While I do agree with having an external staging directory I don’t completely agree that this is a complete best practice solution. If you do it this way you don’t have immediate access to the music you’ve purchased until you sync your staging directory with the nucleus.
What I do, like you, have a staging directory on my Mac which is my music master and where I do any meta data editing. This directory is automatically synced daily to my ssd in my nucleus via Chronosync.
But I also setup a watched folder from Roon pointing to a different directory in my Mac where purchased music is automatically downloaded. This will insure that music purchased is immediately available in Roon.
Then when I get around to it I move this music from the purchased music directory to my staging folder and do any meta data editing if needed. Then when the next Chronosync cycle kicks in, the version of the new music synced from the purchased music directory will be replaced by your final version of the music in the staging directory.
I think the best approach of me is to continue doing what I have been doing; buying the CD, plugging my disc drive into the Nucleus and downloading it that way.
The answer is no, your PC however will almost certainly have some Anti Virus running . Loading files to the PC will check for viruses , direct to the Nucleus won’t so is potentially risky
Hence a “staging” drive while extra work is a bit of insurance
Once the network share is set up you can point your download software to the shared drive in the Nucleus or you can download it to a PC and then copy it to the drive in the Nucleus by accessing the network share. This process is similar with ripping CDs. Simply rip directly to the Nucleus over the network share or rip to your PC then copy to the Nucleus. I rip directly to my Nucleus and have never had a problem. I download to my PC then copy to the Nucleus because it’s easier for me that way.
Personally, I trust the download stores in 2021 protecting their systems from injecting a virus, trojan, etc. into the music downloads but… It’s better to be safe and just assume no one is really paying attention and those systems will be compromised.
