Roon mobile: Syncing Music Files To Portable Devices for local playback [done]

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836

@joel my heart skipped a beat when I was notified you replied here :rofl: Thought youā€™d share some good news :sweat_smile:

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837

Oh, Iā€™m just a developer; they donā€™t let us out much :wink: .

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838

Must say the same, i got a bit too excited to see an employee post here haha

839

what about local-files only, without offline caching the streaming-providersā€™s content?
I would love to leave Roon on an nuc/nas in my network but being able to take everything with me on my MacBook, when I travel.

THIS and the ability of having access to your music-library outside your own network. being at a party and still having your Roon-Library with you, would be just unbeatable.

840

You can already do this by making Roon on your MacBook a core whenever you travel. You can easily switch back when you get home. Main problem is that anyone left at home canā€™t use Roon at the same time.

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841

Exactly what I do right now.
When travelling I authorize the Roon Core on my laptop, I have all of my Qobuz and Tidal albums and a decent chunk of local files that I loaded from my main library.
Much,much more than I could ever need in a week at some hotel.
Bluetooth portable speaker and Iā€™m all set.

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842

I donā€™t use streaming services, I am talking about local files.

843

With everything going on here and the age of this post Iā€™m unsure if what I have to say hasnā€™t already been said 50 different ways. Iā€™m no longer an active user of room for a multitude of reasons, however I still believe in it as a project and itā€™s so close to being a universal music solution.

This request really does dig deep into many different features. Iā€™ll address each of them with a potential solution/workaround to deliver a polished experience thatā€™s up to roon standards.

Remote Streaming:
This entails using your Roon Core to stream to a device outside your local network.

  • 3 solutions exist for this
    • A purely self hosted approach in which a user is required to open a port for devices to connect from outside of the network.
    • A hybrid cloud/local approach where the storage and processing is still done on your Roon Core, however data is relayed to your out of network device through a service hosted by roon. This introduces additional cost to Roons operations and would require excessive server bandwidth, however makes the experience seamless with the end user.
    • A purely cloud based solution. This is my least favorite option, where everything is essentially moved to the cloud, this introduces even more cost as they have to do all decoding/encoding/transmission on the fly.

In my opinion solution 1 is the best as it requires the least expense from Roon and gives greater flexibility to itā€™s users.

  • The main issue I see stated here is bandwidth. Itā€™s true that streaming uncompressed audio can get hefty especially with formats like DSD. Thankfully Roon already supports resampling and realtime conversions.
    • When a out of network Roon Client connects, test the bandwidth available between client and server to set a reccomended sample rate / bit depth / encoding. This allows higher quality sources to still reliably stream at a lower quality when network conditions are not ideal, and could be configured by the user like any other ā€œstreaming qualityā€ setting.
    • The apps player does not need to change as it would receive the same data as it would locally, possibly at a lower bit/sample rate in poor conditions.
  • The other big concern is security, HTTPS would be required and that means generating certs, which would also require domains, this is a lot of complexity on the end user that solution 2/3 could remedy at a cost.

Offline Playback:
This would entail having Roon send your device the full file for playback locally. This has so many complications for the current system not to mention legal issues, I donā€™t blame anyone for not wanting to touch this with a 10 ft pole.

  • Step 1, get permission from Tidal/Quboz/associated labels to cache content locally on customers devices.
  • come up with a DRM system for protecting them.
  • Now what to store:
    • Option 1: Roon Core Lite for mobile, basically a mini core for direct playback, this is complex and time consuming.
    • Option 2: Have the Core preprocess the file before downloading, this has large file size issues, and prevents any modifications to the track after download, EQ and corrections would have to be baked into the file.

Personally I can see why Offline Playback genuinely could take years. However fully self hosted remote access would really make Roon far more valuable to me and many others. Offering resampling/compression for less ideal network conditions could ensure stability. Even if you make it an advanced feature to set up it would be greatly appreciated!

Out of network Multi-client streaming would also be something utterly fantastic to see. Understandably with streaming service restrictions allowing only 1 active stream per account it could introduce issues that proper Roon user profiles with their own streaming service account attached could solve. For now though even 1 remote connection would make me oh so happy.

845

Offline Playback for Local-Files only?
Would be ok for me

846

this is done:

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