Why is Roon so resource hungry? And is Roon development hamstrung...?

Yup - seems to get resource hungry from time to time - not always easy (for me) to get a handle on what Roon is doing.

145k local tracks - that is a large library. I didn’t pick up on that at first. :sunglasses:

My Roon core is on a 2012 13" Macbook Pro. I have noticed that it’s best to shut down the laptop in the morning and start afresh every morning. If I keep it on 24/7 for convenience, Roon will eventually skip tracks and the laptop will shut down and reboot spontaneously while the laptop body feels very hot. So somehow, over time, it gets sort of overworked and it needs a reboot / cool down. Which is not a problem, since I mostly sleep at night anyway. Roon takes long to start since I have a LOT of albums, but not longer than it takes to shower and brush teeth so that is not an issue either. HD with music is connected via USB and the DAC is also directly plugged into USB, so no wifi signal needed besides the other laptop’s Roon app to control / select / add music.

I plan to eventually buy a newer (second hand) mac laptop and expect it will be a little more relaxed even though it’s not urgent to do so.

Laptop years are calculated like dog years but worse1 human = 12 Laptop years. So at 96 it’s not surprising it runs out of steam during the day and needs a long sleep. :slight_smile:

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@ged_hickman1 that makes much sense!

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Also, old laptops had awful HDs… slow, noisy and all.

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Jim, USB HDD is not a back up unless you keep it at another house well away

Even safe deposit boxes create a risk. In addition to this example (link below), I read an article last year on how a bank shut down a branch, didn’t notify the customers, and ALL the safe deposit boxes were simply gone (construction on the interior gutted the area and no one knew what had happened to the boxes). Can’t find the article, but sad part is that the liability of the bank was quite limited.

But in any case, yes, any backup is better than none. I keep one USB drive backup (unattached except when updating) at 3 different locations, work, home, weekend cottage. And one stored at a relative’s place 2000 miles away, updated maybe once a year.

I thought they were in the Cayman Islands Jim? :wink:

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Let’s stay on topic people.

A post was split to a new topic: Off-topic moderation

Going back to the original topic… Decided to enable background audio analysis on my Roon Core (NUC7i5DNHE, Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS, 8GB RAM, 120GB M.2 SSD, 4TB SATA SSD) because why not? Audio analysis set to use 2 cores. Streaming 192/24 to a Pi2AES+Pi4B endpoint (RopieeeXL) from the SATA SSD. This not “resource hungry” in my book:

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Hi Fernando - interesting.

Can you break that down into plain English for me please? I’m not entirely sure what it all means. Thank you.

Best regards. :smile:

Just from looking at the CPU graph:
He has 4 processors, 2 are running full blast (presumably from background audio analysis) and the small spikes above are the actual DSP and/or streaming of the music.
Ergo, analysing audio is resource intensive, streaming music is not.

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My 6 year old XPS i7 running a 44/16 file with extensive dsp, a you tube video as well Even with much higher resolution files, both flac and DSD Ive never had a resource problem.

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A NUC7i5DNHE has a 4 core i5-7300U processor, somewhere between that of of a Nucleus and a Nucleus+ in processor speed. I configured it with 8GB of RAM (same as the Nucleus+) and 120GB M.2 local storage for the operating system and Roon’s workspace. In terms of compute power, it is less than the Apple Macbook Pro I’m writing this on. It was assembled in a fanless case by QuietPC in the UK.

I used to run the NUC with an external USB 2TB Samsung SSD storing the music files, but yesterday I replaced that by a 4TB Samsung internal SATA drive. This might be enough storage for your 6k albums, depending on sample rate. (Of course one needs to think about backup as well. I use a Synology NAS for that, and a couple of other secondary backup solutions – cloud, hard drives).

I run Ubuntu Linux Server on this box, but that’s because I like to mess around with computers. One could install Roon ROCK, which is Roon’s own slimmed down Linux-based software. Or one could buy a complete comparable server, such as the Roon Nucleus(+) or a sonicTransporter from Small Green Computer.

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@Daniel_Lundh
Exactly. what I was thinking, but wasn’t really sure, mostly due to the fact I couldn’t see what was going on other than streaming. - thank you! :sunglasses:

@Fernando_Pereira

The fanless concept, as per Nucleus is of interest to me. So that’s something the right computer store can assemble as required - great. Noise from fans is often spoken about on the forum, where some avoid the issue via placement (distance) or fanless (as per Nucleus).

4TB is currently sufficient, but very little room for growth. So perhaps 6TB would be the way I’d move moving forward.

I assume I’d simply go down the path of Roon Rock and as per your current setup seems 8gb of ram is the way to go, with a similar NUC. Obviously the purchase of a NUC is the simplest part for me - off the shelf!

Thanks.

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It all depends on how at ease with electronic assembly you feel. At the time I got my fanless NUC pre-assembled from QuietPC UK, I was too busy to do the assembly myself. Otherwise, I could have got all the parts separately and the case itself from Akasa.

Confidence aside (not very), as of the 13th, I’ll be back to very busy once again, so the possibility of having a computer store do some assembly is very appealing.

That fanless case looks excellent design wise & is further aesthetically very appealing. Gives me a good idea of what I should try and look for out here. :sunglasses:

Cheers.

When I ordered mine here, I was very happy with their service and delivery speed. (I live in the US). There are a couple of other companies who deliver pre-assembled fanless NUCs, there are some other suggestions on this forum.

It’s of course cheaper (and potentially fun, if nothing goes wrong) to get all the parts and put them together yourself.

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A post was split to a new topic: Roon UI is not good enough