Roon is a wonderland for music lovers best known for its immersive music experience and audiophile sound quality. While customers’ reasons for using Roon are as varied and unique as music itself, many who now can’t live without it initially discovered our software while searching for the ultimate all-in-one music management and player solution.
Whether you’re here because you’re looking for a way to combine your streaming and personal music libraries in one place, trying to consolidate and organize a digital music collection, or about to set up Roon for the first time — you’re in the right spot! Think of Roon as a musical melting pot where all your favorite sounds, regardless of source or format, blend together perfectly to create a uniquely personalized body of song.
In this installment of How to Roon, we’ll cover how to unite your entire digital collection— files, streams, internet radio stations, even playlists—and the various ways you can add music to your Roon library. Bookmark this article for easy access to our step-by-step guides on growing your collection.
But first, before we go any further, let’s get a potential concern out of the way: Roon will never change, move, or modify your music files in any way. That’s true even when we scan and identify them to find cool metadata that brings your music to life. When you add your music in Roon, you’re simply showing us where to find it. Your music files are sacred and always safe & sound exactly as, and where, you left them.
Now, let’s get organized!
Roon: The best way to manage music across formats
Are you trying to bring order to a treasure trove of scattered music files you’ve collected over the years, or maybe looking for a music manager/player that’s compatible with all the files in your digital collection? If so, welcome home!
Roon gracefully unites your entire collection and lets you enjoy it without fumbling through an obstacle course of competing apps, player software, and devices.
The vast majority of Roon customers—more than 62%—have amassed blended music collections of files and streams that have evolved in step with file format popularity and storage affordability. As a result, most digital file collections are diverse both in terms of file type and resolution. That music is equally important to us regardless of whether it’s a newly purchased Hi-Res download or sentimental lossy files that once lived on a portable player.
The good news is Roon can play it all! It supports a wide range of common formats in resolutions all the way up to DSD512 and 32bit/768kHz PCM!
Roon works with:
- WAV
- WAV64
- DSD
- FLAC
- AIFF
- ALAC (Apple Lossless)
- OGG
- AAC
- MP3
- MQA
- DSF
- and DFF
Digital music consolidation: Adding your music
Even the most cherished music file collections can suffer neglect if enjoying them starts to feel like work. Streaming services vie to take their place with easier access and snazzy apps but sometimes finding our favorite music requires navigating an ever-changing series of clicks to break through the blockade of service generated content.
And while most streaming apps boast millions upon millions of tracks, many of us can still rattle off a short list of essential albums, singles, collections, soundtracks, box sets, and rarities that haven’t hit streaming—and perhaps never will.
Beyond that, our personal file collections are important for other reasons. Their contents resonate in our hearts and memories, symbolizing major landmarks and exciting adventures that echo across our music journey.
They represent an ideal seedbed for new discoveries and future explorations. Roon uses them to flex a captivating array of features that remind us why we became music lovers in the first place. Many customers tell us they listen to their file collections more often thanks to Roon!
Roon makes adding your music files easy and can watch multiple storage locations at the same time. This article includes everything you need for adding your music files as described below!
1. Initial Setup Import: Most new users install Roon on the Mac or Windows laptop where their music files live. A few steps into getting set up, a familiar file browser helps you add those files with just a few clicks.
Some folks skip this step, fearful of frustrations and disappointments experienced with other software. Don’t worry, Roon has simplified and improved importing. We encourage you to jump right in, you’ll be happy you did! Your files will be ready and waiting for you, neatly organized and gleaming with fresh metadata once you’ve completed the setup process. You can always add them later if you decide to skip it for now and jump ahead.
2. Drag and Drop Simplicity: For the ultimate in convenience simply drag music files directly into the Roon app. Roon will offer to copy these files to your configured storage location. It’s like tossing your favorite ingredients straight into a musical stew!
3. Connect an external storage drive: Talk about fast, easy, and wired for sound. Connect a USB drive full of music to your Roon Server, configure it in Settings>Storage and you’re all set. Badda-bing, badda-tunes!
A few important things to remember when using an external drive for music storage:
- Roon needs to have consistent access to the external drive whenever you want to play music from it.
