When I want to play a local file, it can take 30 secs to a few minutes to play

What time would that be? Our traffic has 2 modes… high traffic starts start around 1pm EST, when Europe starts to get home from work, and ends around 3am EST, when the US west coast goes to bed. During these times, its pretty stable, as the userbase is spread out nicely across timezones.

What is “a long while”? Could you take a video of your Roon remote demonstrating a few consecutive issues so we can get a better feel for what you are feeling? I can ask you to report a number of milliseconds, but I’d rather just see it to feel exactly what you feel. Also, note the time the video is taken so I can correlate it with your Roon Core’s logs.