Different approaches to backing up your music collection

Roon Software Discussion
21

I got a deal on cloud storage for 1 year so I have set it up as additional backup - HDD will be installed this weekend - so now I have local SSD, local HDD and remote cloud - that should cover it I hope.

2 Likes
22

Complete setup:

  1. 3 Roon servers with SSDs, on different locations, mirrored via Syncthing
  2. Synology NAS with HDDs as aa write-only replica via Syncthing on one location
  3. iDrive cloud backup
23

Thanks to you and @Stan_Jones for the information.
I have just been reading about iBroadcast and it looks like a really good potential solution.

24

Glad to pay it forward. A nice touch (among many) is that it auto-scrobbles: thatā€™d be up your street, no? :slightly_smiling_face:

It can be one of a number of playback options: great to have on hand if and when Iā€™ve hit the streamers too hard.

1 Like
25

Thanks thatā€™s nice to know, I treat last.fm as my single source of truth
Looking forward to testing this out and uploading my music

26

So my library is on a Nucleus and I copy it to my Aurender A30 with CCC on a Mac every evening.

Both of these locations get backed up to 2 different Synlogy NASā€™s every night using Active Backup running on the Synology.

I just started with Hetzner and the backups on on of those Synology NASā€™s gets backed up with Hyper Backup running on the Synology to Hetzner during the day.

I think thatā€™s pretty solid.

I do something similar with my photos and documents, they all end up in Hetzner as well.
I got me a 5TB plan for 13,19ā‚¬ max per month, depends on how much you upload during the month I guess, Iā€™ll see when I get my first bill.
Via Hyper Backup I can backup incremental and with block-level (only the parts of files that changed).
I really like the solution.

27

Just in case, and certainly for all us last.fm nerds, note that iBroadcast can miss scrobbling a sequence of tracks *** edit maybe due to the external factor of adjusting for daylight savings** so if you can keep a copy of your listening habits / playlist/s they may well end up needed. But most of the time itā€™s great to remove that scrobbling anxiety (if youā€™re like me) and let the music take over.

That is keen when it can take on documents and other media : I know that Dropbox is more expensive.

1 Like
28

My setup:

  • Primary storage on NAS with RAID6 for availability
  • Local incremental backup to second NAS
  • Off-site backup to IDrive e2

I found IDrive e2 to be an affordable S3 compatible online storage option. Although their pricing has been going up and down, they are still (slightly) cheaper than Backblaze. They also have free egress up to 3x your storage, which means it wonā€™t cost you an arm and a leg if you ever need to restore your backup. I just noticed Backblaze is now also offering that same level of free egress, but they werenā€™t at the time I signed up for IDrive e2.

29

I signed up for BackBlaze for a different project this week.
Synology backup for some friends company, pricing seems to be more complicated than it used to be. I have not yet put up any database slightly nervous of monthly costs

30

Also useful to know this as well thank you.

It will be more to have my 2TB+ of music stored somewhere else as well.
I donā€™t really expect to playback from it much, as I currently use Symfonium on Android to play the music from my Plex Server and have about 250GB of music offlined for enjoying when away from home. Compared to ARC it is so reliable and a pleasure to use.

31

Iā€™ve found Plexamp does some things well, like autoscrobble, but unless I can find a way to easily add some playlists Iā€™m left with their themed radios, which arenā€™t quite to my taste (too many repeats). Plex is great for video, and Plexamp has that lovely fade in with audio (which as it happens streaming off iBroadcast replicates).

Maybe Symfonium is another step up, but not sure if they have an iOS equivalent?

Oh, and a Plex pass is keener in price! But itā€™s off local storage.

32

I am pretty much an old school album listener.
Rarely touch playlists or PlexAmpā€™s wonderful sonic match mixing.

Symfonium is Android only so good that for now it is pretty much the only thing I use outside the house. It doesnā€™t support Tidal or Qobuz or anything else, but I have 75k of songs to choose from so I should be ok. Supports lots of ways to get to your music and works nicely with Android Auto.

I started with Plex for Video and still maintain that on a now aging Synology server, but it still works well.
But I will start the upload process with iBroadcast today and maybe try it out when I travel later this week

33

I really do think itā€™s a keeper, but for me adding my shuffley playlists easily is the key benefit.

But a shout to those that still appreciate the album. Off topic, but I was burnt by artists of that certain era that padded the album with their less stellar tracks. But that was in the past: onwards!

1 Like
34

Does it play lossless? I looked at their site and could not find any information on this. I use USB Audio Player PRO for offline listening because it does with the right settings (rather than resampling to 48k as is the Android default). Also, one thing I read on the Symfonium FAQ bothered me: it dials home once a month, what if you are offline when that happens? USB Audio Player PRO caught me with a similar restriction (although itā€™s just one call rather than a monthly) when I tried to listen on a flight the day after I got it. Grrrrā€¦

35

I havenā€™t tried it lossless for several months but I seem to remember that it did losses through my FIIO kKA3 DAC. These days I have decided to convert my mobile music down to 320K and store more than 10,000 tracks on my phone.
I will see if I can try it and download some native files and verify tomorrow.

I have been using it since February or March and I have never had an issue with it going offline or calling home or any issues caused by this

36

My current music library backup is primitive but wonā€™t be much longer.

Iā€™m doing manual backups to an external drive (every two weeks) and storing the drive at the office.

37

Itā€™s been scrobbling fine since, and I wonder that Melbs moving into summer time that morning messed up last.fm? Itā€™s done that in the past for that morning.

Not a biggie, but I better put it out there lest somebody cared.

38

I have a Symphonium licence, it can access music directly from Google Drive giving me even greater redundancy when listening to music when on holiday.

I wondered though, you mentioned you use it for accessing your Plex server, what improvement is there above the Plexamp app Iā€™m not seeing? Symphonium canā€™t access the Plex server off your local network unless you open a port for it.

1 Like
39

I have opened a port for it (as well as for Plex as well as having Tailscale), and I really like it for browsing and playback of music, much more so than PlexAmp (I canā€™t really tell you why).
It also supports the ability to playback to UPNP devices, Chromecast etc. I keep both Symfonium and PlexAmp on my phone and use both regularly.

It does support a lot of ways of getting to your music which is great.

2 Likes
40

Update: Installed Symfonium on my Pixel 8 Pro, chose the experimental high-res playback option in Settings, and there we go, playing full res to my Focal Bathys headphones (via USB DAC connection). First impression of the interface is very clean, easy to navigate, way nicer than USB Audio Player PRO or Roon ARC. Thank you for the recommendation, Iā€™ll also try it from my home servers over Tailscale.

2 Likes