Following the havoc Roon created a few weeks ago in my music collection by deleting or replacing a few hundreds of my album covers ( Hundreds of covers lost? - #14 by rebeka ) I patiently rebuilt the whole thing, which took me several days or work.
I used that oportunity to streamline artists, genres, tags and other metadata in my collection. Particularly the artists organisation was previously a complete mess. As a result, the Roon data base is well structured now. However, the underlying file system still shows the old chaos because, as we all know, Roon does not change the underlying files when its database is modified.
As a last step, I created a backup of the Roon database, made a full export of my music files, and stored it all in a safe place.
Now I would like to re-import the newly exported files into Roon.
Why would I want to do this? There are two reasons:
Having my files & directory structure closer to the Roon database could come handy in case of issues with the Roon database
If one day Roon were no longer avaialable for any reason, I would have my music organisation embedded in my files & directories.
My question: Is there a “safe” way to go about this? I mean, would my existing Roon database recognise the exported files in their new locations and apply the existing metadata? Or would it rather try to “re-identify” them, an action that would ruin my previous work on the Roon database?
I am using a Nucleus + with an internal SSD storage
Would deleting all the files currently in the Nucleus + storage while keeping the Roon database, and then copying in that storage the “exported” files do the trick?
Thanks for your help
Have you made any edits to this content in Roon?
Yes
Is this content from local files, TIDAL, or Qobuz?
Thank you for getting in touch with your question and for the thorough explanation of what you’re hoping to do. I apologize for the delay in getting back to you and that you experienced some issues with your database recently.
When you export your collection from Roon certain metadata elements that were applied in Roon will be carried over with the file upon export, such as the album title, the album artwork, and other basic text strings that can be embedded in the file. Some of those elements could be somewhat different after export. An album title or artist information would be the same, but artwork image sizes could potentially be different. For instance instead of 1200x1200 pixel size artwork, they could be 800x800.
However, other rich metadata add-ons are not exported with the files, such as the artist bios you see in Roon, or the links that carry you to an Artist or Composer page and a full display of their discography. Those, as well as many other features, are layers that are added in Roon, not exported. Those would be re-applied after your library is re-imported.
Roon will identify your library if you reimport it. This is part of the process and cannot be overcome. In theory you should be in pretty good shape given that Roon metadata has been applied to your library.
One very important thing to consider; however, is that the Roon Metadata Database isn’t a static entity. It is updated frequently and is in a state of constant change. There is a very real possibility that some albums you exported will have slightly different metadata in our index. This would result in some changes to the metadata you exported upon re-identification when you re-import your library. These changes could be overcome by the settings you apply in Settings>Library>Import Settings.
That is something you would need to weigh as a possibility and be comfortable with if you decide to carry through with re-importing your exported collection.
If you have more questions about this process please feel free to send them my way.