Roon isn't stable and they edit their forum to hide it


I just had to post this somewhere, and their moderators won't allow it on the Roon forum.  Just so people know, it is not an open forum when it comes to comments about Roon or its stability.  

Their moderators edit and delete posts.  It can get a little Orwellian.  

There are users that have identified severe resource leaks or situations where the Roon software pegs a single core in a CPU until Roon has to restart, causing drop-outs in audio as well as very slow responsiveness.  

The moderators must all be severe fanboys.  

Take it for what it's worth.  I just want potential users to understand they may not get the most complete picture by reviewing the Roon forum.  And sure, I understand that moderators moderate.  When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail. 

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I have been a ROON Lifer even before the product was released, so maybe 10 years now.

A few things I have learned. 

1) If you are updating the software and things are not running as expected, then reboot the ROON Core. This has become less of an issue, and I cannot remmber the last time I rebooted.

2) If you are running hi-res streams then make sure you have enough bandwidth.

At one time I have my ROON core on the wrong side of my PowerLine adapter part of my home network. Playing hi-res resulted in intermittent drops. I moved the Core to the Ethernet side of my home network and that solved the hi-res issues for me.

3) I am using a cheap $500 DELL PC to run my Core. At one time I had 3 zones, Grouped some for DAC evaluations. I occasionally ran hi-res and I also had CONVOLUTION filters running inside the CORE. This is all heavy data processing. It worked fine with the cheap computer. 

ROON software is genius level audio code. However, it is code, and code evolves sometimes with glitches.

BTW - if anyone needs to use a BALANCE control for their system. Try ROON's and compare with an analog solution, such as a preamp. ROON's is spectacular. 

I'm not entirely sure that whatever issues I've experienced are even triggered locally.  It is true that the issues are similar to other users who hypothesize that it's some form of library/metadata update. 

That issue was happening quite frequently, as in every 2-3 days for about an hour at a time, and restarting the software or rebooting the server did nothing...the process simply restarted and killed Roon again after that. 

But I haven't seen the issue in maybe 10 days.  This makes no sense if the Roon core initiates some process on a fixed schedule (nothing I have done - haven't added anything to the library or modified anything).  

So I wonder if this is something on the Roon network end...it triggers a process.  So perhaps Roon has addressed it on their end somehow.

Amazing how many different types of issues Roon spews out.  

It is spectacular when it works.  It is incredibly frustrating when it doesn't.  And I feel like we are just guessing at what the problems may be...about as scientific as a Neanderthal wondering why the volcano just erupted. 

I find it hard to believe the issues mentioned here with app itself are inherent to Roon. Vast majority of issues I've seen with Roon on various forums  are outliers, otherwise we'd see same issues with mass numbers of users. Best I can come up is try to determine what users with no issues have in common ,and on the other hand, what do users with issues have in common.

 

Going through Roon issues on forums over the years the above is the norm, unique configurations that are difficult to troubleshoot. With so many users, hard to expect Roon to provide the number and quality of troubleshooters necessary to ensure answers for many of these issues. No doubt they've estimated cost of that exceeds benefit to them, willing to lose some customers. I generally don't even bother with app providers for troubleshooting, self help in expecting steep learning curve and/or using other users of app for needed help.

Roon had worked great for me as long as I use hard wired ethernet cables, as recommended by Roon. With WiFi, I’ll get random drops and I’ll have to click play again.