Music storage folder location - Core vs NAS?

Hi
I have my core running on an intel laptop, pointing to a music folder on my Synology NAS as the monitored storage location.
I had assumed that the Roon Core indexes the music folder on the NAS and streams from the NAS without replicating the music files on to the core. However I recently discovered by accident that I was able to stream my own music via Arc (I have no music subscription services) while my NAS was offline. Does this mean the files are cached or replicated on the core? Is there a setting for this somewhere that I have missed?
cheers, Rog

Not that is known.

To be clear, all music in Roon is played through the Core. When you play a song, the file is sent from the NAS to the Core, processed into PCM or DSD and then sent from the Core to the Endpoint.

If the Core is on a PC, the Music folder on that PC will automatically be enabled by default. So, if there is music available there, then you might have been playing music from that location.

Welcome to the community.

How long were you able to play music on ARC while your NAS was offline?

ARC does offer the possibility to download music to the device. Perhaps you have (accidentally) downloaded some tracks on ARC that were then playing?

Other than that I do know that the core ā€œpre-loadsā€ tracks for playback. Meaning that it starts to load the next track in the queue while the current one is still playing. This is shown in the Roon Server logs.
I donā€™t know if ARC does this, but considering that it is intended for mobile use, I would imagine that there is even a bigger need to do so. So without downloaded music my guess is that you would be able to play music for a brief period.

After further investigation I found that while I thought my NAS was ā€˜offlineā€™, it was in fact still running but ā€˜invisibleā€™ on the network as it had failed to acquire an IP address after a router reboot. Yet evidently somehow the Roon core was still able to access it. I did confirm that when the NAS is shut down, the streaming stops abruptly.
Not a problem, just a curiosity :slight_smile:
Thanks all for your suggestions.
Cheers, Rog

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