Mac OS Catalina Disaster With Sonos and Roon

[daverich4]

Roon just released a fix for the problems they were having with Catalina. 
 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-1-6-build-475-is-live-for-macos-catalina-fixes/81982/2

[botrytis]

8 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Win 10 has issues all by its own without doing anything.

 

On one machine it corrupted it's registry all by itself so badly that it didn't load half of the drivers at boot anymore, including keyboard driver. On another one, update caused mouse pointer to get extremely jerky - it moves for a second and then freezes for another second. Needless to say Linux has been working perfectly on both machines.

 

On my development machine, Win10's screensaver timeout stopped working. No matter what time I set there, nothing ever happens. On the same machine, one of the bigger updates failed to install and spending half a day with Microsoft remote support didn't help, they couldn't figure out why and gave up. I reinstalled updated Win10 on the same machine and got updates working again, however, it didn't affect screensaver functionality.

 

Apart from that, one thing that affected me was that update from Win 7 to Win 8 broke support for multithreaded COM objects with WASAPI. And Win10 Creators Update broke third party license key system (for some unknown reason) and I had to replace that component on the fly during product life cycle.

 

On macOS I only remember one bigger issue when Apple changed behavior of drag-and-drop suddenly.

 

 

I have NOT had issues with Win 10 but I do build my own PC's and I use name brand components. PERIOD. I have built PC's ever since the 486 came on the market, so it is a long time. When I had issues, I could always trace it to a badly written driver.

[mwheelerk]

Roon issued an update to fix the permission issue with OS Catalina,.  I've just updated it and I'm back in business there.

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

37 minutes ago, mwheelerk said:

Roon issued an update to fix the permission issue with OS Catalina,.  I've just updated it and I'm back in business there.

Just received notice off the update here. Was granting the permissions pretty painless?

[mwheelerk]

1 minute ago, Ishmael Slapowitz said:

Just received notice off the update here. Was granting the permissions pretty painless?

I did not have to do a thing but run the update.

[Miska]

6 hours ago, botrytis said:

I have NOT had issues with Win 10 but I do build my own PC's and I use name brand components. PERIOD. I have built PC's ever since the 486 came on the market, so it is a long time. When I had issues, I could always trace it to a badly written driver.

 

The one with corrupted registry was Lenovo laptop with all updates installed and Lenovo factory installed Win10. Jerky mouse one is Acer laptop with all updates installed. Neither one had any unusual manufacturer drivers. The one where screensaver and updates stopped working is Gigabyte motherboard with i7-7700K and Nvidia GPU using drivers straight from Nvidia and no other unusual third party drivers, everything else is what is shipped with Windows. I've built my desktop PC's already since 286 days (8088/8086 PC's I had were pre-built). But I cannot build my own laptops. And for most important things I use HP's Xeon workstation that has next-business day on-site warranty, etc. But it runs Linux (officially supported by HP) and it has never seen a trace of Windows.

 

Most recent problem was on my measurement machine which is Intel's NUC 7i7BNH, some applications suddenly started crashing right after boot. There the problem was that some Win10 update broke Intel's display driver that was not updated at the same time (although Microsoft ships it). Going to Intel's site directly, getting and installing their latest driver directly fixed the problem.

 

On macOS I don't remember ever seeing that their update would break a driver they ship. But seems to happen all the time with Windows.

On Linux too, the drivers shipped in kernel pretty systematically work fine. Nvidia driver may get broken if you are insisting on a very bleeding edge kernel or other component.

[botrytis]

7 hours ago, Miska said:

 

The one with corrupted registry was Lenovo laptop with all updates installed and Lenovo factory installed Win10. Jerky mouse one is Acer laptop with all updates installed. Neither one had any unusual manufacturer drivers. The one where screensaver and updates stopped working is Gigabyte motherboard with i7-7700K and Nvidia GPU using drivers straight from Nvidia and no other unusual third party drivers, everything else is what is shipped with Windows. I've built my desktop PC's already since 286 days (8088/8086 PC's I had were pre-built). But I cannot build my own laptops. And for most important things I use HP's Xeon workstation that has next-business day on-site warranty, etc. But it runs Linux (officially supported by HP) and it has never seen a trace of Windows.

 

Most recent problem was on my measurement machine which is Intel's NUC 7i7BNH, some applications suddenly started crashing right after boot. There the problem was that some Win10 update broke Intel's display driver that was not updated at the same time (although Microsoft ships it). Going to Intel's site directly, getting and installing their latest driver directly fixed the problem.

 

On macOS I don't remember ever seeing that their update would break a driver they ship. But seems to happen all the time with Windows.

On Linux too, the drivers shipped in kernel pretty systematically work fine. Nvidia driver may get broken if you are insisting on a very bleeding edge kernel or other component.

