I’m using Roon in conjunction with Tidal and Qobuz. For both services I wonder where the media files of the favourites are stored. According to the documentation all as fav marked albums should be available offline and stored in the library. But where do I find them?
Unless you’ve specifically purchased/downloaded/ripped something, the files don’t exist on your hard drive/NAS. When you add to library, it’s just adding an entry to your Roon database that you have “favorited” that album/artist/track… You’re still streaming them.
Can you point to the documentation that says they’re available offline? (Curious!)
You cannot have offline files for streaming services in 3rd party applications it’s against copyright and their agreements with record lables. Only the services own applications that are vetted can do this and both use encryption to ensure nothing else can access them.
Your misunderstanding what Roons documentation is saying. You can favourite them to add to your own library but not as offline playback it’s purely metadata in your database not physical file.
Perhaps the misunderstanding is that Roon will still function offline. Roon needs to communicate back to home base about once a month to validate authorizations. In between those periods, Roon can work ‘offline’. But it will not have access to any music or other data that is not part of the local network.
Extract from the Roon User Guide:
And another related additional question: I bought Qobuz HiRes albums, do I have to store them manually on my NAS (I’m using Roon on the NAS) and add the folder or is there an automated download of the bought albums? This is not streaming (though they would be available via pure streaming as well), I just bought them to have them even without the steaming abo in the future.
Yeah, that’s pretty misleading!
But these phrases are relevant:
So, they’re not really stored files, but they’re “treated like storage”
But I agree, it makes it sound like they store the files on your hard drive.
If you don’t stream, you need to download them from Qobuz. They will not download automatically via Roon.
If you download albums into a watched folder they will be added automatically. This is almost instantaneous with an attached drive.
This can take a while if NAS is storage for another OS, like Mac, Windows or RoonOS. It may be fast if you are also running Roon on the NAS.
Links to Tidal and Qobuz files are stored in Roon, not the actual files.
ya ya that’s what i said
This bit of quoted info from the Roon User Guide is to my knowledge incorrect: Qobuz purchases are currently (build 537) not listed or identified in Roon. They were shown originally, when Qobuz integration was first implemented, but there were some issues identified with the original implementation and the decision was taken not to show Qobuz purchases explicitly 
. Of course, you can favourite all your purchases in Qobuz, and they will show up in Roon just like any other Qobuz favourites.
It has caused problems in the past for Qobuz users with certain streaming plans (now grandfathered), who were entitled to stream above-CD resolution purchases, but CD quality only for all other Qobuz content. Through Roon it was not possible to access these High Res (purchased) streams. Also through Qobuz’ native interface it is possible to stream all your purchased albums - some of these are not made available for streaming to other customers. In these cases, you will have to rely on downloads of your purchases for inclusion in Roon.
Also the listing under Qobuz - My Qobuz - Favorite Albums does not show more than 530 albums, for some reason. It seems to chuck content on a FIFO basis, so when you favourite (say) album 531, album 1 won’t show anymore. In your library view under Albums, there is no such restriction, so it is not disastrous, just weird.
Roon has been aware of these issues for some time and may well choose to address these at some point.