Syncing from a master library to a separate Roon Core

Hello all. New to Roon (day 5) and am just about committed. I was hoping to get some feedback on how to best meet a few of my requirements.

My ‘master’ library is in iTunes on a Macbook Pro. All carefully named and tagged .aifs - and yup, I’m fully aware of the relationship between iTunes metadata / ID3 tags and how Roon uses (or doesn’t) each. Main reqs:

  1. Fully groomed local library

I will continue to add new music to my local library, and I want the file names and tagging to be as complete and consistent as possible.

I intend to maintain a pre-Roon ingestion flow involving file conversions, basic iTunes tagging, separate ID3 tagging of the iTunes gaps. I don’t mind the effort and currently do that anyway.

  1. Portability

Why #1 is a requirement. I want to be able to move my library into other software or services in the future. I want as much metadata baked in, up front, to the file names and ID3 tags as possible.

I also want to dump clean files onto a USB stick for my car. And I want to grab my laptop and hit the road with my entire music collection, and do my whole ingestion / tagging routine anywhere I want (sans Roon obviously). Preferably with no external drive.

  1. Syncing to a separate Roon core

I’d need a sync’d copy of my laptop’s master library on my Roon Core. Software recommendations for Mac to PC and PC to PC would be much appreciated. Also curious how running ROCK would complicate that.

And I’m inclined to stick with iTunes for this since Roon can watch the iTunes library and update playlists and so forth, to a greater degree than other library software (as far as I understand it, anyway?). This is important for some of the hacky metadata workarounds I have planned (read: track ratings…)

But, I’m open to iTunes alternatives. So if others are just as good for syncing with Roon but better for tagging, please recommend.


With all THAT said, is this a reasonable approach for my requirements? Open to all feedback and recommendations.

Thanks