Sluggish performance when searching meta data, adding albums, favoriting artist etc

Roon Core Machine

2021 Imac M1 8gb ram (macOS ventura 13.2.1) 500Gb ssd 340gb available

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Modem Motorola MB8611 Docsis 3.1 (2.5 Gbps Lan port)
Roon Core is Cat 6 Lan wired from Tp-Link Ax3200 tri-band wifi 6 (2.5 Gbps Lan)

Connected Audio Devices

Roon remotes used on iPad Pro and iPhone XS Max listening with IEM (both remotes are experiencing the issues below)

Number of Tracks in Library

Local files of only 5 albums… All other tracks and albums come from Qobuz streaming 1217 albums and 17061 tracks saved in Roon library

Description of Issue

Each evening I open my iPhone or iPad Pro and start searching and adding albums or favoriting artist. Works great for about 30 minutes or so and then artist pages don’t load, the option to favorite an artist does not show up on the loaded page. Or I add an album and then it does not reflect having been added. Often the Roon logo spins but doesn’t load an artist page (Going from overview to discography and back again hangs up) Playback generally works ok while these problems start, but after a few minutes even playback becomes an issue. I click on play a track and it won’t play for 30 seconds, sometimes much longer. Roon Arc does not seem to have any of these issues for me but I would need to use it much more to know for sure.

What I have done to fix this: Honestly I am very fatigued from many hours of reading thru threads and trying the things I read about. I am posting this to support as a last ditch effort to save my new favorite thing in the world; Roon! But sadly I find it nearly unusable anymore. I am only into my first month of paid subscription.

New modem - New Router - Explored DNS changes - Rebooted often - Deleted everything I could for iMac to become nearly exclusive to Roon - turned off background apps and functions; email checking etc. - replaced Cat 5 with newer Cat 6 - updated to latest macOS and updated to latest Roon remote apps etc. - I am now having problems remembering everything I have tried so far.

I was in the process of getting a Mac mini M2 to run as server when many threads of people saying they were having same issue stopped me. So I thought I will buy Nucleus when I found threads of people with them saying they were having same issue. Then I thought well I will consider the Intel NUC - this is getting a bit much for me… lol

So before I have to say goodbye to Roon and return to Qobuz app only. If someone has an answer for me that I have not tried, that would be great. Thank you for any help you may be able to offer.

1 Like

UPDATE: When the iPhone Roon remote becomes unusable (Albums don’t load, error loading page, music track selected but doesn’t play until delay of 30 to 60 seconds) I walk into my office and close Roon Core on iMac and wait 60 seconds and then re-open Roon and go back to iPhone Roon Remote and it works well for awhile. Then after 15 minutes or so I need to go back to iMac Core close Roon and then reopen for normal function to return to iPhone or iPad Roon Remotes.

This led me to believe that I am having some sort of a Memory leak or CPU performance problem. I ran Activity and The CPU performance is excellent. The Memory approaches 6.7 GB Ram and my system has only 8 GB Ram. No Swap is happening yet.

So I have tried to force the issue: I ran three zones with aggressive searching, adding albums etc. and noticed that the Memory approaches near 8GB (7.30 ish) but doesn’t go over and does not swap but all remotes not on the core IMAC go sluggish, spinning, delaying, error loading, basically just do not function.

What all this means I don’t really know?

I suppose I need to get a dedicated device such as a Mac mini and spec it up to 16GB of Ram. My fear is that this problem will cointue as it may not be a RAM problem at all. After all no memory swap to SSD is happening which leads me to believe the RAM I have should be sufficient.

I read about so many that have NO issues and are happy which leads me to believe this state of bliss should be possible but I am clearly missing something here?

1 Like

This was another support request that seems to have the same RAM spike issue I am seeing but on a much larger scale

Update: I moved my Roon Core off the iMac M1 and onto an old Desktop PC (i5 8Gb Ram) I am running the Roon Server on it. So far it has similar problems (spinning Roon Logo, delays in adding albums, delays in starting playback on tracks) HOWEVER unlike the iMac this old pc delays but ultimately does what I want. The difference is the iMac could grind away waiting 15 seconds to minutes and I would need to go to where the iMac is located and reboot the Roon Core. With the PC it spins for 5 seconds up to 15 seconds and then it works. I don’t need to go reboot the Roon Core.

So it is faster which makes sense because it is only being used for Roon and the Server version of Roon Core is being used. The iMac had the Core & Remote on the iMac and the iMac had other duties.

