Roon taking a long time to start playback of local files

Core Machine (Operating system/System info/Roon build number)

mac mini i7 quad, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD (Roon db on this SSD), minimal install, only Roon running on this machine. Music on a Firewire 800 disk formatted to ExFAT. About 15k albums total (including Tidal and Qobuz, about 2000 local). OS is Catalina 10.15.7, Roon v1.8(790)

Network Details (Including networking gear model/manufacturer and if on WiFi/Ethernet)

Gig Switch → ethernet → mini → bridged ethernet → dCS Rossini

Audio Devices (Specify what device you’re using and its connection type - USB/HDMI/etc.)

All communication is over gigabit network.

Description Of Issue

It often takes 10-20 seconds, sometimes more, to start playback of a local file. There’s no latency accessing the disk.

Can someone in the Roon team explain?

My (very anecdotal) impression was when the first v1.8 came out, this was an issue. The next release seemed to have fixed it. Then subsequently it became an issue again.

@dylan - No reply at all? Really?

Apologies for the delay, @miguelito! I’ve been pretty sick this week and have taken some sick time, so our team’s queue is a bit longer than typical at the moment. I’m feeling quite a bit better today, though, so I’m working to get back to everyone as quickly as possible.

Is this something that is happening over time, or is it consistent? If you reboot your Core do things work better for a while?

If you play to System Output do you have the same delay?

Sorry you’ve been sick! Apologies for being impatient.

It is pretty consistent. I have restarted the core, it does not really improve. Have not tried to play to the system output, I play to a dCS Rossini over RAAT (ie network), but I have seen the same exact sluggish behavior when playing to other endpoints, like my iPad or a microRendu attached to a DAC.

Ok so I just tried playing to the system output, and I don’t see any sluggishness at all!

Still see sluggishness to the dCS Rossini and likely any other endpoints that run over RAAT (specifically tried a microRendu in my headphone setup). So it seems something related to handshaking in RAAT. My network is all gigabit (Netgear switches) and both the dCS Rossini and microRendu are wired over ethernet.

What could possibly be the cause?

The Roon endpoint versions are:
dCS Rossini → RAAT SDK version: 1.1.32
microRendu → RAAT SDK version: 1.1.38

One more thing: When I run Chronosync to copy new music from my macpro to the mini running Roon I consistently get around 80 MBps (megabytes per second). So network speed is not an issue I don’t think.

One additional comment on networking:

Although I have Netgear switches (ProSAFE GS116NA), the network setup has the dCS Rossini connected directly to the mini over Ethernet, with a bridge to the rest of the network through the mini. The network traffic to the Rossini is very fast and does not involve any Netgear switches. The traffic to the microRendu goes through two of those Netgear switches. I really don’t think this is a network issue.

Also… I can hear my dCS Rossini switching sampling rates (relay actions inside) at the very end of the wait. I think the entirety of the delay is happening in Roon.

This is still an issue. It seems to change with the time of the day - sometimes the lag is not big, and sometimes I get a long lag even between tracks in the queue.

Hi @miguelito

I’m sorry this one fell through the cracks. If you’re still seeing an issue here I want to make sure we get it resolved for you.

Can you provide a few examples of times where things are slow including:

  • The track name
  • The time
  • How long it takes to start

I’ll run diagnostics and take a look.

Thanks!

Most local tracks take some time to start, varying from say 2 seconds to sometimes 20-30 seconds. Usually, once the waveform shows up, it will start fairly quickly.

As for the time (I presume you mean the time of day) it is usually worse when you’d think people are hitting the Roon db at night. But really happens often at just about any time.

It can take 5 seconds to 30 seconds easily. No other player I have does this (eg Audirvana 3.5), they start immediately.

@dylan

I recently switched my Roon music library (local files) from a FW800 connected hard drive to a USB connected SSD drive (both 4TB). Using the SSD over USB I don’t have the load lag anymore.

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