I have my roon app installed on my mac which also works as core.
This is my primary device, however I also wanted to have the roon software running on my windows/work pc. I don’t need my collection there, I just want to use the editorial/recommendations features of Roon - as well as the player of course.
I understand however that this is not possible and I should purchase a different license to run the software on another pc. Honestly I find this quite upsetting, the way a software is bound to a device is always surreal. As if it was my macbook who subrscribed to listen to his own music even when I’m gone, and not really myself trying to use a service regardless of where I am.
Couldn’t it be enough to have limitations such as one device running at a time, or maybe just the player (no library) on a second device?
Thanks for any suggestion and apologies in advance shall this sound dull or misinformed.
I’ve moved your question to the #roon category, since it’s a question of how to setup a configuration of Roon for your particular requirements, rather than a Support requestion for something that isn’t working.
The subscription is not bound to a device. You can, as you suggest, simply use one device at a time.
We do exactly that. We have two cores, one at home and a second at our weekend apartment. We simply deauthorise the one we’re not currently using.
@Vincenzo_De_Simone - Roon has a rather different architecture to most other music players.
The key point is that the “editorial/recommendations features of Roon” are provided by the Core - so if you want to have that accessible on your work PC (presumably this is at another location), then you need to have a Roon Core installed on that PC.
Now, as @Michael_Curtis points out, you can have multiple Cores installed, and transfer the license between them, as described in this article:
If you have a streaming service (Qobuz and/or Tidal) integrated into Roon, then any albums added to the library on one Core will automatically get synced to the other Core’s library. Syncing of local music files is, however, a manual process and down to you to do this.
One thing to be aware of is that your work environment should allow for the Core on your work PC to communicate with Roon’s services in the cloud. Not all employers will allow this.
An alternative to having a second Core at work might be to use Roon ARC at work on your smartphone - that is a “player” that has full access to the editorial/recommendations of your Core at home (providing, of course, that your employer allows Roon ARC to access your Core)
And in addition to what was already said: If your MacBook and Windows work PC are at the same location, you can have the core software running on one of them but still use the control app with editing and player on the other. (You can use one core device with any number of control devices on the same network)
As mentioned, you need to deauthorise the home core when you are at the office and vice versa. License for Roon is not bound to any device, but you can only use it on one device at a time.
Alternatively you could use Roon ARC at the office, then you would only use one Roon Core both when at home and when you are on the road or office.
You could just bring your macbook air to the office and use it as the core, especially if your company does not let/want you to install a music server on your work computer. I did this and used our “guest” WiFi in the office to get my core on the internet. I also had my own DAC and headphones I was using as I was in a cube farm, not my own office.