This feels like it ought to be obvious, but it has me scratching my head.
Prior to setting up ROCK on a NUC, my local library resided on an external SSD connected to the iMac where my Roon Core resided.
I have now gotten a NUC, set up ROCK and connected a copy of the SSD to the NUC for the Local Library.
But now that I have NUC ROCK set up, hardwired to my router, how do I add music to the Local Library on the external SSD that’s attached to it? That SSD doesn’t show up in my network settings when I go to change the location of, say, my iTunes “Music Media folder location.” Nor, if I rip a CD, is that location available as a choice. We also have Sonos that is used outside of the Roon ecosystem, and it points to the same library on the external SSD on the iMac.
I can keep that library active, but new music that is added to it won’t get added to the Roon Core on the NUC, and Roon won’t know about them because it isn’t “watching” that folder any more.
What are you using as the remote to control Roon and is your iMac currently connected to the NUC over the network as a server? If not, you need to connect the iMac to the NUC, and then you can access all of its folders along with the external SSD that is connected.
To connect to the NUC:
From your Mac finder go to the “Go” menu and select “Connect to server”. A small window will pop up, Enter “smb://rock.local” (without the quotes). Another window should pop up asking how you want to connect. Select “Guest” and then click on the “OK” or “connect” button. Your NUC should now show up as a drive under the “locations” list that is on the side of the Mac windows, or under “Network” It will show up as “ROCK”
Now you can treat it just like any other drive. Double click on the ROCK icon and in the new window there should be a folder called “Data”. Open that and in the new window you will see a few different folders.
Thank you. I figured it was something logical like that.
But…Now when I look at “file info” for music that is already in iTunes (i’ve added nothing new) it still points to the old file location. Which I understand and makes sense. And that’s sort-of okay, since I’m not getting rid of the old file folders. But won’t I now have a multi-location library of the actual audio files? Some on the old internal HDD on my iMac, and everything after now on the SSD providing storage to the NUC ROCK which is somewhere else in the house wired to a router.
I fear that in order to have a single storage source for all music files, I’m going to have to copy almost 1TB of media files from one USB SSD to another inside the iTunes/Music) application. (I don’t like those kinds of heavy lifting file operations. Too much room for file errors and corruption.)
Or…Should/Can/Might I create a new “library” for my iMac and Sonos with actual media files referenced–as in Adobe Lightroom or the old Apple Aperture–to files residing somewhere else? (For any who doesn’t get the reference, my Adobe Lightroom Catalog is a photo database that doesn’t actually have the original photo file, just an editable reference. Like a library that’s actually a huge Playlist. There’s no “Playlist A” folder, containing tons of actual songs, which would vanish from the drive if Playlist A were deleted. It’s just a reference to a file somewhere else.
You can have as many storage locations as you like set in Roon. iTunes you can only have one so yes you need to decide where that library lives. Just keep it on the Mac as it is and have Roon access it over the network and don’t use local storage on the NuC. Then iTunes and Roon use the same location. If you where running Roon prior to the NuC on the Mac, backup your, library then restore on the NuC disable that storage location and ensure your iTunes folder is shared and accessible over the network then add it as a location to Roon. It will then relink your music this process takes some time so leave it to get on with it.
It if you copied your entire library to the SSD on the NuC already. Just add the network location to the Mac and change iTunes library to point to it.
I’m sorry if my question is confusing. I think CrystalGypsy got it though.
I was trying to keep as much of the Roon infrastructure as possible hard-wired, self-contained, and off of existing desktop computers—e.g., Roon Core on a NUC on Ethernet direct from router, with local storage on a USB SSD connected to the NUC. My overall objective in setting up ROCK on a NUC in the first place was to get my iMac completely out of the picture except as an end point. Obviously if I leave the local library that Roon accesses on the iMac, then part of the mission has failed.
2 thoughts.
Set up a background auto sync to sync the iMac and NUC SSB folders at night? The NUC would be somewhat behind in catching up to new music but, assuming one could live with that delay, will Roon “watch” that NUC SSD and notice if new music is added by sync?
What about putting the whole local library on Dropbox and letting both the iMac and Roon access it from there? Can NUC/ROCK/ROON Core do that?
Oh…And I did set iTunes to point to the NUC SSD, but, as I mentioned in my last post, none of the EXISTING file locations for music in iTunes shows that as the location. They’re all still looking at the iMac location. I could scrap the existing iTunes library on the iMac and recreate it from the NUC I guess, but then that leaves the iMac dependent on the NUC.
I’m thinking I either have to have two libraries in sync, or both iTunes and Roon (and Sonos too I guess) referencing the same data, via DB if possible.
Why do you need iTunes then if this is/was your goal. Why does it matter? If you want to keep iTunes then You can change iTunes to look at the NuC storage and keep all music on the NuC rather than have two copies. But you should be backing up music files somewhere any way as you don’t want to loose them. You can only back up Roons database to Dropbox it won’t work for music. I use Rock as my primary music location then this is synced to my NAS over night to back it up. This inturn goes to the cloud for another backup.
You can add music easily to the rocks storage using finder but adding Rock as a server. It automatically shares its storage via smb for easy access to delete or add media.
I back up stuff all over the place, 3 and 4 times. Not the issue. The issue is a household of folks—luddites really ;)—who don’t want to deal with Roon. They want iTunes, Sonos and Spotify. My curiosities are seen as Dr. Frankenstein playing with his monster in the basement.
Ok, then I would sync from Roon to iTunes then you have the music instantly and the luddites can wait. Or just map iTunes to Roons shared folder. That’s the simplest option but leaves it open for abuse by iTunes and others.
Yeah. I think that’s the best of not great choices. I was trying to avoid having to force iTunes to remap it’s entire library.
(I use Apple Match, and that POS has made a bunch of music that it supposedly matched from my own ripped CD’S un-downloadable now. It put them in the cloud for “safekeeping” and now won’t restore them to the local storage. Every time I have tried to redownload my own music, it chokes on another 20 or 30 tracks. My Match subscription is up for renewal and I want to terminate it, but not before I recover all the stuff that it’s holding on to. But that’s a whole different saga, unconnected to my Roon adventures I know.)
Oh ok, I understand now. That is how I have my set up actually except that I have my music files on my NUC SSD AND on my iMAC and the two folders sync wherever something changes in the Roon music folder only. If something changes in the iTunes music folder, nothing happens. That way, if music in the iTunes library folder gets deleted or has metadata changed, it does not affect my Roon music. Whenever I want to add new music or change anything I do it to the Roon Music folder, which then syncs to the iTunes music folder.
Hopefully I explained that so you understand what I am trying to say. There are a few programs that you can get that will do all this folder syncing and give you options to customize it. I use SyncTime, but there is also SyncFolders and some others that can be found on the App Store.
Thank you. That sounds like a good strategy. I’ve got Sync Folders but have never really trusted it on a network. I’ll give it a try with some non-essential stuff and see how that goes.
