Very high CPU load on MAC

Support
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Creating a new thread to repeat this issue described in the thread below - but it’s a serious enough issue for me that renders my Roon subscription practically useless. Please have a look at my post in the thread below.

There are multiple reports of abnormal CPU usage on MacOS so this seems to be a MacOS issue rather than specific to a certain mac model?

Would be great for Roon support to acknowledge the issue and try finding a solution.

Original post was here:

Content:
I use roon core and playback from my laptop, music is on external HDD connected to laptop. DAC connected via USB to laptop.
Macbook Pro 15" 2019, 8core, 32 GB RAM, Vega 20 Graphics. (Latest model)

The moment Roon starts, the CPU jumps to 250 to 300 % for Roon alone then another 100% for RAAT without any DSP or other corrections applied.

The Fans turn to maximum power, as you can see from the highlighted SMC Fan Controls info - Also see CPU Graph and Cpu Temperature jumping to 90+ degrees.

Not even 4K video editing gets the fans running this high this quickly!!! It’s comparable to 3D rendering.

I just recently moved the Roon core to my Laptop, so can’t report when the issue appeared - used to run it on a separate computer.

The issue persists as long as Roon is open, even if minimised running in the background.

Kindly please keep us updated on this - as it’s basically rendering Roon useless atm. The fans get so loud that they badly interfere with the music. Using the Tidal App, Youtube, Deezer or Audirvana never gets the cpu this loaded.

Thanks for taking the time to look into it.

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Hi @Stefan_Stefan,

Thank you for your report here. We are aware of this behavior on a few specific models of MacOS and the dev team is currently investigating. I don’t have any further information to share at this time, but I appreciate your report and have added it to the investigation ticket.

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Thanks @noris
As much as I absolutely love Roon, this sadly makes it unusable as the fans get so loud that they overpower quiet passages of music I often listen to…

Hope you can find a solution to this - not sure how many users are affected but I’m genuinely worried having read reports of this many months ago and at least 2 Roon releases ago…

Adding to my report:

RAATServer process will also push its one thread to 100% thus heating up the CPU enough to kick the fans up to maximum. Tested this while throttling the main Roon process and leaving RAATServer untouched.

I can throttle each process to less than 100% - RAAT seems to run well enough on 50% but ROON itself gets really slow and laggy. Playback is fine, but the interface and search are even slower.

2 Likes
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Thanks for the additional info @Stefan_Stefan. The dev team is aware of similar reports and they are looking into it.

1 Like
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Months pass but still no progress?

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Yeah, It’s a bit worrisome that Roon devs are aware of this for a while but they keep to their updates schedule I guess which means we’re likely a long while away from a fix still.

@noris happy to be proven wrong :slight_smile:

I’d really appreciate more care to these things as we are paying customers. This is not free software and I pay yearly and support the Roon team long term - the company should also stand up for their mishaps and compensate their users. Roon is to me absolutely useless at this point - and it was one of my always on pieces of software.

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Second that.
FYI Apple support said “don’t use any app that causes constant overheating”. Totally agree. I’ve stopped using Roon, too bad…

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@noris
I have found the way to reproduce this issue 100% of the time. It is related to network conditions changing.

  • Let’s say I am connected to the internet via my wired router and switch to another network via WiFi - BANG, CPU spikes up.
  • I am connected to the Internet via any type of connection and connect to a VPN - the second I connect to the VPN, CPU usage spikes. It always happens for bot RAATServer and ROON.
  • Restoring previous network conditions (disconnect VPN, connect to initial network) does not make the issue go away.
  • Restarting ROON changes nothing.
  • Issue persists in 1.7
  • It is mitigated ONLY by restarting the whole system (which is impossible to do when you’re actively working…). After which - any change to network conditions will spike the CPU again and the cycle restarts.

Kindly please be more communicative about this issue. This is a serious bug and more communication on your part would be appreciated by those affected.

Thank you!

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Hello @Stefan_Stefan,

I appreciate you looking into this behavior further. I have forwarded your reproduction steps to our technical team who will investigate this issue further.

Apologies if you feel we haven’t been communicating enough. This issue is a tricky one to reproduce in the lab, and if we don’t get this behavior occurring on the dev machines it is hard to say what causes it.

I am hopeful your steps here will help shed some light in the issue, I will be sure to let you know once I have more info, thank you once again.

1 Like
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@noris @support

I have a mac here that does not get out of high CPU usage, whatever I do.

I’m offering remote access to it for you to take a good look. You could even run a debug build on it you desired!

Come and get it while it’s hot!

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@Nicolas_Will - I’ve followed up via PM.

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Hi @noris,

Is there any update on this topic? I experience the identical issue on my iMac, where periodically the Roon CPU usage goes up to > 200% (even when not playing), and only rebooting the machine brings it back to a more normal 5%.

The iMac has a 3 GHz 6 core i5, 32 GB memory, and Catalina 10.15.2.

Thanks.

1 Like
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5 posts were split to a new topic: Mac Mini High CPU

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I just signed for a trial and experience a similar issue. Roon takes 38-50% of CPU all the time.

MacBook Pro i5. Mojave.

Edit: Just found out that the CPU peaks are related to “Background Audio Analysis Speed”. Turned it off and problem solved.

1 Like
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Thank you very much for your edit! I’d been suffering through the same problem, but now I’ve changed that setting (I’m using “Throttled” right now) and Roon’s started to use a reasonable amount of resources.

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Awesome! I’m glad to help :slight_smile:

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My Roon Remote is a late 2013 Macbook Pro. Lately, several times the fan noise of the overheating laptop caught my attention, and every time the culprit was RAAT server. Exiting Roon and restarting the software after a while resolves the problem, until it comes back. I so wish there was a Remote package for Mac, without need to install all the server stuff just to select music on my core.

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Same issue here on a MacBook Pro (mid 2014 with Catalina) with the latest version of roon. Core is on another Mac mini.

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This seems to be reported by other users too, wanted to add my voice to the mix too.

Issue: persistent high CPU usage by Roon running as a client on my Macbook Pro, fans full blast, loud enough to be distracting while working.

System: Macbook Pro 13" 2019 / Quad core i7 2.8Ghz / 16GB Ram. Output is a JDS Labs Element II dac/amp connected via USB. Running latest version of Catalina and Roon. Connected to a dedicated ROCK on my Lan. Playing music both from ROCK core on my Lan and TIDAL.

Notes: I read earlier another thread that saw CPU usage drop when WLAN was used vs Ethernet. I also found that switching WLAN while I’m on Ethernet lowered CPU use but still burning enough CPU to keep the fan on.

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I’m getting the same behaviour.

When I first bought roon last summer everything was smooth, now when I open it not too long after the fans of my mac mini kick in pretty loud and activity monitor shows that room is using over 300% cpu.

This is pretty bad, I don’t want to burn down my computer prematurely.