the full win would also include 2 instances of readarr, once for ebooks and one for audio books, whisparr for your 18+ needs, stash for your 18+ needs frontend, and I think audiobookshelf and kavita to play the audiobooks and ebooks respectively. If you're into comics you might also want to throw mylar3 in there and if you have multiple users (aka a spouse and/or offspring) you may want to throw ombi in there too.
For Radarr, it's for cleaner separation and easier automation. Also, keep in mind that you cannot have the same movie with two qualities on the same instance.
My 4K instance has one root path (different from non-4K) and one quality profile that's auto-selected by default. Using the Radarr connect option, I have a quality profile on the non-4K instance that automatically adds the movie to the 4K instance. This way, you can ensure you have both 4K and non-4K copies of certain movies (e.g., for external access/transcoding). You also ~never need to actually interact with the 4K instance. See this page for details: https://trash-guides.info/Radarr/Tips/Sync-2-radarr-sonarr/
For Sonarr, it's also for separation, but less of an issue if you're on Sonarr v4. The one thing you gain even on v4 is the ability to have different quality definitions for anime and non-anime content. See: https://trash-guides.info/Sonarr/Sonarr-Quality-Settings-Fil...
There are anime specific trackers that are better for downloading anime from, especially if you're looking for non-English subs, but radarr doesn't have a way to tell it to use a specific tracker for a particular series, so having a separate radarr instance with only those trackers on it ensures it downloads from them everytime.
Pretty sure the 4k thing is a hard limitation due to not being able to select the same root path or something. I don't remember tbh.
For anime first time I've heard that suggestion but anime in general is super annoying to download due to not having real seasons or whatever often. Wonder how it helps..
I have a separate radarr for anime because there's are anime specific trackers that are much better for downloading anime, especially if you are looking for non-English subs, but radarr doesn't have a way to pick a specific tracker to download a particular series from. So my anime radarr instance only has those specific trackers on it so it will download from them everytime.
With anime people are wayyy picker about release groups because they come part and parcel with fanmade translated subtitles, preference for which track is the default for dual-language releases, are all the honorifics written out, etc.
You either have to commit those preferences to a tag that you try to remember to put on everything (fiddly), or you just commit to them being on everything you download regardless of whether or not it is anime, which can cause weird selections when sonarr is sourcing western media.
Jesus christ. Thank you for the Unpackerr recommendation, that was pissing me off, but jesus christ.
I’d pay an extra $10/mo for my seedbox to have just a single interface for all of this without having to manage all these independent apps. Trying to debug why sonarr->prowlarr->flaresolvrr don’t work is a nightmare. That reminds me:
- flaresolverr: proxy that handles cloudflare bot checks for torrent trackers that are starting to put it up
Haha yeah, it can be definitely become a rabbit hole if you have the interest and time :)
I think the base setup of Radarr + Sonarr + SABnzbd/qBittorrent + Prowlarr is a huge improvemenet over doing things manually. A lot stuff on top of that is helpful, but the benefit vs. effort ratio diminishes quite quickly.
I haven't had to setup Flaresolverr just yet, but might do that soon.
I set up radarr + sonarr after a few years of doing it manually. Really glad I did — adding something from my phone and then having it pop into plex on my tv is delightful.
Readarr is weird. Turned it off after I started get messages from it saying it was deleting my ebooks. I don't know why it can't just work like Sonarr.
Indeed there are probably multiple paths to the full win. I like to use airsonic-advanced to feed music to my legacy sonos systems (can somebody please make an easy to use, pretty opensource alternative to the sonos multiroom software stack that can output to hifiberry's or ideally a cheaper alternative? even better would be an included best at each price level alternative speaker to double sided tape the hifiberry to). I also prefer to use beets and a cron job to convert my whole music collection into decent quality opus files and syncthing to get them onto my phone rather than using a frontend and mobile data to stream the flac files from my house.
Prowlarr is a deitysend. Instead of having to configure indexers in Sonarr, it does the heavy lifting for you. Goes in, configures an indexer, and that's your search setup done.
Prowlarr is also important if you do multiple *arr. Sonarr, Radarr, Readarr. instead of configuring your indexers (multiple) in multiple places? You point the searches at Prowlarr and then keep it updated.
I personally run a fairly modified version HTPC on a QNAP (was synology but upgraded earlier this year - better base board + dedicated graphics card)
I use the full stack and all very grateful for the products.
The remaining annoyances are:
- lack of multi language support
- there is no connection between the systems when you want to remove a movie (you remove it in one place and everything knows about that and acts accordingly)
- I still did not make to fully grasp how and where to say "I do not want this particular release". I think I saw that in radarr but it never is obvious to me where it is.
Yeah I was initially surprised when learning about the *arr stack for the first time, as my intuition was very insistently telling me: "I must be gettint it wrong, these ought to be all a single service!!"
They all definitely feel like small parts of a single package, don't look like they merit being their own thing. But it's not my thing, so what do I know.
I have no idea why Radar and Sonarr are seperate programs. Surely the difference in searching for Movies vs TV is a single line of a query search string.
Honestly I just think the concept of Son/Radarr doesn't translate well to music, I find Lidarr fiddly in general.
In particular I'd add to your list that the overnight scans to update cover art are an absolute mess. It's not so big a deal on my libraries in Sonarr and Radarr, but for Lidarr? Jesus Christ. I have reasonably sized music library (~400/500 gig), and every night Lidarr starts phoning out to check, for every single album and artist, whether the associated cover art or artist image has changed. This takes hours, and is completely unnecessary, and cannot be turned off. I've resorted to just blocking the addresses it does this on, but this breaks things when I try and use it to add new music.
> there is no connection between the systems when you want to remove a movie (you remove it in one place and everything knows about that and acts accordingly)
Not following this. Settings -> Connections in Sonarr for example.
What I meant is that there is no common management of dat. When I make changes in one service, the others do not know it, or know it after the fact (via a reindexing for instance).
Say for instance I delete a movie in Jellyfin. Radarr will then pick up that it is missing and re-upload.
Or that I deleted a torrent in deluge. Radar will restart it.
Most of the things are doable, one just need to know what to do where, exactly (otherwise the other pieces may try to recover).
Right now I am making the chnages in Radarr (despite actually seeing them in Jellyfin). This is a real problem when I have, say, two uploaded versions of a movie and want to keep only one. I have to be very careful to track down in JF what I will remove in Radarr.
It would have been great if there was a common indexing mechanism across all the suite.
What you pointed me are notifiers - they work fine (but are shoot-and-forget kind of services)