I am considering buying Roon. I have a home I live in in one state, and a vacation home in another.
If I purchase Roon, and want to use it to manage my streaming and NAS drive music in another location, do I have to set up 2 separate Roon Nucleus’s (Nuclei?) or can I somehow use one Nucleus from 2 locations?
There are a few different ways to address this. It, of course, depends on your use case.
You could have two totally different Roon servers, one at each location, and easily switch your Roon subscription (license) back and forth if there is nobody trying to use Roon at the other location. If someone is using Roon at home, then you would need two Roon subscriptions to keep both Roon servers active.
Also, Roon ARC can do this to some extent by connecting through the internet to your active Roon server at your main house. This works if you are OK with using your phone or a tablet at the second location to connect to a DAC.
Thirdly, you can run a Roon server on a laptop computer that you would take with you to the vacation home so you don’t need to purchase a second Roon Nucleus or NUC or Apple Mac Mini, etc. for the vacation home. Again, this may or may not require a second Roon subscription depending if anyone is at home using Roon.
Part of the problem is keeping your Roon servers in sync with your music files. Roon will keep Tidal and Qobuz in sync authomatically, but you would have to manually keep your local files in sync by hauling an external drive back and forth or some other means. You would also have to backup one Roon server and restore to the other if you want to keep all your metadata and edits in sync.
Personally, I spend a lot of time at my 101 year old mother-in-laws home with my wife. I have a Nucleus at home running Roon with a second Roon server on my Dell laptop. I use Tidal and Qobuz with no local files so I have no problems syncing the two. I did purchase a second Roon subscription so I can keep both my Nucleus and Dell active so I can use the Dell as well as Roon ARC when away from home. Roon ARC has to connect to an active Roon server.
In addition, there might be some other methods using a VPN, but they are not supported by Roon other than with Roon ARC.
I loved how clearly you described the options @Jim_F
I’ve ended up taking two of your options.
I have dedicated servers in my home and studio (other people use these when I’m not there) and another on my laptop which I use when travelling.
Thank you so much for the information. I couldn’t find anything about this on the Roon website.
How much space does the Roon server take up? I bring my work MacBook Pro with me back and forth between the two locations. I have Sonos at both right now and I’m done with their updates that ruin functionality for me. I have 2 NAS drives, one in each location that mirror one another for my 2 TBs of ripped lossless music from my cd collection. I’m concerned about Roon being able to manage 2 different physical systems with matching hard drives. I want to stream Tidal in both locations.
That’s great. If you decide to purchase a second Roon subscription, make sure you add it to your existing Roon account. Don’t start a second account. This will allow them both to be connected to your Tidal and/or Qobuz accounts, if you use them, and stay in sync. You can also do backups and restores from one to the other. If on separate Roon accounts, that will not work.
I’m not sure if you want to use Roon at both locations at the same time or not. That would determine if you need a second Roon license.
You could install Roon server and Roon client on your MacBook Pro or you could purchase one or two Roon Nucleus One or Roon Nucleus Titan. I don’t know the dimensions but you can go to Roon Store and find out. It’s not very large.
Most people start out putting Roon on a laptop or PC but quickly decide they want a separate dedicated Roon Nucleus, NUC, or Mac Mini.
As I said above, Roon will keep Tidal and/or Qobuz in sync. It sounds to me you already have your music files being kept in sync with NAS mirror routine.
If I was you, I would start by installing Roon (server and client) on the MacBook Pro and do the free Roon trial.
I already followed your example and went for three lifetime licenses in the same acccount.
Makes life very easy - and compared to many HiFi purchases seems like good value.
I have file system syncing setup and a shared Qobuz account. Perhaps a once or twice a year I backup/restore from my master at home to get roon db edits.
I have three different automatic backup routines running on my Nucleus. It backs up every night to an attached USB drive and saves 30. I don’t think I have ever had to restore it to my Mac Mini or Dell. But, I don’t have any local files and don’t try to keep my few edits updated on either of them.
I am the only user, so it would be either using Roon at one location or another, never both at once. I am concerned about the cost of 2 Roon subscriptions, but as I have not yet set it up, maybe I will think it is well worth 2 lifetime subscriptions cost.
With Sonos, I had to delete, and reinstall the App everytime I went to the cabin, for it to play from my NAS or stream. If I have only 1 Roon subscription, I don’t wnat it to get “confused” by the location, and think the system there (different amp, speakers, mirrored NAS, different internet connection) are invalid.
At home it is Verizon FIOS. At cabin it is Starlink. Will that cause a problem with Roon? Different internet log on locations?
I don’t see any reason you would want to pay for two Roon subscriptions unless you want to keep your “at home” Roon server active for Roon ARC. That’s why I bought the second subscription.
If you are using two different Roon servers, one at each location, I don’t think you’ll have any problems. All you are doing is authorizing one and unauthorizing the other. They are both already setup properly for their location.
I don’t know anything about using Starlink for Roon. Do a search on this forum and see what experience others have had.
Do you really need to go to the expense of multiple Roon instances, nevermind Licences.
Use Roon ARC on a old iPhone device on Wifi only, with a USB connection to a DAC/Amp/Speakers or powered speakers. This gives you access to your own library remotely, Tidal and/or Qobuz.
If you need to add new music to your library, you can remotely connect to the NAS units at home, and it will be picked up, indexed and then available in ARC.
If you find something in Tidal/Qobuz you can add in ARC or in the native apps on the Phone, and again it will be picked by the Roon Server and made available in the ARC app.
You probably can. But first, how would you like to use Roon in your vacation home ? (What HW). Cause if you can accept Roon ARC, and use an iPhone with CCK, you are more or less covered.
Other options include VPN. Or just accept to change core every time you’re at the vacation house.
This is how I manage my 2 different servers. Remember that your remote server has to be online for you to unauthorize it. If it is powered off or disconnected from network, you can not unauthorize in order you to have license available for your now local server.
Not true. The unauthorization happens in the Roon cloud.
Just my experience. Maybe i misinterpreted my experience.
When you authorize your local Roon server at your current location, Roon will unauthorize your currently active Roon server at the other location regardless.
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