can I have an exact copy of my SSD drive that is conected to my server by thunderbolt out of a modfied MacMini. I want to put a clone of my thunderbolt SSD on another computer in the roon network using a USB3 SSD. Can I have two dirves and can I switch between them?
Hi Richard,
There is nothing to stop you doing as you describe. Roon will, by default, hide duplicates unless configured otherwise in settings. If everything works properly you will see two versions of the same albums under “Other Versions”; one for each storage location. You can “unhide” duplicates, either generally or for particular albums.
You could, in theory, switch between the drives by making them separate watched folders and toggling each on and off. But 'm not understanding why you would want to do this ? It sounds like an overly complex arrangement that could see you experience unintended consequences with analysing and scanning, particularly if the libraries drift apart from editing etc.
If you wanted to backup your music files (always a good idea) then there is no need to make the backup a watched folder.
Are both drives on machines that go on and off the network ? It didn’t sound like your thunderbolt connected MacMini was a mobile solution.
If you can describe what you are trying to achieve here there may be a simpler solution.
Andrew, thanks great answer, so it is possible. I just want to see/hear what makes a difference in my system. All the major “decoders” sound about alike (Roon, Amarra, Pure Music, and Audirvana Plus).whic would sound better an attached music SSD or a network “attached” music SSD. My guess is the local will sound better? who knows.
OK. Sound Quality (SQ) is close to all our hearts so I can see why you would be interested in that.
This KB page deals with SQ improvements within Roon and you can see that the major architectural recommendation is to use a “thin client” network renderer to your DAC rather than connect your Core to the DAC. I can say from personal experience (I’ve used an Aries, Raspberry Pi, Cubox, BeagleBone Black and a microRendu) that this is sound advice. All of those devices resulted in better SQ than connecting my computer directly to the DAC by USB.
If you use that network renderer architecture then I would be very confident that there would be no SQ advantage to a network SSD or a local (on the Core) SSD for music file storage.
Where you are directly connecting to the Core I would be surprised to find extensive SQ differences between network or local SSD storage but I can imagine that it might occur. I would think, however, that network storage could be better as it would minimise processing in the Core, which seems desirable when directly connecting.
So rather than experiment with multiple storages, I would encourage you to experiment with a network renderer. Although it is not impossible, the first is frankly a path that I would expect to result in problems, while the second is a well trodden route to improved SQ.