Article: Review | Running a Large Roon Library on a QNAP TVS-872XT

[The Computer Audiophile]

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[The Computer Audiophile]

25 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Nice report.

 

It might be useful to supplement the comments on how well this NAS and its cpu handle your complex tasks, including DSP, with the numbers from Roon's assessment of the processing headroom.  This will indicate current throughput relative to the instantaneous demands of the task.

 

I did not see any reference to functions such as up/downsampling and/or format conversions and, unsurprisingly, no attempt to use more than 2 channels such as for bass management or multichannel.  These are the things that might stress an "Core i5-8400T running at 1.7 GHz."

 

 

 

 

.

Hi Kal, great points. I will run some tests and post results. I’ve used DSD512 upsampling on this NAS without an issue. I’ll post the exact stats. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Can send DSD512 and apply a 66,000 tap FIR convolution filter and don't experience any playback issues. Here is a screenshot Roon and the QNAP.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Streaming 24/192 from Qobuz causes a large spike in CPU when also doing DSD conversion and convolution. But still. no audio dropouts. 

 

I wish I had a multichannel DAC. 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I just added parametric EQ for the heck of it and the QNAP didn't even blink. 

 

Looks like the only thing that will likely phase it is multichannel.

[The Computer Audiophile]

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

Rebooting your NAS is not a solution. Roon is a memory / CPU hog regardless of the platform. This needs to be addressed by the Roon developers.

It’s a solution I can control. It’s either reboot or don’t use Roon. 

 

 

 

 

4 minutes ago, ted_b said:

Chris,

I may have missed this but why aren't you sending Roon (NAS) to an HQPlayer machine to do the heavy lifting (modulators, upsampling, converting, etc)?

I do. The above DSP was only a test. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

6 minutes ago, bobflood said:

Just curious. Can an adult live long enough to listen to 10 TB of music?

Definitely not. What’s the alternative, picking certain tracks from albums to save and delete the others?

 

First world problems of the highest order :~)

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 minutes ago, Yop1403 said:

As a technician it kind of hurts to reboot a NAS every morning + my QNAP TVS672XT (the smaller sister of the TVS 872XT, also pretty well specˋd) needs ca. 1-2 hours after reboot to re-index all files, create photo miniature icons etc. which also reduces CPU efficiency + creates additional hard disk/SSD wear etc. so this is IMHO not the best to do to a NAS - at least if the investment into it matters. 

in general, the hardware of QNAP is great (they are using pretty recent CPUs), in regards to software I find them a bit crappy. Had my old Synology run over months without a need to restart. That‘s definitely not possible on my QNAP, needs to be restarted every ca. 2 weeks – everytime it starts to slow down and lag with certain tasks...

Roon also runs well on my TV672XT but I‘m nowhere near the database size of this review...

 

I suppose I could create a script to just restart Roon but I’ll take the easy route for now. I don’t have anything else to index upon reboot, so I’m ok with it. Not ideal, but I can live with it. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

10 minutes ago, MarkS said:

Any thoughts on SQ running Roon on the QNAP vs. a Nucleus?

I’ve been running Roon (with a bunch of DSP) on a top spec’d (as of 2 years ago) SonicTransporter, and it is rock solid. I toyed with Roon on my Synology NAS just for fun and had some problems. 

I haven’t found any sonic differences with Roon core running inside the NAS out outside on a Roon ROCK NUC. I do t have a nucleus. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

12 minutes ago, afrancois said:

Hi Chris,

 

It uncanny how much your system resembles mine! I've been using the same QNAP for 8 months now. It's a powerhouse and I also use it for Roon. As you, I have a fiber connection. I'm using an Ubiquity XG-16 and several XP-10's to get complete isolation. My library is half the size of yours and I also get the occasional slow-downs. I don't reboot the QNAP, but every 2 or 3 weeks I restart the Roon app.

My 872 is connected on 3 separate VLAN's, one specifically for music, the other for IOT and security camera's and the third one for all the rest.

