Roon tracks won't play on Macbook Pro

Hi, I am having the same issue…

My set-up is MacBook Pro with SSD and 16GB of memory… most of my music collection is kept in a dropbox folder… never had this problem before, but started happening a couple of months ago… does not happen when I use Audirvana and other players… Thx

Does Roon monitor these posts, or do we need to start a new thread to get assistance? This is so bad, I may just cancel my subscription outright if I can’t get some help on this… Thx

Hello @Dr_L_James_Valverede,

We do monitor the posts but it may take a bit of time for new reports to reach our queue. Can you let me know if this occurs for all of your endpoints or just one? Typically when you have this issue it can be due to networking setup.

Does your setup meet our Networking Best Practices? Does this issue happen with all of your endpoints or just one/some? Have you tried connecting your Macbook Pro via Ethernet and verified if the issue remains the same?

Thanks,
Noris

Many thanks, Noris…I have a super simple set-up… no networking at all… just using Roon as my main player on my MBP… the only wrinkle I can think of is that my hi-rez music files are kept sync’d in a dropbox folder… this never caused any problems before… and the problem just started occurring a couple of months ago… perhaps some settings have been changed? What do you recommend that I do first to try to diagnose what’s going on? Thx Jimmy

Hi @Dr_L_James_Valverede,

I would try to see if the issue happens if you save the files locally to your PC or an external hard drive. As I mentioned it is best to try on Ethernet as well and remove WiFi from the mix as a test. Also please use this thread as a guide to provide some more information:

Thanks,
Noris

I just finished explaining that Ethernet and WiFi do not factor into my setup… dropbox files are essentially local to my machine, are they not?

@Dr_L_James_Valverede - It depends on if you have Selective Sync turned on or not, selective sync just pulls files when needed. I would try to copy a few files over into a separate non-dropbox folder just to see if that changes anything.

How often does this issue occur? Are you making use of any DACs or are you outputting directly to your Macbook Pro’s speakers? If you have a DAC, does this issue happen to both your DAC and Macbook Pro’s speaker output? Have you tried rebooting the Core?

– Noris

Thx, Noris — not sure I understand… you mean my dropbox settings? Those music files are always sync’d up… that shouldn’t be a problem… (and yes, the problem occurs way more than just those few times when those music files are being updated (like when I make a new music purchase/download).

I am not making use of any DACs at the moment… just trying to play the high-rez music files straight through the speakers on the MBP, or Thunderbolt display when I am work and connect the MBP to the display.

And yes, of course, I tried rebooting tons of times…

Is there a way to uninstall and reinstall? Would that maybe help?

Hi @Dr_L_James_Valverede,

You could reinstall Roon, but I’m not sure if it’ll help as there may be an underlying performance or network issue in your setup. If you do want to reinstall so please be sure to make a Backup first as to save any edits you made so far.

I would try to see if moving some files over to a non-dropbox folder works as expected just to eliminate a variable here. Please give that a try and if it fails let me know the exact local time in your country (ex. 10:24PM) that it stops working, I can then enable diagnostics mode to take a look when I’m next online. I would also temporarily disable the Dropbox watched folder in Roon Settings -> Storage if you run the above test.

Thanks,
Noris

I just had some skips on a new track that was not on dropbox…

Is there some kind of “buffer” setting that I need to adjust?

I have not tried the re-install (is there a procedure I need to follow? And what kind of “edits” are you referring to? what do I need to “back-up”, since my music files themselves should not be affected, correct?) Thx

Hello @Dr_L_James_Valverede,

Have you performed the procedure I outlined in my last post of completely disabling the Dropbox folder in your Roon Settings -> Storage Tab? The music files are untouched by Roon so if you haven’t manually edited anything you can uninstall Roon using Apple’s instructions.

To clear out the old database folder you can also navigate to it and rename it like so:

  • Make a Backup of your current Roon Database
  • Exit out of Roon
  • Navigate to your Roon’s Database Location: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Database_Location
  • Find the folder that says “Roon”
  • Rename the “Roon” folder to “Roon_old”
  • Reinstall the Roon App to generate a new Roon folder

Please note the exact local time as I requested in my previous post if Roon is still having issues after performing the change from the Dropbox folder to a regular folder so that we can take a look at diagnostics afterwards.

Thanks,
Noris