Roon mobile: remote streaming outside of the home [done]

I don’t understand all the doom and gloom regarding computers and networks you guys are propagating. What kind of equipment and ISPs are you guys running to have such negative opinions of home based equipment? I’ve never personally witnessed such levels of unreliability, and I’ve been working IT for almost 2 decades now.

My Roon Core server has been running without interruption since the day I installed the OS. It’s a handbuilt Hexacore from 2011 … still works fine / last long time.
My internal network is rock solid stable and is a mix of Gigabit wired and 802.11AC.
My ISP’s broadband connection has bandwidth for days and generally great uptime.

Locally syncing selected songs to my phone for off network use (the same way Spotify and Tidal ALREADY DO!) would eliminate the network/equipment concerns you broach anyways.

My local audio library is over 300GBs … and I have an 8TB RAID 10 array locally … why would I want to upload that to the Cloud when I have ample capacity, reliability, and bandwidth available at home?

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I think you’ve answered your own observation - you’ve been working in IT for almost two decades. You are comfortable with it. Many people are not, and wouldn’t have the first idea of where to start if something went wrong.

Even if I accede to that logic … wouldn’t it make sense for ROON to offer all of the proposed options?

Local syncing and off network streaming for those with the wherewithal, and a Cloud based service for those who are uncomfortable with managing the local technology aspect?

It’s the exclusionary and drastic negative statements against tried and true technology that I find consternating.

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I suspect one argument would be that Roon Labs have finite development and support resources. Unlikely that both avenues can be taken, so which do they choose…

Solid argument, and without subscriber data it is hard to respond to. Who knows what Roon’s resources are … but I would argue they stand to lose re$ource$ if they continue to not offer a solution that’s been baked into their competitors for years.

Note: I love Roon … offers 90% of what I need … it just kills me that I have to fire up Spotify, Tidal, or Plex apps when on the go. Come on now … Roon can do this =/

“Hi, honey? How are the kids?
Yeah, Japan is great, after the Friday meeting we’ll do some sightseeing before flying off to Singapore.
But I’ve got one problem, I can’t play my music.
Could you please check if the network is ok?
Not the one for the house, the separate subnet for the office and the sound system, the switch is in the closet.
And check if the Roon server is ok, if the light is on, you will have to RPC into it and look at the status logs, fire up the laptop, there is an RPC icon on the desktop, the password is Roonsecrets, all lower case after the capital R. And check the NAS as well, you can log into it from a web browser, username is Admin and the password is data1234.
I’ll wait here while you troubleshoot, and then I’ll walk you through how to fix it.
Ok, honey? Honey? Are you there? Hello? Hello?..”

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My biggest reservation with regards to streaming off-net from Roon Core is simply that the upstream on my broadband connection is currently limited to 10 Mbps. I can upgrade to 1000/40Mbps with Comcast, but that costs an additional $60/month (iirc) and is typically subject to the 1TB monthly usage cap (allegedly signing a 3-year contract removes the usage cap).

I already pay $20/month for Tidal Hifi which duplicates a large percentage of my local FLAC library and the quality is typically more than sufficient for my mobile listening needs. That being said, I would like to be able to use the Roon UI remotely. I would also like the option to access songs in my local library that are not available from Tidal.

Ideally:

  • I’d like to be able to use the Roon UI when away from home to play music.
  • I’d like the Roon app to stream songs available on Tidal directly to my mobile device when off-net.
  • I’d like to be able to access songs in my library that are not available from Tidal.
  • I’d like the option to sync and store specific songs / albums on my mobile device for off-line playback (ideally either songs stored in my Roon library or songs from Tidal as Tidal allows in their app).

Remote access could be by streaming over my broadband connection with the option to transcode songs down to a rate suitable for the broadband connection’s upstream speed (with headroom for other traffic).

I’d also like the option to sync music from my Roon library to cloud storage so I don’t need to stream over my broadband connection. This could be music not available on Tidal or other music that I choose for whatever reason (e.g. version on Tidal is lower quality than what I have in my library).

The trade-off between streaming from home and cloud storage would be broadband connection speed, reliability and potential date overage costs versus the cost of cloud storage and streaming. An added benefit of paying to store your entire library in the cloud would be as an off-site back-up to your local library.

Clearly this would be a major undertaking for the Roon development team, but it seems like the current ‘Versions’ logic would extend nicely to off-net streaming and prioritization with or without Tidal.

The dissonance of having to switch from Roon UI to Tidal UI is real. Your Ideal requests are not-mutually exclusive and would benefit us all regardless of end user infrastructure. And undertaking worthy of Roon’s development team!

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Just replying to past me (2018): Got it working perfectly via ZeroTier, without any lag or delay. In fact, Roon works better at home via ZeroTier, because my WiFi is hell of a bottleneck. Highly recommended.

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@Roni_Laukkarinen - You say you got it working… but on which devices? I’ve had it working on Mac OSX but there is a limitation on IOS devices whereby the roon client on IOS cannot discover the Roon Server over a VPN connection (multicast/broadcast discovery issue if I remember), so in my opinion a non-VPN proper remote solution is still needed.

The saved settings in my IOS client show the LAN IP address, not the ZeroTier address. I do wonder if I disconnected that server from the IOS client, then searched for servers again while connected to Zerotier and then saved it… that perhaps this might work for remote access (but then likely wouldn’t work for normal LAN access. I must try this sometime…
All of that said… ZeroTier is amazing software that I use all every day for remote access to my machines at home.

2 posts were split to a new topic: Remote access to my Roon on Synology NAS by running a VPN

8 posts were split to a new topic: Music on the go - just putting it out there… (iPods)

A post was split to a new topic: To all that want access Roon remotely: Try using ipCop

66 posts were merged into an existing topic: Roon mobile: Syncing Music Files To Portable Devices for local playback [On Roadmap?]

A first step for remote access might be to access your Roon Server database and stream available content directly from Tidal. I have the Tidal app on my devices, but I definitely prefer using the Roon app.

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Could you link to the one saying it might not be coming this year?

I think it’s a feature many of us would like, but it’s not trivial to do (and even less trivial to do well) so I’m not sure it would come ‘soon’. More ‘as soon as possible’ I’d think. Where did they post it would come ‘soon’?

The only pointer I’ve seen is Brian’s post above (quoted below), which I read as they’d really like to have it this year, but can’t say.

I’ve only just started using Plex for video so haven’t tried remote streaming (not sure I’ll bother as I tend to watch movies at home). I can only imagine it took Plex a while to create the system.

So with latest update, will Roon finally stream to a mobile when NOT on the local WiFi?

Please say yes.

No. The last update was Linn compatibility and MQA first stage decoding. The good news is that frees Roon developers to get the mobile work out.

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12 posts were merged into an existing topic: Roon mobile: Syncing Music Files To Portable Devices for local playback [On Roadmap?]

Just making a comment to follow the matter more than anything. This is a killer feature and I would love to use an iPad pro 12.9 on the go as if it was on my local network (CD quality is fine for me).

As far as I am concerned take your time and release it when its ready. Threats of membership cancelation isn’t an issue, they will eventually come back :slight_smile: