Do I need to set up a new Roon core at my second home?

I installed Roon a few weeks ago at my home. I’m now at another location and want to use Roon on my system here. Do I need to set up an alternate Roon Core?

Yes, unless you have it on a laptop or some other device you bring with you. If you do install on another core device, you can only run Roon at one location at a time with only one license. When you activate your second core device, you will deactivate the previous core device.

There is also the issue of your music files and keeping two cores in sync, if that is important to you. Roon does not sync across multiple core devices. You have to do a backup of one device and a restore to another device to sync them. You would need a separate copy of your music files on a USB drive, etc.

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Thank you for the reply

So, it will be necessary to reactivate the original core once I go home? And each time I move back and forth, activate and deactivate.

Yes. Only one core can be active per license. So you have to switch between the cores as you change locations.

There are a bunch of threads here on different strategies people have.

Personally, I have a ROCK (w external USB-connected SSD for local library) at my primary home. I have a near identical one at my country house / cabin. I bring the cabin SSD back with me once every few months and duplicate it from my primary SSD. Initially I set up the secondary one by restoring from a backup of my primary, but now I just let it drift. New items are picked up as they get added as Tidal favorites or as they eventually get added to the SSD. If my cabin is a little out of date I don’t really care too much. Others have much more sophisticated processes.

Since your Roon library is defined on the Core machine, the real hassle is if you want to keep your libraries in sync. This would require a Backup/Restore each time you switched Cores to pick up any interim changes to tags, playlists, etc.

Would a VPN and proper network configuration be too difficult to setup?

Dunno, is it?

It’s been done. Depending on your networking gear it’s more or less doable. I run one occasionally for my coworking space, but I wouldn’t do it for my second home. Too hinky / laggy. Maybe they will build it in someday, but for now the secondary core is far more “elegant” (read: stable, fast), and I don’t care about libraries being out of sync and only catching up every 3-6 months; to be fair, 90%+ of what I add is from Tidal these days, and so they get added to both libraries automagically since they are Tidal favorites.

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