Cannot get Roon to work as a Roon core with Innuos

Even the Roon Tags? Where are they stored, also in Tidal? I added a few dozen or so Albums from Tidal to my tags in Roon and it has remembered those from the restore. Pretty sure that’s not info stored in Tidal.

At what point would I do this?

I’m trying the restore again, from the Login screen without logging in.

Does anyone know how to tell Roon where the music library is, even though it’s on the same device as the Core (the Innuos Zen Mini)? Or should I not need to do this?

Roon’s Settings==>Storage is the way to tell Roon where the music is.

What does that look like?

What does “myinnuos.com/music library” look like?

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After restoring the backup is seems to go ahead and import the library as a new library without associated playlists, favourites, tags, play counts, ratings etc… Surely this isn’t working properly?

No, certainly not.

I don’t have an Innuos device, so I’m shooting in the dark.

I think the reason none of your tags, favorites, ratings, etc. are restored is because Roon can’t find the associated music files.

You have a Music Folder with only 5134 tracks. Does that count seem right to you?

What is in the storage that is Disabled?

Also, what do you get when you click on “myinnuos.com/music library”?

Does Innuos have an app that will show you the contents of it’s local folder?

If so, what does that show?

So, When you had the Roon Core on a different PC you had to setup a share to the zen for that PC to access the music.

However, the zen itself sees the music as an internal folder NOT via the same share that the other PC had to use to access the music. In the screen cut above, you see that the Zen is now seeing the music on itself in the Music Folder.

Now, if you notice below, you see listed the “zenmini > Music” storage location, that is the share that Roon used on your old PC. And that is the location that the music files meta-data is tied to.

Notice that under the listing it is saying the drive is not available and then followed by an “edit this folder”. You need to edit the old share to point to the internal music storage.

So, first DISABLE the current Music Folder. THEN, click the “edit this folder” and choose the new internal location of the music on the zen. After a quick scan, everything be back to square.

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Thanks @Rugby
That’s what I tried to do. Glad I was on the right lines. However, (and apart from the Roon iPhone app crashing after 20 seconds every time I navigate Settings > Storage) there is no way to navigate to the Music folder in the Zen Mini when editing the folder location using the Roon file location browser (which is extremely unhelpful as usual). Roon is happy navigating Windows network shares, but I have no idea how to navigate to the folder on the Zen Mini.

No. That’s disabled when you set it to act as a Roon Core.

Nothing to speak of. Just random hi-res stuff I was experimenting with. It’s almost empty, which is why I disabled it.

@Rugby you are a genius! Thank you!

This worked perfectly. I just needed to use the IP address followed by \music

I think this is finally resolved. I wish these instructions existed somewhere for those of us who don’t fully understand network shares or simple things like the Innuous Zen Mini Music library location being its IP address followed by \music.

I will write up a summary once I know this is definitely working for sure. I can’t quite believe it yet.

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Congratulations. That was quite a journey you just took. Glad you finally arrived at your destination.

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Glad you got there in the end. The migration stuff is all documented pretty well in the knowledge base including editing and adding network shares. They can’t however account for all the intricacies of every server architecture and how they work to share their library area with Roon. They do need to make the knowledge base easy to access from with in Roon itself though.

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In Summary.

  1. On a Windows 10 PC, don’t backup the Roon Database to a folder synchronised to the OneDrive Cloud service, the OneDrive Metadata screws with the backup files.
  2. Enable SMB 1.0 in Windows 10 if the Innuos Roon Core cannot see the Windows folder where the Roon DB backup resides. Instructions for this are on Microsoft’s website where it also says “SMB1 is uninstalled by default in latest Windows 10 and Windows Server configurations.” NB. this is probably because SMB1 is insecure and was replaced by SMB2.
  3. Apparently you can use a USB backup to restore to the Innuos Zen, but I couldn’t get this to work. Restoring directly from the PC using a network share works fine, so long as you don’t make the mistake in point 1.
  4. Restore the backup to the Zen Mini Roon Core without logging in first - click the restore backup link on the login page
  5. If your music library resides on the Innuos device (most likely), the Innuos Roon Core may import it as a new library, ignoring the restored Roon DB playlists, favourites, tags, play counts, ratings etc. Disable the “new” music library folder added automatically by Roon and click “Edit” on the old network share restored from the Windows 10 core backup and point it manually at the Music Library using the Innuos Zen Mini IP address followed by \music EG. type in: \\192.168.x.xx\music to the Roon network share dialogue.
  6. Finally, do not believe any Roon user who tells you the Innous systems do not have enough power to run a Roon Core. This is utter nonsense for every-day use. However, this is a well documented issue if you use Roon for heavy DSP processing or multi-room DSP processing. For that you need a dedicated PC/Mac/Roon Nucleus. Also, for a pain free Roon experience, get a dedicated server like an Intel NUC/Mac Mini or Roon Nucleus.

If none of this makes sense send a message to @Rugby because he is a genius. All his posts here are worth reviewing. In particular…

I would never have bothered with all this angst, time wasting and messing around if Roon wasn’t such an amazing service/system. I can’t wait to get back to it now because I absolutely love using it and cannot extol all it’s virtues enough.

However, running the risk of hate mail here, Roon needs to sort out the setup process, it’s a mess. It wasn’t easy on my Windows 10 PC in the first place, then moving the Core Backup to my Innuos system was even worse. Roon assume too much user networking knowledge and the knowledge base is lacking for everyday users and inaccessible/not in context (error messages are unhelpful). I have plenty of friends who would love Roon, but I hesitate recommending it to any of them because they wouldn’t have the patience or want to purchase a dedicated server without trying Roon first.

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Personally, I believe Roon backup’s should be scheduled on a regular basis to an attached USB HDD. That seems to work well and is readily available to be moved to any device where you may want or need to do a restore.

@Jim_F However, that didn’t work for me. The Innuos Roon core could not see it at all. It could see the USB drive before the backup was either copied to it from the Windows machine, or backed up directly onto it from the Windows machine. But afterwards, the USB drive just would not show up on the Innuos. No idea why.

Edit: You make a good point though. I have no idea where I am going to backup the DB to now. I’m ditching my old Windows machine. I will have to use a USB stick. I would think as the backup will be made from the Innuos Roon Core, it will be readable by it.

I’m sure it was just a matter of getting the correct file path typed in. At least, that’s my guess.

I’ve only used my Nucleus backup once to restore Roon to my Dell XPS 15 just for synchronization purposes. I don’t remember the path, but it was not an issue IIFC.

You may well be right. I have no idea what that path would be though.

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