Someone who knows better than I can answer, but I think you need to do two things. First, make sure all of your local music files in your watched location on the first computer are also in the watched location on the second computer. Next, you will need to do a Roon backup of the first computer to a USB drive, or similar, then restore that backup to the second computer.
Thx. That all makes sense. The question is whether I need to change something else so that Roon doesn’t get confused regarding the state of the library after the clone. So for example if I make a change to my library in one location, should the library in the other location be marked for an update?
Are you using one license? If so, you will only have one core active at a time. So, I don’t see how Roon could get confused. However, keeping two cores in-sync will be a totally manual task. If you’re talking about using two licenses, I have no idea how that works.
You can follow the Migration guide to setup a second core as copy of your existing one. There is no integrated synchronization in Roon – both Roon Cores will run independent of each other after setup. A new playlist created on your old core after the setup of the new core won’t automatically show up on the new core – you have to manually recreate the playlist on the new core as well or restore a new backup of the old core on the new one.
For local music if you can point both cores to the same library added tracks/albums will show up on both cores. If both cores have their own local library this is fine, because the two cores are independent, but if you want to have the same music available on both cores then it’s up to you to find a solution to keep the libraries of both cores in sync.
For TIDAL/Qobuz, if both cores are connected to the same respective service accounts they should also sync the same content to Roon.
It works exactly the same as with one license only.
PS: If the environment of the two cores is very different (endpoints; zones), keeping them in sync by restoring backups might be a PIA because one has to (re)configure the audio setup/zones and/or library location every time afterwards – but so is the manual recreation of changed/added content (playlists, edits, …) if you don’t restore backups to sync.
PPS: You can’t restore a backup to a to a machine running under a different Roon account because Roon databases are account bound.
Thanks for clarifying. Generally you don’t want two of the same databases running on the same network, but since these are in two different locations there are no additional considerations.
If you are moving Roon from one Core to another on the same network, and you are still going to be using the other device as a remote, we recommend wiping the database on the old Core. By same database, we mean restoring a backup and not just “starting fresh” on the new Core.
The thing with the accounts is a prerequisite that has to be met for that it (copy a core following the migration guide) works – otherwise it doesn’t work at all.
You were talking about keeping two cores in sync so I assume that one was able to create a copy of a core at some point in time (the prerequisite was met).
OK, I’m confused. If a person has two licenses in his/her name and credit card, etc. Can he/she backup and restore the Roon core from one license to the other license? If so, then it’s a non-issue.
Yes you can restore to another core under this condition. The amount of licenses per account controls how many cores can be active at the same time (for the same account). Licenses are not bound to a given running core, the Roon account is.
In other words, an individual Roon account can have multiple licenses. Each license can have multiple cores, but only one core per license can be active at a given time. You can backup and restore across cores within a license or across cores in multiple licenses within an account.