I am trying to keep two music servers in synch. One for Naim and one for Roon.
I rip with Naim which has an internal SSD. I backup using a Western Digital Elements portable drive whenever I rip new music, or soon after. The plan is to use the Naim backup file as input to The Roon server, a Sonic Transporter. That has two downsides that I can think of:
1). Music played through Roon is compromised by the use of a conventional hard drive instead of the recommended sort, an SSD.
2) I am forced to run everything through Roon’s initialization routine every time I do a backup.
As far as 1) is concerned, I can’t really afford a second 4 Tb SSD at this time (a 4 Tb Samsung EVO costs around $660).
But there must be a better way to accomplish 2). If so, please let me hear from you.
That is clearly the best choice, but how do I do that when they have different formats? The Naim Music files are WAV and, as it is now, I will need Song Kong to convert them to standard WAV otherwise he metadata in Roon will be a mess.
Roon applies its own metadata, so you may find that it is the solution to all of your tagging woes with the Naim Core. You have the option to use your own metadata if you prefer it, but I suspect you will not!
I’m with Bart on this. Naim don’t recommend SSD over HDD for the Core’s internal drive. They say you can fit either. And indeed someone told me that Jason said at a recent Naim demo that they use an HDD in the Core they use to demo the ND555 because it sounded better to them.
I’ve tried both, as I started with an HDD and then changed it for an SSD because the HDD was just audible where my Core lives next to my chair in my office and also it ran hot, whereas the SSD is silent of course and runs cool. But I can’t say the SQ was any different at all.
I’ve been really obsessive about my metadata and I have to say, it’s perfectly groomed, and as good as Naim’s limitations will allow. I’ve let Roon apply its own metadata and it makes a mess of my classical/opera music. I have instructions to use Song Kong to convert Naim’s non-standard of WAV to standard WAV and then to set a preference in Roon to use my metadata. I’m hoping that will turn out much better. I am stalled on that project for various reasons, but when I feel better, that’s the plan I want to implement.
From what I’ve read, the SSD vs HD argument for music is pretty well established. If you are an audiophile or a wannabe audiophile, it’s all about avoiding noise. Music and noise are said to be very bad bedfellows and computers, for example, are to be especially avoided because they are notoriously noisy with fans and clocks and hard drives all busy making their own little “symphony”. SSDs are recommended because they are silent as is the Naim Uniti Core and the fanless Sonic Transporter. So putting a “noisy” HD inside gear that was deliberately designed to be silent seems all wrong. I’m a wannabe audiophile and it’s painful to be violating that ethic, but in this case the extra cost of going silent is just too much and I don’t think it’s worth it.
Why do you want to use Roon in the first place if you do not want/need to take advantage of its capability of improving poorly tagged music collections?
No matter why you want to use Roon: your original question is actually not about how to keep two sets of files in sync (this can be done easily, e.g. with tools like rsync) but rather how to export (the metadata associated with) your Core rips to a standard format.