RoonServer running on Mac Mini 2.3GHz i7 quad core (late 2012) with 4GB RAM running latest Mac OSX high sierra (10.13) Music on home internal harddrive of Mini and also on a USB attached 6 TB Seagate Drive formatted xFAT. All Controlled using iPad Mini ME280C/A with 10.3.3 (14G60).
Playing via MAC optical out to a Benchmark DAC 3. (Not using USB connection)
RoonServer sometimes hangs. In one case the DAC stopped receiving anything. In another case the DAC sees a signal but it must be only zeros as no sound is playing. Issue occurs after several hours of playing Roon radio.
Using the iPad there seems to be no way to send any play commands to the server even though the connection works and browsing and music selection works fine on the iPad - just nothing will play - so everything working but even with play ON the play bar remains frozen at 0 secs.
Only solution is to connect my monitor to the headless MAC Mini and Quit RoonServer app and then relaunch. No need to reboot the entire MAC Mini as it is only RoonServer that appears to have hung.
This never happened for months before.
Only recent change is the new RoonServer app on Oct 18 and new iPad Roon remote app update around the same time. Also I upgraded to Mac High Sierra recently. So I suspect and issue between the current latest RoonServer and Mac OS X High Sierra 10.13
Hi @Rhythmatist ---- Thank you for the report and sharing your feedback with us the insight is very appreciated!
Moving forward, to help us better understand why you are experiencing this behavior with your Roon setup, may I very kindly ask you to please provide the following information:
How often are you experiencing this behavior?
When you do notice this problem occurring are there any similar or identical patterns of behavior that are triggering this hang up that you can thing of? Things to consider:
Content being streamed.
How you are interacting with the application from a procedural stand point.
Just out of curiosity, have you tried testing with USB in to the DAC 3? Did you make the same observation?
It has happened twice in about 24 hours. I listen to Roon radio selection all day every day. This is very new as I explained above as previously it ran for months with no issue.
I notice because music stops playing.
I am not interacting when it hangs - it is just playing Roon radio selection.
I have used USB connection to DAC 3 in the past and it worked fine for weeks. I just prefer Optical as there is no electrical connection (galvanic isolation and less USB logic noise to affect the DAC - see Meitner 1991 AES paper)
I had to Quit RoonServer and then restart it. Nothing I tried from my iPad remote would get anything to play. A song would cue up on my iPad and then after ten seconds it would jump to the next song in the radio. Meanwhile no sound or music played by the server.
Seems like the connection from Remote to RoonServer was wonky even though it claimed to work.
Although the Mac Mini did not crash and was working fine, for good measure, I reset SMC and PRAM.
RoonServer hung again. The iPad remote Roon crashed and would not restart. I had to reboot the iPad and then Roon was connected and indicated music was playing but nothing was sent to the DAC.
A simple Quit and relaunch of RoonServer solved the problem.
With RoonServer now hanging several times a day, Roon is becoming very
frustrating to use.
Instability problems clearly evident between Roon remote on iPad and the RoonServer application running on the core that results in regular hangs or crashes.
All I want to do is to have Roon radio running 24/7 without having to troubleshoot and reboot all my devices 3 times a day.
Hey @Rhythmatist – I’ve enabled some additional diagnostics on your account. We’re going to generate a report with your logs, and then @Eric or I will follow up.
Thanks for your patience and sorry for the trouble here!
Thanks! I strongly suspect Apple has royally mucked things up.
There are many complaints online about iOS 11.0.3 on multiple devices (iPad and iPhone). I have been experiencing weird random effects on FaceTime and sometimes the iPad is very slow to type.
Less complaints online about OS High Sierra but given Apple has become sloppy lately I wouldn’t be surprised if there are bugs there too.
I have reconnected USB to the DAC 3 and have been trying that lately to see if it also crashes.
So don’t worry - it might not be your build 269 but Apple!
Just had another crash of the Mac Mini running the core Roonserver at 17H30 MST time.
I was listening to a track on Tidal Willie Dixon Chess Box that Roon radio had selected. I was not actively using my iPad Roon remote. The mac Mini crashed mid song.
Once the Mac Mini had rebooted I was able to hit play on my iPad (no need to reboot iPad) and continue from the same point it crashed at.
Hi @Rhythmatist ----- Thank you for touching base with me, very appreciated!
Following up to let you know that we have received the automated diagnostics report from your system, as mentioned in @mike 's post. I am going to be passing this information over to our techs to see if we can figure out what is causing this behavior to occur. Your patience is appreciated!
At around 18H00 MST, I swapped out the core hardware entirely. I installed a MAC Mini 2.8 GHZ i5 with 16 GB RAM and 1TB SSD drive. I did an entirely fresh install with new Mac OS High Sierra 10.13 operating system and reinstalled RoonServer freshly. The only thing I am still using from the original setup is the iPad and the 6TB harddrive attached to the core Mac Mini using USB. I had to deauthorize Roon from the previous Mac Mini (details above).
We will see how this goes. Indexing is done and it is calculating the DR on my music files which will likeky take about 12 hours.
Since my last post 5 days ago, I have not experienced any issues at all.
Tentative conclusion is that my previous Mac Mini developed a hardware issue - logic board and/or RAM are most likely suspect as I already checked the harddrive several tmes.