Roon on a new NAS

Hello,

I have a question for a friend of mine. He is using Roon on a Buffelo NAS.
He wants to replace this NAS for a new one. He was thinking about a Synology DS416Play.
He asked me to install it for him, so I have a few questions i’d like to ask before getting started.

  • Is the Synology DS416Play a good choice to put all his music files on and then use it with Roon?

  • At this moment all his files are on a buffalo NAS. But all his data is saved in a really bad way. He has his own “system”, but the fact is there is no system at all, no organisation, everything is in random folders and so.
    I know that there is an option in Roon where you let Roon sort you music files? Is this a good option to use?

  • The plan is to move all his music to the new NAS. What is the best way to do this?
    For instance, do I let Roon sort my files? Or do I just copy my files from one NAS to another?

Any advice is much appreciated!

Thank you in advance! (sorry for my bad english)

D

Hi Dennis,

Roon minimum requirements are an i3 and 4 GB of RAM. You can use lesser hardware, of course, but you might run into issues as well as Roon is always going forward. So, if you’re friend is buying a NAS to specifically use for Roon, I would suggest it be one which meets the minimum specs.

Roon used to have an option where it would re-organize your files. That option has been removed.

The easiest way would be to backup the Roon database. Copy all the files from one NAS to the other. Turn off the old NAS. Install Roon, restore the backup and point Roon to the music on the new NAS. Let Roon rescan if it needs to. That should get your friend to where he is now just on a new NAS.

Thank you for your answer! Im not so familiar (yet) with Roon, so please bare with me.

The Roon program itself (the core? i guess) is installed an a Mac Mini with an i5 or i7, so that would meet the minimum specs I guess.

The files itself will be placed on a NAS.

Few more question then:

  • Does it matter if the files are badly organised on the NAS for Roon? (About 5 TerraByte of files)
    If it does it has to be manually organised.
  • Does a NAS where only the files are stored, (The program itself is installed on a fast MacMini)need any special specification? Or is a DS416Play a good one?

Thanks again!

Dennis

Sounds like it would do the trick, i"d go for 8 GB of RAM.

If the NAS is just for file storage, that sounds like a good one to me, based on specs. I am more familiar with the ReadyNAS product than QNAP.

I thought the user already had been using Roon. If so, did Roon already find and identify all of their music correctly? Again, if yes, then you should just move everything over because Roon has already sorted it out internally.

However, if I have misunderstood, like a lot of things with computers, you get better results when you provide better starting data. Roon will try and identify albums, even if they are sloppily stored on a drive. However, there is only so much Roon can do if the files are in a truly bad state. In that case, I would take the effort to do some file organization before pointing Roon at the files. At the minimum, I would make sure that everything was in \Artist\Album[track number]_[track file Name]