgear Orbi Routers

If you’re making use of an Orbi router, we recommend unchecking Disable IGMP Proxying in your router’s settings. This setting can interfere with the ability for Roon Remotes to connect to the Roon Core.

Let us know if any of the suggestions help!

Let me respond to all of the suggestions you made. First of all, you have outdated information. When I first wrote, I could navigate to and access all the files in my hard drive. They loaded slowly and the skipping occurred on every track on my hard drive, but not at all on any of the streaming services. Then, suddenly, the hard drive disappeared from Roon and I got the screenshot that you see in my post to Roon. It took me a while but I think (?) I was able to navigate back to the hard drive but there are no tracks that appear on Roon. It essentially says the hard drive is empty. There should be over 90,000 tracks on that hard drive. So one potential issue is that I need to confirm that I have successfully navigated back to the hard drive. Rebekkah is helping me with that exact problem. So it’s possible that the problem I initially wrote to you about “May” be solved. I won’t know until I can access the files on that hard drive. I doubt that it is iced as I suspect the skipping will continue to occur. I’ll include an updated screenshot showing the state of my hard drive on Roon so you can see what I’m talking about.

As far as updating the latest version of the SonicTransporter OS, I tried doing that earlier at someone else’s suggestion. Unfortunately, I’m not confident that it actually updated successfully. The first time I updated from 2.7 to 2.8, it took several unsuccessful tried to get it to update. The update occurred in two steps, and both took quite a while. When I tried to “re-update the ST OS, it took seconds to update. I did it several times but it only took seconds every time. That’s why I’m saying I’m not confident that it actually “re-updated” successfully.

Yes, I have playback issues on all zones when the hard drive files were accessible on Roon. Now, I don’t know.

Yes, I am using an Orbi router. I’d be happy to change that setting, but I have no idea how to access the Orbi’s settings to accomplish that. Any suggestions?

Thanks for getting back to me.

Jacob

Jacob, to get to your Orbi’s admin page, you need to go to a computer or tablet that is on your WiFi network and open a browser and navigate to 192.168.1.1 as seen below;

You would have to know your username and password for the router. Default is admin and the password is password if you haven’t changed it.

The setting is on the Advanced tab under WAN Setup.

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Hi @Jacob_Ofman1 ,

If updating the SonicTranporter OS is having issues, this makes me think that you might have some hardware issues. Can you please reach out to SmallGreenComputer and ask them to run a system check? To contact them, you can use the bottom right button on:

Thanks!

I only use roon off of the computer I use as the server and am hardwired to my network with with actual gigabit internet speeds (not just gigabit wiring but actual service from my ISP as confirmed by speedtests). My local network is not the bottleneck at hand. It very well may be tidal/qobuz/dropbox, but its not my local level network.

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