Looking to try out Roon and have a few questions before I start the trial. Currently all my music is in iTunes on a Mac Mini with files residing on an external firewire drive. I also have it cloned to a QNAP NAS as backup but don’t really use that for playing.
I want for now to keep iTunes as the “Master” for importing and managing music. I also need to keep my iTunes playlists. I understand that the way to do that is to monitor the iTunes library via the xml files, as explained here, after creating symlinks to the local drive: https://community.roonlabs.com/t/how-do-i-import-my-itunes-library/120/2
I’m very paranoid about my existing metadata, filenames, file organizations etc. I’ve read that “watched folders” preserve this completely without any changes to the files themselves. Does the “monitor iTunes Music Library” option also do this, without altering any existing file metadata, filenames, organisation etc?
I have a LOT of obscure African music that I have doubts Roon will recognise. How easily can I ensure that if the album isn’t recognized, that it will show the existing metadata, album art, etc?
I have a lot of custom genres by country and region that I would like to keep. How easily can I have Roon recognise these? E.g. even if the album is recognised, the recognised genre is likely to be “World” or “Africa” - I want it to show my existing custom metadata genre of “Nigeria”, “Senegal”, “East Africa” etc.
I understand with the iTunes import method above, that playlists get brought over to Roon. Does that include smart playlists or only fixed playlists?
Is there a way for Roon to show the “Date added” metadata of iTunes? i.e. not the date it was added to Roon, but the date it was added to iTunes?
I see the amazing cover art views in Roon. Is there also an iTunes-like text-only list view optionally available if one wanted?
Let me attempt to answer as many of your questions as I think I can, and we will drop a flag for @mike to correct and expand on things I get wrong or don’t know:
I understand that iTunes is treated as a “watched” folder meaning Roon will not make any changes to the underlying files or the metadata attached to them;
You can tell Roon to prefer it’s own metadata (if it exists), metadata from files or edits that you make within the Roon database. You can do that globally, for groups of albums that you select or on an individual basis;
I don’t know enough about genres to confidently answer this one. Mike will help out here;
Fixed playlists only, but you can effectively recreate smart playlists in Roon using Focus searches saved as bookmarks;
Date added is a property of Tracks. You can tell Roon to use the date a file was created or modified as “Date added” instead of the date imported to Roon;
No. Roon doesn’t have a text only album view but you can export selected albums (including all) to a spreadsheet format and view the list in a spreadsheet program.
Thanks a lot for those answers, they are very helpful indeed…
That’s what I figured, just wanted to be sure.
Great. Being able to do so “globally, for groups of albums that you select or on an individual basis” sorts me out.
OK will wait to hear.
OK I guess I’ll have to recreate the smart playlists by hand as focus searches then.
“Date added is a property of Tracks. You can tell Roon to use the date a file was created or modified as “Date added” instead of the date imported to Roon”. OK that goes some way, though date modified or created on the filesystem may (likely) be not the same as date added to iTunes. Not a big deal though.
That’s a shame there’s no list view without artwork. I realise the rich graphical user experience is the whole idea. But sometimes you just need to wade through a lot of info quickly. Again, not a big deal though.
Moving on to yet more questions if you don’t mind…
I can either go the iTunes-import route on the files on the FW800 disk attached to the Mac Mini that would run Roon Core. Or I could point it to my NAS which keeps a clone of those files. Even over gigabit, I’m assuming the responsiveness will be better with the directly-attached storage, yes?
If I point Rune to my iTunes XML and music files that reside on the external firewire disk, does the Roon database get stored there, or still on the internal boot drive? I want the latter because the internal drive is an SSD.
Roughly how large will the database and associated cache files be for a library of 90,000 files? I just want to ensure I have enough free space on the boot drive?
If your internet connection goes down (mine is not always reliable) does anything then not work, such as rich metadata, licensing checks, etc? Or is everything fully cached after a scan?
I’m planning to upgrade the Mac very soon, and have read the recommended hardware requirements, but in the meantime… is Roon going to choke on this 2.26ghz Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM and SSD?
Brian reccomends allowing 2Gb per 1,000 albums, which allows space for further metadata expansion, more artwork etc. A database of 90,000 tracks should fit into 9Gb with room to grow;
Identification of new albums won’t work without internet but not sure about licensing or metadata; anyone else know ?
If your internet connection goes down (mine is not always reliable) does anything then not work, such as rich metadata, licensing checks, etc? Or is everything fully cached after a scan?
Roon works fine offline. You need to connect at least once every 30 days to keep your license. All metadata related to your files is cached locally. Anything TIDAL related requires an internet connection.