It's the perfect solution for me, not the least because of solid backup and the use of RAID-0 and RAID-5. The Roon db is on RAID-0 and the music on RAID-5.

Switching from a powerful NUC to the 872 didn't degrade the sound quality. I no longer have any powerful computers  (that use switch mode power supplies) nearby my HiFi equipment and that's a good thing.

One last thing I've upgraded the memory to 32GB on the 872

Wow. Very similar. 
 

I love my UniFi stuff. USG Pro > fiber > XG 16 > fiber > Sonore opticalRendu. 
 

I turned the USG Pro WAN2 port into LAN so I can run fiber to everything internal. Not sure why they only have SFP ports for the WAN on that router. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

21 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

I don't use JRMC but I have bench-marked Roon Vs. MinimServer on a Syology 1513+ NAS. In every aspect, like CPU, Memory, I/O, etc.. Roon failed miserably.

Isn't that like benchmarking apples and crackers? They do extremely different things.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

 

The comparison was (among other things):

 

1. Initial scan time of the library

2. Memory consumption at the end of the scan

3. CPU utilization during incremental scans

4. CPU utilization during playing a track

5. Service readiness since start up

6. Memory consumption over time

 

The above are identical to many applications that index music libraries.  

Roon is incredibly different when it does those things. It also doesn't need incremental scans. Music is automatically seen without a scan. The initial scan does so much more than just scan. 

 

These are two extremely dissimilar apps. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

23 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

It does not matter. Roon can mine bitcoins in the background as far as I am concerned. The fact is that Roon is extremely memory / CPU intensive application.

That's quite irrational.

 

Roon must do mush more intensive operations to offer people all the features it offers. Add those to MinimServer and you'd have the same thing. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

Let's look at this from a different perspective and a bit more rational, if you may. The fact that you reboot your NAS daily speak volumes about the efficiency of the software. If you really want to geek out into this, run a performance monitor tool to see what's going on in the background. (Hint... it's not pretty). Lavish GUI aside, you need to look into a software's ability to scale and scale well and Roon's ability at this is lacking. 

I'm with you, but comparing a Toyota Camry to an Airstream Trailer isn't helpful.

 

If there was another app that did what Roon does, then comparisons would be great. Instead we just have to look at the pros and cons of what we get for the utilization footprint and decide if it's OK with us. 

 

Minim doesn't do much. Even if it ran on a Raspberry Pi I couldn't use it as my sole server. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

4 minutes ago, bobfa said:

I find this VERY interesting.   Why QNAP?  What about Synology, or others?  

Hi Bob, I've used QNAP, Synology, FreeNAS, openMediaVault, and many others over the years. In my experience QNAP has the best hardware and equal software to Synology. The others are more DIY solutions that can be equally as valid if the user wants to go that route. Roon installs very easily on QNAP and people can just add to cart if they want to go this route. 

 

Perhaps I need to work on an article for those of us who have fun putting together all the pieces of the puzzle and messing with the software. Roon can be a little harder to install on such devices though. 

 

If someone isn't using Roon core on the NAS, then the options open up even more. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi @Ran I thought I knew what system you used for storage and streaming, but I can't remember. I believe you're a big fan of DLNA etc... correct? What are you using for software and hardware? I'm interested and others may find it helpful. I know you have a ton of knowledge in this area. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, robbbby said:

@The Computer Audiophile was there a reason you chose a 500GB drive for the roon software/database?  It looks like a 250GB drive should be more than adequate?

The 500 GB drive was half the price of the 250 GB drive. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

12 minutes ago, DuckToller said:

... dreaming about a multi-channel Wilson setup ?

Ever since Pearl Jam released its new album Gigaton in Dolby Atmos, I’ve been considering it!

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

I'm wondering; have you tried repointing Roon to a different Roon core then bringing it back to the QNAP? That doesn't lose your scanned library but should

reset session data.

I haven’t done that. 
 

