I found there are similar questions to mine. But I would still like to seek your advice.
My room core is on my Mac Book.
I now have to travel between 3 locations constantly.
Each location has its own library.
2 of them are NAS and 1 is external USB drive.
All three of them have very similar contents
(2 NAS highly sync each other, USB drive does not sync so maybe 90% similar file content)
What I wish to achieve and learn is
1.Set roon to watch one of the folder and read in all the data, album.
when I go to a new location, I enable the watch folder at that location.
Will roon realize the music content is the same, and continue to use the original database?
Whatever change I made to the [song A] in location 1 (re-tag, listening frequency, rating…)
will roon retain all these changes to [song A] in location 2 when I move there?
When I add new music [song B] in one library, and has it read into roon database.
when I go to another location and watch antoer folder where [song B] is not there.
[song B] will be removed from database?
if I sync the [song B] to it, the [song B] will reappear?
4.the roon read the song signature, so it is ok if the file directory and structure is not identical, isn’t it?
all these questions arise probably because I don’t quite understand the rule of roon database.
The simple question to ask I is:
is it possible to make roon carried the update song information (tag, frequency, footnote, cover…)
over to different if roon find there is an exact same file.
or roon will treat it as 2 different song and I will have a duplicate song in the library.
song A (edited) and song A (fresh new)
Seems quite convoluted and prone to generate problems and frustration.
Why not choose a simpler approach and schlep your USB disk around with you as your main music storage, then use the NASes to take music and database backups, which, due to different locations, conforms to backup best practices!
This is actually quite similar to what I am doing at the moment.
NAS as main storage, 2 NAS sync and backup each other
&
USB drive I carried with me to oversea work place.
however.
USB drive not big enough to fit in all the music (hence similar database)
same problem arise, If roon watch my USB drive.
What happen if I return home and switch watch folder to NAS when there are same and different music file.
or do I have to give up the idae of sync between all the database, and have to manage 3 database separately, or watch USB drive only.
My solution to this is a vpn connection that extends the network with Ethernet over IP (eoip).
This extends the subnet where my core and library is to another location (same IP everywhere), thus only needing endpoints.
Though not always usable because of network limitations (eg. MTU or bandwidth), this can be a good alternative, YMMV.
I use MikroTik devices for this solution, cheap, reliable and highly configurable.
They are not for the novice, but have very good documentation.
Another reason is I am already stuck with this USB drive oversea at the moment.
feel quite puzzle about how to fiddle with 3 different yet very similar database.
If there is no way for roon to merge music data across watch folder.
Then yes I will have to get a large USB to use as main and only database in the future.
You mean even you travel out side of local network.
you VPN back and let roon watch over same drive like it is still in network?
I am at a place which make VPN very difficult and yes bandwidth would be a problem.
BTW wouldn’t that be similar to use WebDAV?
which map distant folder as local drive?
Yes, it simulates one local network on two (or more) locations.
It creates a bridge or tunnel between two routers over IP, acting as one not routed network.
So you can have the Core and NAS in one location and connect endpoints at another and it works transparent.
This comes with a penalty, it uses CPU of the routers and may not perform as required because of bandwidth limitations.
It is not like webDAV and does not map local drives.