I bit the bullet early-on and bought two lifetime licenses. I keep my local libraries on a Synology DiskStation in each house, and use their software for 2-way file sync. New music mostly gets added from Qobuz, so it appears on both sides automatically.
The downside is that play history, playlists, tags, etc. diverge. I just live with it, though I periodically spend time rationalizing the libraries from each system separately (merging albums versions, updating playlists and favorites, etc).
I occasionally flirt with a new strategy to get full synchronization (variants on those listed in the first post here), but my eyes glaze over when I think through all the ramifications.
Two homes, time split pretty evenly between the two. Air travel is the primary mode between the two. 1 MacBook Pro M1 14in. , 1 subscription. The minimalist / simplistic solution for me.
Problem? No problem
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
23
We have two houses, one “home” and then the weekend/holiday lake house type of thing. I have two separate cores, similarly built and configured, albeit I converted the home core to Linux because I run a lot more devices off the home core and when it was on Windows it just would not remain stable.
What I do is periodically back up the home core to a USB drive and then restore the backup on the core at the lake house. This means that in-between restores, the lake house doesn’t have the latest and greatest in terms of tags or playlists but it catches up eventually. It also means that I cannot set tags or create playlists or otherwise edit metadata at the lake house, so I just live with that. Also then the play history at the lake house is over-written periodically, so whatever I listen to at the lake “doesn’t count” in the long run.
The process works fine albeit imperfect and I live with it. The major pain is that you either have to have identical endpoint and storage location configuration at both locations or you have to set it up again at every restore.
I can see why Roon would want to include storage and endpoint configurations as part of a backup, but I also think it would be quite useful if Roon allowed either that as a full backup, or only the library backup, so that restoring a library backup would not over-write the endpoint and storage configurations. This would save a little work and help with trying to remember storage configurations at the lake house.
I have roon cores in my home and my recording studio, which are about 10 mins walk apart. I have two lifetime subscriptions.
I have a lot of local content (including mixes I’m working on), which I sync between the cores using Goodsync.
Qobuz takes care of syncing newly added streamed tracks between the cores.
I don’t use playlists or tags much.
A couple of times a year I restore the home backup (which I consider the master) to the studio - and fix the endpoint / settings chaos that causes to get the edits I’ve made to album grouping etc.
I can run a vpn between the sites, which I tried and worked, but wasn’t as reliable as having a second local roon core.
James_I
(The truth is out there but not necessarily here)
27
No, I haven’t tried it because reconfiguring everything on the home end — endpoints and storage — would be a hassle. Plus the backup and restore functions take a while.
So there’s the folks who choose #1 - physically bring the core with you. Amongst those who don’t do that, I’m hearing a fair bit of effort devoted to keeping music in sync passively, and some efforts to keep data unidirectionally in sync on occasion, but no one yet really trying to keep it frequently/automatically in sync or to do bidirectional sync.
Would love to hear from anyone else who is keeping real Roon cores rolling through multiple homes. And the legendary site-to-site VPN which has been much discussed but not seen in the wild. I’ve heard from Roon that this is a real use case, but that it’s not super wide-spread. Did anyone get it working? paging @Jarle_L@bymatty@Barista@Gerrit_Scherpenzeel@Nepherte
Sorry, no multiple homes (actually yes, but I only stay in one, so it probably doesn’t count ). Therefore not really invested in experimenting with solutions myself.
The most safe / reliable way it seems would be to have 2 physical cores and to do a manual backup between them when you leave ‘home A’ (or schedule one if you know more or less when you’re leaving it), preferably to a location in the cloud or any place that is accessible to both homes, and then manually restore that backup in ‘home B’. Repeat this process when going back from ‘home B’ to ‘home A’.
Unfortunately, the above is also the most annoying solution. So I’d probably pursue the site-to-site VPN as well. I’m convinced it can theoretically work. You get the buttload of pain that comes with it, for free as well (or if you’re like me, a buttload of fun). I suppose this would only require 1 core.
More error-prone but perhaps doable as well, could be to do do some sort of automated file sync between 2 cores, in the hope that you’ll end up with identical databases, while making sure you exclude files that should be unique to each core (like a machine id). The tricky part would be to make sure that the Roon Server is stopped on both machines. Automating that would be a pain as well (or fun…)
I had been carrying my small, fanless core server between the two main locations I stay at, but now I also spend some time at a more remote location, and it’s just too much of a hassle to keep carrying that little box, and I also wanted to enable others in my family and family friends to use Roon independently of me at different locations. As I was already using Syncthing to sync my local music files among multiple servers for backup purposes, it’s pretty straightforward to keep the music in sync across locales. As for Roon metadata, I’d prefer to have it in sync too, but it’s not such a critical need for me as I tend to play whole albums from local files or Qobuz.
Over 24 hours down this rabbit hole, and I’ve found the mDNS Tunneller as a possible solution. I’m posting this in case anyone wants to play with it before I have a chance.
Two homes and an office. All separate cores/subscriptions. Main home library sorted and organized/backed up - used as library and database for other two. Numerous end points on each of three cores.
Works for me.
I’m a student so I travel home a few times a year during the holidays. I have a single Roon core running on my NAS which is placed in my rented apartment, I’ve also got Zerotier running on it so I simply just connect to it through Zerotier from my Mac. It was really easy and quick to setup.
I have 2 homes and have tried different things. The game changer for me was buying a NUC with a 500gb ssd in it for my local library, installing ROCK, and simply bringing it between homes. It’s so tiny …… and is the best Roon core I’ve ever used. I’ve done an old 2010 macbook pro, an aus windows i7 laptop circa 2017, a i3 linux tower and more. Shoulda bought a NUC ages ago. And I only got th i3.
The one thing I got going for me is when I am in one location, Roon is not needed at the other location, That’s an important piece to the multiple location thing.
If you decide to try this be aware of the command under “Join your network” in the guide. It consists of a network ID, but you have to use your own ID which you get when creating a new network as demonstrated in the video. I don’t know why they didn’t make this clear in the documentation.
I have done number 2 for a few years. I used to have enought problems getting Roon to let go and find the new core. The recent versions of Roon have been much quicker and better at switching cores so that I too have been wondering what I could do to sync my cores. I will look for your summary on what to do. Thanks.
Well, I’m still hoping @JS_Gladstone or someone manages to get #5 (peer to peer VPN, single core) working so that it’s not the Mr. Snuffleupagus of Roon multi-home solutions (oft heard of, never seen). I’m happy to write up an interim, but it’s far more tame than I thought it’d be. I’m not surprised at the number of people who are doing “Full core sneakernet” (carrying the core with them), but I’m surprised that that seems to thus far outnumber even #2 (multiple cores). I know this isn’t representative, but it’s the best we got.
If anyone out there knows someone who has run #3, #4, or #5 (or the unknown #6), please see if you can get him/her to post on this thread…. I’m going to keep running at this white whale / windmill, but I’d be kind of surprised if I’m the first.
). Therefore not really invested in experimenting with solutions myself.