Please educate me on what happens when that is done. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

21 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

I'm a little surprised at the results you're getting on a machine that I THINK is less capable than mine. I run Roon on a 2014 Mac Mini, 3GHz i7, 16 gig RAM and a 500 gig SSD. I have hundreds of DSD64 files ripped from SACDs and when using Convolution filters made for me by Home Audio Fidelity along with a Low Pass Parametric Filter my setup is just on the edge of not working. When I hit play on a DSD64 file it takes a second or two for the music to start playing. Watching the monitor in Roon it's almost like the music is spooling up. It starts out at about 0.5X and ends up with the music playing at about 1.2X. If I let the music play it's fine for the rest of the album but if I skip a song Roon spools up the music again before continuing on. I just tried playing a DSD64 file and under Convolution Roon says it's using 4 paths and 2984k taps which I believe is far fewer than you said you were using. Everything else about Roon works as expected and I'm very happy with it. Turning off Convolution immediately solves the problem but I much prefer the sound with it on. This too is a First World problem but I wouldn't mind knowing what spec I need to upgrade on my computer to get rid of the delay.

Interesting. Is that convolution filters tap number correct 2984k (2,984,000)? I’m using 66,000 taps. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, davide256 said:

I do that when trying to compare my PC vs NUC as Roon core . Roon allows you 1 licensed/active core per account as default, you can pay for more.

Under settings,general you can see your current selected/active core. If you chose disconnect, it will show you available roon cores to pick from. I just changed from NUC to

PC back to NUC all in the space of 15 seconds from my PC core/client with no library scan impact. I doubt that its a session variable but all it takes is 2 available core instances to test

 

The problem you describe does remind me of issues I had with the Aries mini where the Lightning database would corrupt over time and I would have to periodically delete it. Running

the library maintenance option for Roon is a lot more friendly.

I know that I can switch cores, but what does that get me?

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

@The Computer Audiophile, 

 

Thanks for keeping the beautiful English language alive by correctly using the word eke, and not the abomination eek that seems to have pervaded popular culture. Bravo!

OMG. Someone noticed!

 

Eek made it through my first draft but I caught it just before publication :~)

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

Neither of us designed/coded Roon so we don't know how it's maintaining/cleaning up session data and session resources. Changing cores is the closest you

can come to a session "logout" to try to force a session cleanup. From your earlier comments reboot of the QNAP clears the problem, shutting down Roon did not,

this is just probing to see if you can find a faster way to clear the problem... won't make it go away but might allow you to clear the problem in seconds, not minutes.

The only gotcha I've found in changing cores is that the Roon authentication server needs to be accessible... don't do this at 2AM when they are doing maintenance.

 A recent Roon backup should protect you if you have the bad luck  that the authentication servers down

OK, now I follow you. 

 

Restarting Roon fixes the issue 90% of the time. I suppose I could also script the Roon restart as well, but the Power Scheduler is too easy and I have no down time since it takes place at 5am. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

9 minutes ago, udis said:

Hi Chris,  Would you happen to have the "how to" link/instructions?

Hi Udis, I'm not sure if there is a how-to on this one, but here are the screens where you can make the changes. 

 

Click on your USG Pro so the right little window pane opens. Then click on the Ports icon. Then click Configure Interfaces.

 

 

 

 

 

Here you can select Port WAN2 network and change it to you LAN or whatever you've named it. Then you are fiber from the router into your entire network. I wish I could the fiber that comes into my house directly into this router and bypass the ONT. CenturyLink isn't up for that they told me. 

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

9 minutes ago, Hardinge said:

@The Computer Audiophile thanks for this review. I’m at my wits end running a large db on nas and a fire in my laptop. Continually rescans the library at the drop of a hat (even though set to 24hr interval) and can’t handle any dsp. 

So your solution is appealing. One question though, would there be any performance or sq hit in your system if you also used the same qnap for general file storage? ie photos movies files etc? To justify the cost i’d be looking for the qnap to run double duties. 

Thanks

 

I did many other things on this QNAP while running the Roon core on it and this thing didn't break a sweat and didn't change audio performance at all. I even ran a couple Docker containers and a complete virtual machine with full operating system etc... This thing can handle it.