So I am thinking about getting Mac mini M2 to run headless as a Roon Core. This would be its only purpose. My concern is 8GB of RAM will fall short and have delays. I have read a few threads where others appear to be just fine with 8GB on the older M1 chip. Any thoughts anyone might have would be helpful.

I repost my comment of adifferent thred with a similar problem:

Hello to all,
same problem here. RoonServer on an iMac 2019 8-core 128GB/2TB/8TB/64TB.
Adding new albums takes too much time and even more the longer RoonServer is running.
A typical scenario is:
I start RoonServer on the iMac running the library from the internal m.2 SSD. Librarysize is 881.000 tracks. Looking for new additions in the surveilled folders takes about 10 to 15 minutes.
Very fast since the update from 1.8 to 2.0. then the new additions take forever. Beginning of additions much faster, after hours there are only some albums added per hour. Playing tracks the same behaviour. When Roon is newly started playing a track maybe takes 15 seconds to start. The longer the Roon Core runs, the longer it takes to start playing a chosen track, sometimes this is minutes!
It started some weeks ago with an update of Roon, where Roon updated the internal database. My database is 87GB and I back up regularly. I tried this step again with the old database but problem was the same.
Vents on the iMac are up continously. This is not normal behaviour.

Thanks for sharing, I didn’t see, what amount of RAM does your iMac have? Also how I have noticed a marked improvement by going to setting - Library and then changing from throttled to fast 4 cores. Being my system is dedicated for Roon it is working much much better. Also I think recent update has improved something’s

128GB Ram, Library combined on an internal SSD and external Thunderbolt raid.
The sluggish behaviour began with RoonServer update 2.0.11, when the database was somehow rearranged.
I tried everything to exclude network, Harddisk performance, bad database.
No question here: Roon itself remains as the problem. They have to solve this problem urgently.

1 Like

Wow, that is a lot of RAM! Thank you for posting, that is very helpful as it suggests I can probably stop buying equipment thinking it will make Roon work properly. :thinking:

Another Update on the slow and sluggish performance issue with Roon. I have upgraded everything I own on my network, Modem, Router, New Lan to Cat 6 matching the new wifi 6e, Moved core from iMac M1 to dedicated PC i7 2.5 Ghz with 8GB Ram, that was slow so I upgraded to 16GB and NOW… It is functioning with minimal Roon Logo spin as long as I go slow adding albums or favoring tracks etc. If I get going to quick Roon get unsettled and I get a logo spin for awhile. Anyway, it is stable for the most part. The new issue I am having is Sonos decided to improve their product and pushed out an update and Roon does not like it much. I get the "Roon has lost control of the audio device. I have a support request thread started (although I have yet to hear from Roon support as of 25 days now) So I am closing out my first month as a Roon paying customer. I am really not sure about going any further. I know some of you have had similar issues so I just wanted to update you on the much improved performance I am getting out of replacing EVERY piece of equipment I own! (much of it needed to be replaced anyway) Good times!

Hey @Sean_Blount,

Ben here with the support team, I’m extremely sorry for the long delay in getting to your thread! It seems your issue has slipped through the cracks until now - there is no excuse for the wait time you’ve experienced. The last thing I’d want is to leave you with a sour taste in your mouth within your first few months of using Roon.

How have things been since your last post? You’ve done some excellent troubleshooting so far, and I’m curious to hear how things perform on the latest Roon build - 1272.

If you’re still running into sluggishness, would you be able to jot down a specific date and time when things are really struggling? I’ve assigned your thread to me directly, so there will be no delay in my response moving forward.

Thanks again for your patience, and I’ll be on standby for your reply. :+1:

1 Like

Thank you for your response. The things I have tried have made a substantial difference and the new build has also improved. What I have come to understand is that Roon will not function as fast as other apps and software I am accustomed to using. And that is fine. When I add an album I have learned that it will need to scan that album and that will cause small delays in further activities. It was so slow as to be unusable but now it is around 1 to 3 seconds and I can live with that. I Don’t really have anything else I could do that I know of to make it any faster, and I am not sure I should expect any faster? So it is livable in its current state. (Apple Music is what I am contrasting it to, I can jump around as fast as I want, adding albums, playing albums, deleting albums, reading artist bio while sampling tracks, I just never get any delay or pausing, so perhaps this is unfair to Roon to expect that experience because Roon is doing a lot of others things that Apple Music is not doing) Anyway thanks for the response.

This topic was automatically closed 45 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.