Roon 2.0 and internet connectivity [it's just like 1.8 now]

So on Nas there will be 2 servers:
Roon stopped and
Roon Legacy running

Wow! I’ll try this when I get home.

This is kind of nuts. I work in IT and find this challenging. I remember when DSM7 was released for Synology and Roon was not straightforward. The average guy in the street has NO chance understanding this.

So basically, I can’t really downgrade to legacy without losing my precious metadata.

I might try out Logitech Media Server. In the PS Audio forums, they have been active at looking at alternatives to Roon since the release of Roon 2.0.

I need something nice that will work without the need to have 100% Internet connectivity.

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I’m not sure that’s the case if you have a backup and can restore from it. Roon has stated that 2.0 and 1.8 backups are compatible formats. I’m not on Synology so cannot comment on its specifics but if you can retrieve and copy the current backup you should be able to restore when this mess gets sorted out.

I went from 2.0 to 1.8 legacy on both Ubuntu and then Mac and had no issues with the restore.

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Thanks BCBC,

I’m petrified of doing something irreversible. I already lost some of my collection because I stupidly removed a Shared drive from Synology thinking that it was only a mapping of a real drive. I was wrong. Thankfully, most of my material was backed up on an external drive. I thought that recreating the shared drive would sort the issue out but no.

Shon,
The main problem for me is: i don’t even know if the problem was Roon or a strange behavior of Synology.
So keep a backup of your RoonOnNas Folder. In worse case, you can go back to this backup to not loose your whole metadata.

A friend of mine had no problems at all ( Syno with Roon 1.8. Update to 2.0. Decided to go back. Installed 1.8 legacy. Everything was fine)
Strange all this.

FYI, The Feedback / Feature Suggestion for offline functionality was just reopened

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/make-roon-play-local-music-files-w-o-internet-access/214998/71

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Yes – my ISP went down on Saturday for two days — I couldn’t play files from my local NAS.

I would call that fragile and unreliable!

This was an absurd decision. Even if you don’t want to have a local “search” facility, you could still support local folders (for example) just like PLEX does.

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I understand your point, but I think “fragile and unreliable“ apply to your ISP in this case.

Maybe, we can play with the words if we must — I can change it to “fault intolerant” if you prefer!

But I consider that being unnecessarily dependent on something makes a product fragile and unreliable via transitive closure.

I should be able to use something inside my house without external dependencies. I get the concern about piracy (if that’s an underlying driver) but I sell a software product to live performing musicians and I went out of my way to make sure that there were absolutely no dependencies on external “environment” to reduce the risk of not being able to use the product whenever needed

We call it “customers first”

Edit: I know several home theatre companies who use Roon – I’m sure they’re going to love not being able to demonstrate their systems to customers when their ISP goes down for any reason!

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I feel like playing the devil’s advocate here… I’m not a fan of some of Roon’s design decisions, but it seems they deemed online access necessary for the future of Roon, and the sooner they require that, the better. I’m sure this is - at least in part - a consequence of the emphasis people put on “advanced search”. (That seems to be one of Roon’s differentiating features.) I couldn’t care less about the “advanced” part, so I should be upset about having to accept this new restriction because of others. Yet, it just feels like a phone jack moment to me.

Yes, I prefer that :slight_smile: This does make Roon less fault tolerant, but as I said before, having a constant Internet connection today is as basic as having a phone line used to be.

Well it sure feels like the ‘Zuckerberg school of customer exploitation for profit’ to me…

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And? what does this mean? this 1% of you user base is in possession of the truth?
Now it came up, please deal with it, show that you care about your customers, more than we can read in yours and your staff replies.

Sad times

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All depends on what you consider unnecessary. My electricity goes down more than my Internet, and Roon is sadly dependent on electricity, so I added an automatic backup generator. Lot of folks with flakey cable Internet can back it up with LTE or satelite.

Meh - there’s a big difference between your entire household “going out” where it’s understandable that nothing will work (unless you have a generator) and the external internet “going out” which should still allow everything inside your LAN to continue working.

In fact, I often take advantage of the internet going down as a means to force me to relax from work and relaxing includes listening to music … oh, wait…

If they’re concerned about piracy, then they could do occasional checks so as to take into account that the internet connection goes down from time to time. The argument around removing local search seems absurd excuse for requiring internet access.

Just wait until Roon’s servers go down and every single customer is screwed! And what happens if Roon goes out of business?

IMO this was a really lousy decision by Roon and it is quite absurd that I cannot listen to my audio system just because something “outside” went down.

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I asked a friend his opinion about being unable to use Roon while the internet is down.

His response: “What, they don’t have turntables?”

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I guess you’ll have to treat Roon as outside your LAN from now on. It is a subscription-based service after all.

If there’s any takeaway from this backlash, it’s that there’s no vinyl revival going on.

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I take it you don’t frequent Steve Hoffman Music forums. The existential crisis there is that MFSL one step records had a “secret” digital step in what was thought to be pure analog $150 records. So happy I moved away from vinyl in about 1986. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Lots of subscription based services allow you to have local stuff that’s still accessible without external internet. I can watch Netfix movies offline, I can access all my local music with my Plex system even if the ISP is down (but sadly the Plex can’t stream to my hifi DAC)

I bought a lifetime subscription and the main reason I did that was so that I could have it forever to play my local files, even if I cancelled other services. - I never even dreamed that that would become explicitly blocked if Roon itself couldn’t access the outside world, and for no legitimate reason.

What I’ll have to do is find an alternative to Roon.

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