Newbie use case recommendations (Roon Core hardware solutions & how to keep tags when importing)

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Read only the bold text below for the shorter executive summary version.

Roon Core Machine

2017 iMac (4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7; 16 GB 2400 MHz DDR4; Ventura 13.4.1 22F770820d)

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Physically I’m in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Fiber into house: initial router from Telmex (phone company) is Huawei EchoLife HG8245H

Ethernet into Asus RT-AC56R router with ExpressVPN firmware in it. (ExpVPN server set to Dallas, TX)

Ethernet to TP-Link Deco X20 Mesh WiFi network (3 of these to cover my house)

I can easily run Ethernet from my iMac (or its nearby 100M Ethernet switch) if needed, but for now it’s on the Wifi Mesh Deco network.

Connected Audio Devices

In order of use, most common first:

  1. iMac analog headphone port to Genelec loudspeakers (or to in-ear monitor DSP processor/headphone amp’s Beyerdynamic DT 770 headphones)

  2. USB to Sennheiser HDVD 800 to HD 800 headphones

  3. iMac’s ‘local file’ Apple Music library (physically on an external USB hard drive) simultaneously to both the iMac headphone jack to Genelecs and Airplay to four AirPod Minis (two as a stereo pair, two as mono).

  4. Ethernet from iMac to Linksys switch, to Denon AVR-X3500H & Ethernet to Oppo BDP-105D to M&K 5.1 loudspeakers (I don’t use these often - mostly with my JRiver Media Center, 3,000 file surround & high rez library. But I do use this set up for the critical outdoor pool movie night with neighbors and different networking setup - but that’s another use case and perhaps future post.)

5 - AirPlay from my iMac Apple Music library to combinations of my three Apple TVs (sometimes I push to them, other times I pull from them).

Number of Tracks in Library

81,000 audio tracks in Apple Music (all on external USB drive)

2,000 music videos in Apple Music

1,000 videos in Apple’s TV app for MacOS

Description of Issue

I’m not yet having a problem, so didn’t want to post this to the Support area. It was unclear where to post this. It’s a general discussion thing.

I am just starting out using Roon. Here’s my current plan, but suggestions would be very helpful to understand the path I should move toward. My goals are to:

1) Use Roon & ARC (instead of Apple Music) for playback around my house. It’s me & my wife - both heavy Apple eco system people (e.g., iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, AirPods).

[We very rarely use Apple Music’s streaming service and hope to drop it completely (for Roon). Apple Music streaming has consistently failed to deliver integrating my (heavily custom tagged) local files with its cloud content. In fact, it’s been a nightmare despite multiple serious attempts over years (lost files & tags/artwork in the thousands, every failed attempt).]

2) Continue using Apple Music on iMac to organize (import & tag) my still growing local file library. I am an audio guy, and 98% of the time it’s stereo, CD quality (or my older 256kbps VBR AAC). 1.5% of the time I’ll watch videos from my library. The other half percent is my 100 files of high resolution content - but with significant hearing loss (too many years drumming and ear hair destruction from a cochlear virus) means I can’t appreciate good audio anymore - my ears rebelled, oh well.

My new use case for Roon: I played in jazz bands for 30 years, the guitar player recently passed away, he left two thousand CDs & DVDs to his several bandmates. I’ve picked up the gauntlet and will import them all into my local Apple Music library - soon to be imported into Roon.

I want to store the music on a local server here in Mexico, have the 5 Seattle-based band members use Roon & ARC to listen to or view the files.

At first, I’ll use the iMac as my Roon Core, but I want to migrate to something that serves the files that is not my iMac. For example, I want to turn off my iMac each night (it’s hot here in Mexico and I don’t use air conditioning).

Maybe the new Roon Core is a NAS, maybe it’s a different dedicated Apple computer (mini? MacBook Pro? Air?) maybe later, I go whole hog and get a Nucleus - but since I’m mostly a stereo CD quality guy, maybe a Nucleus is overkill?

Does Roon’s tagging musicians per song or per album? There is a big difference. I’ve been reading up on the import process and will try to find recent YouTube videos from basic to advanced (if there is such a thing). I think I’ll try a “blind” Import - just let Roon do its thing. (I can always delete the Roon library and start again). Then later I can attempt something more fancy - for example, this probably isn’t possible: I wish there was a way I could: re-map which Apple Music fields (e.g., Comments & Grouping) get imported into Roon’s metadata fields. My concern is, on every song I ever imported, I have always listed all the musicians. This is per song, not per album. But maybe this is already handled by Roon?

Thanks in advance for the help!

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I still tag / edit tags using Apple Music, and also let it organise my music collection directory structure. This works fine.

I used to run my core on a Mac mini, but now run an Intel NUC in a fanless case running ROCK. If you’re willing to put this together it should give you the low maintenance benefits of a Nucleus at a lower cost.

I’ve never done anything except let the roon scan do it’s job.

If you switch to a ROCK / Nucleus and continue to use Apple Music to tag, you’ll need to copy the files onto the local drive. Many options - but I’ve been very happy with GoodSync.

I’m a sound engineer - and copy WIP projects to my ROCKs so I can listen on different systems. I’ve ended up using .wav files, and a directory structure that roon can make sense of - so I can just copy files and not need to do any tagging.

As long as ARC works for your network, than I can’t see why your other band members couldn’t listen.

Sadly ARC doesn’t currently support tags, which might otherwise have been good for classifying views on tracks.

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Thank you, Greg for the feedback. Very useful just for the sense of the possibilities.

Do you mean that you have two copies of your music files - one for Apple Music another on the NUC? This is a nice backup scheme at least.

But I already have two backups on USB drives. For now, my main USB drive is where my Apple Music files all live, and I just point Roon to this single main library.

I don’t have Music’s Playlists importing into Roon yet. Some hiccup or something I’m not doing right yet. This will be key for my Roon playback needs. I’ve started a Support thread on my trouble.

It’s been over a dozen years since I’ve loaded Linux on generic hardware. And now that I’ve done some research, the NUC choices were amazing, if very slightly overwhelming. It looks like Roon has nice intros for that world, thankfully. It’s nice to see Asus pick up the disco’d NUC line too.

These days, I’m more likely to go with a Mac Mini due to the OS familiarity (less time consuming) and I’m already in a deep Apple-centric world. Kool-Aid and all. This would also make it easier for me to manage my backups with Time Machine from the Mini. Still investigating.

I’m also concluding to stick with Apple Music for importing, tagging, etc. and use Roon only for playback, and nothing else. I’m not impressed so far with the tag details in Roon - they seem rich and pretty, but a lot of inaccuracies once you dig. Also thinking of re-subscribing to Tidal due to its nice integration with Roon.

Thanks for the ideas. Have a great day.

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I subscribe to the Qobuz level that gives you a discount buying high res downloads.

I still want to own my music, so mostly use Qobuz for auditioning new music.

It certainly enhances the roon experience to have all that extra material available.

Roon doesn’t change tags in files - just updates its local database - so if you want to keep tags up to date you have to use something other than roon anyway.

Lastly Rock uses Linux - but if you didn’t know you’d have trouble seeing it. Once installed it’s an appliance and (for good or bad) you have no access to the OS.

I depend on time machine for my main backups, so having my music master on a Mac makes sense (I have a second roon install in my studio - and so replicate there too) .

And my Rock backs up the database to a Mac shared drive, but my time machine then keeps this backed up (and I have an offsite strategy based round this too).

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