· I am experiencing problems with the Search function. When attemting to find an artist or an album Roon says "Searching for..." and after a while - "Can't connect to Roon Search". Prevoiusly searched items in the "Recent" list are loading fine, but any new search attempt fails.
Besides, many album and artists images appear as grey squares or empty circles.
My music library is stored on Synology NAS. Roon server is running on the same NAS, another copy (not at the same time) - on a PC with Windows 11. The search problem persists with either Roon server activated. I stopped and restarted the Roon servers, restored from a backup, even rebuilt from scratch the database for one of the servers.
Tell us about your home network
· Router: Keenetic Giga (KN-1010), neither switches nor VPN.
Thanks for the detailed description — this is very helpful.
Based on what you’re describing, the symptoms point strongly to a connectivity issue between your network and Roon cloud services, rather than a local database or storage problem. Specifically:
The message “Can’t connect to Roon Search” indicates the Roon Server is unable to reach Roon’s search backend.
Grey/empty album and artist images occur when the server can’t retrieve artwork from Roon’s metadata and image servers.
The fact that this happens on both servers (Synology NAS and Windows 11), and even after a full database rebuild, effectively rules out corruption or a server-specific issue.
This pattern is most commonly caused by something blocking or interfering with outbound traffic at the router or ISP level (for example: DNS filtering, firewall rules, traffic inspection, or ISP-side filtering).
To help confirm this, a few clarifying questions:
Are you using the default DNS settings on your Keenetic router, or have you configured custom DNS (for example: ISP DNS, AdGuard, Pi-hole, etc.)?
Does the behavior change if you temporarily:
Switch DNS to a public provider (e.g. Google or Cloudflare), or
Connect the Roon Server to a different internet connection (for example, a mobile hotspot)?
Are any security, filtering, or “safe internet” features enabled on the Keenetic router?
Once we confirm whether the issue follows the network connection, we can be confident this is an external connectivity block and advise accordingly.
Hi Vadim!
Thank you for the prompt and informative response! I do incline to the thought that the problem is related to the connectivity. Perhaps it has something to do with my ISP or the broader Internet limitations imposed by the Russian watchdog - Roskomnadzor.
I attempted to activate a VPN and the problem seemed to be gone when the network traffic was temporarily routed via another country.
As to your questions:
Yes, I use the default DNS settings given by my ISP.
I tried changing settings to a few public DNS providers, including Cloudflare and Google, all to no use.
No special security features or filtering is enabled in the router. Besides, I disabled all the firewall and antivirus software while trying to find a remedy, it did not help.
The addresses roonlabs.com and roonlabs.net are pinged OK. Are there any other URLs that are vital for Roon to operate correctly so that I could check and ping them or maybe point my ISP to check the accessibility?
Thank you for the update — that clarification is very helpful.
Based on your testing, especially the fact that the issue disappears immediately when using a VPN, this strongly indicates that access to Roon cloud services is being restricted or filtered at the ISP or regional network level. In such cases, Roon Server is unable to reliably reach our search, metadata, and image services, which results in exactly the behavior you’re seeing (failed search requests and missing artwork).
While basic domains like roonlabs.com or roonlabs.net may respond to ping, Roon relies on multiple backend services and content delivery endpoints, which may not be reachable or may be intermittently blocked depending on ISP routing or regional restrictions.
Because of this, we’re unable to guarantee normal operation of Roon features (such as Search, metadata, and images) in environments where network traffic to Roon services is restricted.
Using a VPN or an alternative internet connection that provides unrestricted access is currently the most reliable workaround in this situation.
We understand this is frustrating, but given the circumstances, there isn’t further troubleshooting we can perform from the Roon side. Please let us know if anything changes on your network or ISP side.