- If you disconnect the drive, those files won’t be available until you reconnect it.
- For best performance, connect via USB 3.0 or higher if possible.
4. Watched Folders: Want Roon to automatically add any new music you put in a folder? Set up a watched folder and let Roon take care of the rest. Roon’s music scouts will be on the lookout for new tunes and get right down to business scanning, identifying and grabbing juicy details for your music. Here’s a detailed guide on setting them up. You can even fine tune options for importing playlists.
5. Network Storage (NAS): Is your music lounging on a NAS drive or other shared folder on your home network? No problem, use these instructions to connect it to Roon.
6. Nucleus and ROCK Internal Storage: Our dedicated turnkey Nucleus Music Servers and do-it-yourself ROCK kit provide additional Roon music storage benefits. I installed a 4TB internal storage drive in my Nucleus Titan and simply drop music files in it over my home network. It’s a seamless process and by far my favorite way to add my own music files to Roon.
Centralized music collection: Combining streaming and personal music libraries
To really get the most out of Roon, and witness everything it can do, we highly recommend adding a streaming library. Combining streaming and personal music is our customers’ favorite—creating a custom library that unlocks an even more personalized platform for expanding your musical horizons.
As music lovers, we’re fortunate to live in a time when music is so plentiful and easily accessible. Syncing a streaming service in Roon immediately plugs customers into what I call the vast web of sound. It lets you explore and stream untold millions of lossless and Hi-Res tracks. It also means 24/7 access to an unrivaled array of recordings when using Roon ARC on the go.
Once you sync your TIDAL, Qobuz, or KKBOX membership, Roon’s rich features are applied to those immense catalogs delivering expert recommendations, featured albums, daily mixes, and a Roon Radio experience informed by an intimate understanding of your listening history and the interconnected storylines surrounding the music you love.
1. Linking Your Accounts: Connect one or more TIDAL, Qobuz, or KKBOX accounts by visiting Settings → Services. Enter your credentials and suddenly a practically limitless all-encompassing palette of music appears at your fingertips!
2. The Best of Both Worlds: Once connected, streaming tracks are seamlessly integrated with your personal collection. Unlike other players, Roon doesn’t discriminate—a great song is a great song, whether it comes from your hard drive or the cloud. Your streaming and personal files are equally treated to the same rich presentation.
Radio revolution: Rediscover the airwaves
Sometimes it’s nice to sit back and let someone else spin the music. Roon’s got internet radio covered too — consult this guide to add radio stations to your Roon music library!
1. Browse Suggestions: Not sure where to start? Roon’s team of international volunteer radio curators hand select stations across genres and countries. Explore these suggestions from the Live Radio tab to discover an incredibly diverse tapestry of mesmerizing sounds.
2. Add your own favorite stations in a snap: Already have favorite internet or local streaming radio stations? Add them to Roon using the instructions linked at the beginning of this section!
3. Create Live Radio Presets: Found a few new stations you love while browsing? Save them as presets for quick access whenever the radio mood strikes.
Keep it tidy: Maintaining your music
As you get acclimated to Roon and begin to discover all the ways it can help manage your music collection you may want to do some housekeeping or explore advanced library options.
Head to our Knowledge Base and check out our articles on Managing your Library for a self-paced master class on Roon’s advanced collection handling. Or join the discussion at our Roon Community forum — where our gracious power users are always happy to help newcomers learn the ropes.
All-in-one music management, at last
Your Roon library is a living, breathing interwoven tapestry of sound that grows and evolves with your musical tastes. Whether you’re looking for a music library software solution that handles it all, importing cherished local files, elevating streaming to its full potential, uniting them both, or tuning into radio from around the world, Roon brings it all together in one beautiful, cohesive and captivating experience.
For anyone who’s struggled with finding the best way to organize digital music collections spanning multiple sources and formats, Roon offers that elusive unified solution. But adding music to Roon isn’t just about building a collection — it’s about honoring your personal music journey and cultivating the soundtrack to your life with the care it deserves. So come along, fill your Roon library with the sounds that move you, and let all new audio adventures unfold!
Ready for Roon to transform your music library and listening experience? Start your Free Roon Trial today!