 

Not the same at all. Linux doesn't work on all hardware that is in the Windows Ecology. And Apple picks and chooses theirs. You cannot, for example, put an NVidia card into an Apple PC now and get it to work and same with AMD, as only certain cards are supported. That is the difference between a closed computer system and an open one. 

 

I remember having to support all the computers in the lab I was doing my Post Doc in. At the time, one student bought the first iMac and to get a network card, we had to go to Apple which was 300 USD at the time. It was the EXACT same card that I got for 25 USD for the Windows PC except the PCI slot was turned 180 int the MAC so you could not plug in the 25 USD card in it. All the numbers and the producer were exactly the same, as on the Windows PC and Mac board you could see the traces on the other side of the card.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

Not the same at all. Linux doesn't work on all hardware that is in the Windows Ecology.

 

Like what? Instead, Linux works on much wider hardware than Windows supports, for example various devices based on ARM processors.

 

The same hardware where Windows is having problems works perfectly fine with Linux. For example on both Lenovo and Acer laptops, I've been using Linux since, Windows thrown out for good.

 

1 hour ago, botrytis said:

You cannot, for example, put an NVidia card into an Apple PC now and get it to work and same with AMD, as only certain cards are supported.

 

I have one iMac with Nvidia GPU and the new iMac has AMD GPU. And for example my software supports Nvidia's CUDA on macOS because Nvidia still supports it. But add-on card support will very likely now change due to the new MacPro that once again allows one to plug in all kinds of third party cards. So I expect Nvidia to continue and extend their support, and same for AMD. I have also bunch of other non-Apple hardware that has vendor provided drivers for macOS. For audio side, such as exaSound DACs, Merging audio interfaces (through RAVENNA) and for example Prism audio hardware. Plus there are various Thunderbolt devices.

 

[botrytis]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Like what? Instead, Linux works on much wider hardware than Windows supports, for example various devices based on ARM processors.

 

The same hardware where Windows is having problems works perfectly fine with Linux. For example on both Lenovo and Acer laptops, I've been using Linux since, Windows thrown out for good.

 

 

I have one iMac with Nvidia GPU and the new iMac has AMD GPU. And for example my software supports Nvidia's CUDA on macOS because Nvidia still supports it. But add-on card support will very likely now change due to the new MacPro that once again allows one to plug in all kinds of third party cards. So I expect Nvidia to continue and extend their support, and same for AMD. I have also bunch of other non-Apple hardware that has vendor provided drivers for macOS. For audio side, such as exaSound DACs, Merging audio interfaces (through RAVENNA) and for example Prism audio hardware. Plus there are various Thunderbolt devices.

 

 

The new ones will NOT take an NVidia as reported in the Mac Press.

 

Win 10 runs on ARM (which was originally designed by Intel) - uhh - they did it first. 

 

NVidia dropped support for MACs since Apple dropped their cards.

[Miska]

38 minutes ago, botrytis said:

Win 10 runs on ARM (which was originally designed by Intel) - uhh - they did it first. 

 

Intel? ARM has never been designed by Intel. ARM is designed my ARM. AFAIK, Windows 10 doesn't run for example on RasperryPi (Broadcom SoC), BeagleBone Black, or any of my NXP iMX6 or iMX8M platforms, or any of my AmLogic, Atmel or RockChip SoC based devices. While all those run Linux happily. Nor on any of the Android phones, while Android is based on Linux...

 

Over time, I've also been running Linux on Sun (nowadays Oracle) SPARC and DEC Alpha workstations.

 

Current list of CPU architectures supported by upstream Linux: alpha, arc, arm, arm64, blackfin, c6x, cris, frw, h8300, hexagon, ia64, m32r, m68k, metag, microblaze, mips, mn10300, nios2, openrisc, parisc, powerpc, s390, score, sh, sparc, tile, um, unicore32, x86, x86-64, xtensa

 

38 minutes ago, botrytis said:

NVidia dropped support for MACs since Apple dropped their cards.

 

No they didn't. At least the very latest CUDA toolkit release supports macOS, I'm using it...

 

[Ishmael Slapowitz]

22 hours ago, mwheelerk said:

I did not have to do a thing but run the update.

Great, thanks. 

[ferenc]

On 10/29/2019 at 11:26 AM, kirkmc said:

Yet another developer - Roon - who ignored what Apple told them to do regarding file and folder permissions. Just like that DJ software that was making the rounds a couple of weeks ago, attempting to pin the blame on Apple, whereas it was just lazy developers. 

 

Actually, this problem with Roon was present at the first developer beta sometime quite few months ago (I hope I did not break my NDA with Apple). So it is really strange it was not addressed for so long by Roon.

