Roon on two systems?

I’m a longtime, lifetime Roon user. Suffice it to say that Roon is awesome.

I’m in the process of buying a vacation home. Is it possible to use my Roon lifetime membership in both of my homes? Or do I need a second license for the new place? I would never be using both installations simultaneously. I would use only be using Roon wherever I happen to be at any given time. Thanks for any input.

Yes that would work. You would just need to “log out” of one install and log into the other.

The Knowledge Base is your friend.

Thanks for your response. So, if I have Roon core on each of the two systems in different locations, do I have to shut each core down each time? Or is in enough if I shut down any Roon control application on each system? If I leave the core it “on” in location 1, does that mean I can’t use Roon in location 2 until I shut down core 1?

Thanks but this doesn’t completely answer my question regarding the logistics:

Yes! If you only have one Roon license, you can simply log in to Roon at any location, and Roon will prompt you to de-authorize the previously active installation. However, you can’t run Roon in two locations at the same time with only one license.

You need to shutdown the “unused” core. You could use periodical backups onto a cloud drive to sync your two cores. When activating the other core you can restore to the latest backup.

Got it. Thanks for the input.

As far as I’m aware, you don’t need to shutdown the “unused” core - just de-authorize it when you sign into the other core… That is what the KB states…

I have a pair of NAS, one in each house. These sync with each other so I have a back up of my music, and a NUC running ROCK in each location.

As Geoff says, you do not need to power down the cores at all, you just de-authorize the one you are not using and authorize the one you do want to use. Takes no more than 20 seconds to do this and you can de-authorize remotely, so no need to worry about forgetting to switch one off before you leave.

Also I have found that if you leave the other Core on it does scan for new music in that location even when it’s not authorised, which is quite funky.

The biggest manual aspect is syncing the two cores. Restoring a backup from Core A to Core B also then overwrites the storage paths, backup paths, and audio configurations for Core B. So you have to reconfigure whatever isn’t identical at both locations.

I spilt my time in 1 - 4 week periods between two homes. I actually place my headless Roon Core and power supply, built on a compact NUC7 i5, inside the original box. And it travels with me. It’s only like a 5x5x5 box.

Yes, now that I learn all one needs to do is logout/in, that does seem pretty easy. Nevertheless, that is what I do. :wink:

Plus, needing to maintain my Roon environment on only one system seems like it would be only 1/2 the work. As its headless, arrive, take it out of the box, plug in power, plug in lan, boot, done. When leaving, the same in reverse.

This is exactly what I’m planning to do as I travel a lot. ROCK on a NUC that I can take with me everywhere and not worry about synchronization. Music storage will be a USB drive. Very practical indeed.

1 Like

I split my time between two countries. You definitely don’t have to shut down anything at the old location, just sign in at the new one and deauthorize the old one from there. It’s all easily presented on the login screen. Much easier to keep duplicate music files in both locations than mess around with backups etc.

Thanks everyone for the very helpful responses. I’m all set.