Hi - I currently have my full iTunes library in Roon under its own folder in the USB harddrive separate from my FLAC library, and I have a copy job each night that will copy over any newly added iTunes music files into that Roon iTunes library folder. I want to delete my ‘Matched’ and ‘Purchased’ iTunes music files on my Mac and re-download them in order to get higher quality versions of all my files (I have a lot of files that are less than 256kb). What is the best practice for doing this without impacting my Roon library too much? As soon as I delete the ‘Purchased’ and ‘Matched’ files on my Mac and overlay them with newer versions, the copy job will replace the files in my Roon library over the course of a few nights (it will take awhile to download them all from iCloud to the Mac). Is there something in particular I should do with my Roon library to handle this the best way? For example, I was wondering if maybe I need to “remove” my iTunes library completely from Roon and have it do a scan to remove the files, and then re-copy over a fresh version of iTunes once all the replacement files have finished downloading to my Mac? Is this overkill and not recommended? I guess I’m worried how Roon would react if I just re-download the “removed” iTunes files and let the copy job do its thing over several nights (ideally this would then not impact my playlists, etc. if this would even work well). Looking for the cleanest way to handle this. I appreciate any advice! Thanks!
Are the files the same format just a different resolution?
I would say it’s a mixture of different formats as my files are sourced from not only iTunes, but from Google Play, Amazon Music, and other internet purchased downloads (usually in mp3 format). It seems like downloading the ‘Matched’ songs are all in .m4a format (from what I can tell) which is Apple’s format but with higher resolution.
Normally when you are moving your library, you want to to prevent Roon “seeing” or thinking it is seeing a new copy of the music. That way you maintain your edits, play counts, playlist links, etc
Roon also discusses it here: https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/faq-how-do-i-move-my-collection-to-a-new-folder-hard-drive-or-nas-will-i-lose-my-edits#Preparation
However, you are not talking about just moving the music. You are also changing the files. I just spent time testing. I took an album not in my library in FLAC. I converted it to MP3. I made a brand new storage location in RoonServer. I copied the MP3 version only to it. RoonServer imported it.
I then played several tracks to up the tracks played count. I made an edit to the Version information and release date. And, I put one track on a playlist. All good so far.
I then, disabled the storage location, replaced the MP3 version with the FLAC version, and enabled the storage location. It imported the album all over again since it was a different format and treated it as new. The track counter did not copy over, the edits/tags did not copy over, and the playlist pointed to the now missing mp3 version.
So, I would wait til Monday for official support to chime in. @support They may know a way to switch formats without losing all previous information. But, as far as I can tell, Roon will treat the new format as a new version, leaving all playlist links, play counts, and edits on the older version.
Thank you for the feedback and testing, @Rugby After thinking about this some more, I think I’m just going to remove my iTunes copy altogether from Roon and have it re-scan to remove all those tracks (and iTunes playlists). Once that is done, I plan to do the following to get a clean version of all my matched/purchased iTunes tracks back into Roon:
- ‘Remove Download’ on all iTunes tracks on my mac that are either ‘Matched’ or ‘Purchased’, and then re-download them (format will then be .m4a files)
- Only copy over the iTunes/iTunes Media/Music folder itself into the Roon storage location (I will not bring over the xml file which has playlists, etc. - hopefully this is okay and not needed in Roon)
- Roon will then re-scan my ROONMEDIA folder with the newly added iTunes tracks folder
As a sidenote, I do only use one folder called ‘ROONMEDIA’ in the Roon storage location that contains all my various folders of music (FLAC, iTunes, OTHER, HI-RES, LO-RES). Hopefully this is okay to do and doesn’t really impact anything in Roon (specifically with how iTunes does its own folder organization of music files). If I could start over I would probably add each sub-folder as it’s own storage location folder in Roon to assist with ‘Focus’ better if I want to browse by folder, but not sure how switching it would impact my Roon db info (other than iTunes which I plan to do as outlined above).
Glad to have been of help. Sounds like you have a plan. 
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