[Abtr]

7 minutes ago, ferenc said:

 

Actually, this problem with Roon was present at the first developer beta sometime quite few months ago (I hope I did not break my NDA with Apple). So it is really strange it was not addressed for so long by Roon.

Especially because it probably only involved adding a few 'permission keys' in an 'info.plist' file..

[ferenc]

17 minutes ago, Abtr said:

Especially because it probably only involved adding a few 'permission keys' in an 'info.plist' file..

 

Exactly. 

[cambridgehank]

But, what is happening with Sonos?  I cannot control my speakers with the Music app?

[daverich4]

3 hours ago, Abtr said:

Especially because it probably only involved adding a few 'permission keys' in an 'info.plist' file..

Roon is suggesting it was a little more complicated than that....

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-1-6-build-475-is-live-for-macos-catalina-fixes/81982

[Abtr]

1 hour ago, daverich4 said:

Roon is suggesting it was a little more complicated than that....

 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-1-6-build-475-is-live-for-macos-catalina-fixes/81982

In the end they say that for version 1.6 build 475 they "resolved storage access & media keys issues on macOS 10.15 Catalina." That sounds like a simple permission key problem which typically doesn't require extensive code changes and testing. But who knows..

[kirkmc]

I call BS. I know a number of Mac developers, and all those who needed these access permissions fixed things shortly after the first developer beta. It's not complicated to do this. What it does suggest, however, is that Roon does not have a full-time Mac developer, and that they had issues around that. This change was literally a question of adding a few entries in a file to request permissions. The macOS API handles the rest. 

[rn701]

1 hour ago, kirkmc said:

I call BS. I know a number of Mac developers, and all those who needed these access permissions fixed things shortly after the first developer beta. It's not complicated to do this. What it does suggest, however, is that Roon does not have a full-time Mac developer, and that they had issues around that. This change was literally a question of adding a few entries in a file to request permissions. The macOS API handles the rest. 

 

I read somewhere that they use .net and some cross-platform runtime called mono and that they were several releases behind on mono. They also apparantly have a lot of homegrown libraries, too. Probably a nightmare to maintain.

[gcoupe]

4 hours ago, rn701 said:

 

I read somewhere that they use .net and some cross-platform runtime called mono and that they were several releases behind on mono. They also apparantly have a lot of homegrown libraries, too. Probably a nightmare to maintain.

There's a long list of open-source components that they use. It's apparently been a Catalina car crash.

[mwheelerk]

On 11/1/2019 at 1:04 PM, cambridgehank said:

But, what is happening with Sonos?  I cannot control my speakers with the Music app?

I wish I knew.  I still can't access my library with the Sonos app though I can use the Sonos speakers through iTunes (Music) and Roon but not JRiver either.

[mwheelerk]

On 11/1/2019 at 1:04 PM, cambridgehank said:

But, what is happening with Sonos?  I cannot control my speakers with the Music app?

From October 5th on the Roon site.

 

"Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina has dropped support for XMLs with the iTunes app, now called Music. The Sonos software looks for an XML file for importing playlists out of iTunes. Because of this, music libraries shared with Sonos will not be able to find playlists that are created in or updated with the new Music app. Please note that the rest of your music library should work with Sonos without any issues, this just affects the playlists in XML format from iTunes.

We'd recommend holding off on updating to Mac OS X 10.15 Catalina, but if you've done so already, you can use AirPlay 2 in the Music app to play your playlists to Sonos (if you have compatible Sonos players). Also, if you have an Apple Music subscription, your playlists and music should be available in there."

The team is investigating this now, and we'll update you when we have more to share.
 

[cambridgehank]

That is the same statement Sonos made on their community site the same day.  My suspicion is that Sonos as a technology company does not have any Macintosh specialist.  

[jriver]

We've got a thread on the Catalina problem on our forum here:

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,122610.0.html

 

Catalina introduced "notarization", so now every build we release will need Apple's approval first.  Not a good move, in my opinion.

[mwheelerk]

52 minutes ago, realalex said:

I am interested in Sonos as a replacement for one of the Squeezeboxen (the SB Radio, which still works, but I am fearful of when it doesn’t, so I figure I might as well start looking.)

One thing that I am not at all interested in, is using Alexa or any other Sonos software with these Wifi powered speakers. I want to connect the speaker to my Wifi, and then control it with Roon. No junk software and no voice control.

The question is: am I forced to install Sonos apps somewhere to get the unit to 1) install intialy (I assume yes) but also do I need to 2) keep using Sonos software to keep using the product? I just want to use Roon.

Thnx for the input.

Once you have Roon working with Sonos you no longer have to use the Sonos app but it would need to remain installed.