I’m still on a trial, and I’m mostly very happy with the software, but looking at options to store music in additional libraries on different machines. For instance my current Roon Server with a USB Schiit DAC connected works fine - but the storage is full. I’ve ordered another HDD, but would love to be able to have a small silent system sitting next to the stereo, with an additional library of music on a server somewhere else in the house. This is something Plex does well, just not sure if a Roon Bridge can have a library attached to it, or if you can have more than one Roon Server on the same network.
You can with multiple licenses. A Roon Core only runs one database. The actual music files can sit in different locations however. You can point the core to a local hard drive, as well as a NAS, and a share on a different PC.
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Ah, I see under the storage tab. I’m all Linux in this house, no Windows machines or proprietary NAS boxes, was hoping for something that didn’t require Samba to be installed. Not the end of the world I guess.
Ideally, the core, which is meant to be a server, isn’t used as an audio device, although you can, and is located in a room separate from any of your listening rooms (that’s what Roon recommends anyway). In your case you would deploy audio devices/bridges (not more cores) to any other locations where you wish to use Roon. Once you settle on Roon-compatible audio devices you could even move your Core out of any listening rooms and just use it as a server going forward.
You are right, that would be ideal. Stick a box with a bunch of HDDs in a closet somewhere, and just use a compact fanless machine as a bridge with a DAC. Currently I’m just making due with existing hardware I have.
And you can continue to do that. My point is you don’t add more cores because you want to listen in another location or because you need more local storage. You add bridges where you want to listen and, as others have mentioned above, hard drives to your core or NAS devices on your network when you want to expand local music storage. As far as bridges go it doesn’t get any more compact and fanless than an iFi Zen Stream or RPi. There are also Roon ready DACs out there.
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In addition, for little expense and some DIY, a RaspberryPI and Ropieee makes a simple endpoint for any USB DACs you may have. In fact you can get additional ‘Hats’ for the RasberryPI to add SPDIF etc, for example HiFiBerry.
Work well for me, Linux core and a few Ropiee end points around the house.
For several years I’ve used a RPi-Pi2AES-Ropieee-based Roon endpoint (https://www.pi2design.com/) to drive my Schiit Yggdrasil DAC. A separate Roon server with sufficient music storage, running Ubuntu Server, sits elsewhere on the home LAN and serves multiple endpoints around the house.