I took a break from configuring Roon any further after investigating Tags in Roon and just enjoyed the music for a couple of weeks. And I must say I am thoroughly enjoying Roon, it's interface and how it works.
Alan Taffel's article on The Absolute Sound's website linked above mentions that he found Roon to sound better than it's competitors. When I was first told that by a friend who had adopted Roon some time ago, I scoffed. "It's only software, John! How could it sound 'better' or even 'different'?" He assured me that it did and I found that to be true. Don't ask me to explain it because I can't.
Alan Taffel takes a stab at explaining why in the article. As we all know, since we all hear differently, some of this may be subjective but as I sit here pounding away on my laptop and listening to Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris performing "Beyond My WIldest Dreams" from the "All The Roadrunning" album, I am once again struck by the fullness and detail I am hearing that exceeds anything that JRiver presented with the exact same file. Don't get me wrong...I liked JRiver. Program setup and user interface could use some work and simplification. The Wiki is difficult to use and finding information took a long time for me. Anyway, enough about the sonic and use differences between the two. For what it's worth, I am sticking with Roon.
I knew I'd get back to my initial setup issue eventually.
Yesterday an AK member PM'd me. He asked me to continue with this narrative as he was contemplating switching from JRiver to Roon and my real world, non-technically based user experience was of some interest. It's funny...his PM came to me just as I was wrapping up what I am about to describe below.
I got some help from the Roon community forum and their technical support folks that frequent that site in working through a couple of issues. I strongly suggest that, if you adopt Roon, you make good use of those resources and the Roon User Guide.
This is not a super technical document. I have endeavored to use the correct terms, especially specific areas within Roon, but if you have any questions just PM me and I'll do my best. You may be better off accessing Roon's online community than dealing with this Roon Noob.
In post #3 above I showed the file folder setup I used during initial setup of Roon. I could not, for the life of me, connect to my NAS to set up a Network Share so all the music would be stored on, and accessed from, the NAS. So, for the time being, I partitioned the music server's HD and set up the folder on that box. But that basically duplicated the file load in the system because I ended up copying all the folders over from the NAS to the server. This was not the most efficient use of network resources but it got the job done. Also, I hadn't figured out the proper folder hierarchy to use from within the NAS.
Yesterday I circled back to my initial setup of shared folders. My intent was to resolve the issues I had when trying to add a Network Share. It was apparent that Roon could access my Network Attached Storage (NAS) box - a Synology D415+ with 4-2TB solid state drives in a RAID 01 configuration - for the music files so I could avoid having two huge music directories on the network with one on the Endpoint running the Roon Core and one on the NAS.
My issue was not one caused by Roon. Rather, it was all due to my being in a hurry and not practicing RTFM again. However, having learned my lesson, I managed to eliminate two errors that prevented me from making the shared folder connections.
1. When trying to connect to a shared folder from your NAS or similar storage box, use the right address. Even though my NAS has an IP address, what I really needed was it's network address.
Tip 8: Use your NAS network address, not the IP address. Instead of using https://NASXX/Music/xxxx, use \\NASXX\xxxx. You'll note the shorter network path there. Here's why...
2. Roon will only "dig" down so far into a shared network file hierarchy. Another reason it would not connect was that my music file paths were too far down in that hierarchy. If I used \\NASXX\Music\FLAC Roon only went to the next level below \Music and it would import ALL the files into one shared folder. I didn't want to wade through ALL my files to find what I wanted to build playlists. I needed to segregate FLAC from my Xmas folder, a MP3 folder, a New Music file and some others under \Music in order to build specific playlists. So I moved the FLAC, Xmas and New Music folders up in the hierarchy so they could be found one level below \\NASXX. I also added some numbers to them being 01, 02 & 03 respectively so they were at the top of the folder list under \\NASXX\ which eliminates some unwanted and unneeded searching on my part.
Tip 9: Roon seems to only go one folder level down in the NAS file directory. So you need to shorten the path and use \\NASXX\folder name.
Think about how you want your various music folders organized and labeled so Roon can build a network share you can use. I don't see a limit on how many network share folders you can build but I'll explore that later.
Tip 10. Before you populate the network share folder in Roon, organize the folders on your NAS so they are easy to find.
I initially built a small shared folder in Roon to test the connection and my understanding of how it was supposed to work. I certainly didn't want to fail my own test, right? Here's what I did:
1. On my NAS I created a small folder called \\NASXX\Shared File Test and copied a few FLAC files over to it.
2. In Roon I accessed Settings > Storage and added that network share folder by clicking on the Add Folder button, then clicking on the Add Network Share link in the lower left of the Choose Music Folder popup box.
3. I entered the information necessary to access the NAS on the network (Network Share Location - \\NASXX\Shared File Test, Username, Password - Workgroup is not needed unless your NAS is part of a Workgroup set up under Windows) and clicked on Add Network Share. Roon made the connection and there was the file. Then I highlighted the new shared folder and clicked on the "Select This Folder" button while still in the "Choose Music Folder" popup box.
4. I went back to the Roon main menu > Playlists > clicked on the My Playlists button > +Add New Playlist. I created a playlist called Shared File Test (creative, right???
).
5. Then I populated the playlist with the FLAC files from the new Shared File Test folder.
6. Fingers crossed, I went to the playlist and clicked on "Play Now". Success!
At that point I built the three shared folders (FLAC, New Music, Xmas) following steps 2 & 3 above, then built some playlists for each.
Once I tested each playlist to make sure they all worked, I freed up some space on the music server by deleting all those music files I had copied over to it on 11/1/18 and deleted the test playlist and shared folder.
So that's it for now. I hope this helps anyone who is thinking about adopting Roon.