Having a separate app for mobile with different features and interface is needlessly complicated and annoying. Roon is a streaming service that you host on your own equipment. It consists of the streaming server (RoonCore), the end-points where music is played, and the control application. RoonARC breaks this model and tries (and fails) at being the control and end-point.
The better solution for playing music from mobile devices should be about connecting those devices back to RoonCore using a secure tunnel and and provide RAAT end-points. ROCK already supports TailScale to enable this and is being used by more savy technical users.
Basically, we just need RoonBridge for multiple platforms (Android, iOS, MacOS, Windows) that tunnels back to your RoonCore. Then ANY end-point device can be played using the regular Roon application. It also would allow Roon to focus on development for a single codebase and not have to have a separate team working on a platform (mobile apps) that changes frequently and is difficult to deliver consistent and reliable interfaces. It’s literally a win-win-win solution.
I’d even be fine with RoonBridge requiring a Roon subscription to use, if it managed the tunnel, keys, and authentication. This would make a seamless experience and also could be justified because Roon should be paid for for the infrastructure and development. The biggest plus to this would be basically adding millions of new “Roon Ready” devices to the Roon eco-system overnight. Roon would immediately become the biggest thing since the iPod.
I’m not sure Roon is for you. Of your 14 post on this site, all are about what Roon does not do. Maybe there is some other app that would work better for you?
I’m happy with Roon, but I see how it could so much more. What’s wrong with providing suggestions on improving it. I’m literally telling Harmon how to build the next iPod for free.
I’m posting here for discussion, so that I can educate and build support among other Roon users. As you already pointed out, I’ve been posting improvement ideas in the feature request forums as well. Sometimes people need to be shown what is possible before you can build support for it and get action from huge companies to deliver.
There are basically two types of media consumers-
Those that want to collect their media and play that same media repeatedly and always have access to the media they purchased.
Those that don’t care about owning or collecting and just want to “tune-in” and have someone else choose the programming and select between the “channels”.
The Streaming companies have clearly got the first audience down, and Roon is supporting them by having their services integrated into their platform. The second group is the group that started Roon and were the original people looking for a better self-hosted streaming service of their own library. These are the people that used to have 10,000 songs on their iPods, or hundreds of records. This crowd has been DYING to find something as easy to use as the iPod/iTunes but with modern quality and works on modern devices. The first company that delivers a product for this need will become the largest player in the music space for music collectors. It’s exactly the market for high-end audio that Harmon aims to build products and sell for…
RoonBridge on modern devices would enable this easily, quickly, and make things easier for Harmon. RoonARC is just a distraction and doomed to fail.
I quite like RoonARC, after some initial teething issues it is working really well for me and my use case. I don’t necessarily understand the reason for two distinct applications, but I do recognise that Roon has chosen to go down that route.
I also understand how frustrating it must be if it doesn’t work, so I wish everyone well for future improvements.
RoonARC has never worked for me, ever. However, I’ve got Roon Ready devices in my RV that use tunneling back to my RoonCore that work perfectly. I’ve even got it working over Starlink so that it is always connected. I basically have the Room home experience while in my vehicle and I feel that if others had that option they would definitely choose it over RoonARC.
People complain already that ARC buffering 5 tracks is not enough and using RAAT instead will make it break down immediately if cell service is not great, because RAAT is not designed for this at all.
Arc buffer 5 tracks? Doesn’t seem to be more than 1-2 for me as of leaving office whilst it’s going it will two track as Flac before switching over to opus. Where is this documented?
Wouldn’t you always need a different interface for something like Apple CarPlay or Android Auto? I don’t think the standard Roon interface would work well in these situations.
I’ve got my RoonCore music share mounted on my Plex server and PlexAmp works so much better that I totally gave up on RoonARC.
I basically am using Roon for high quality playback when I’m on a dedicated high-speed Internet connection and listening to playlists that I’ve already curated or prepared.
I use PlexAmp if I need offline downloads and stable playback over unstable networks, sonically similar tracks played from an initial seed song, and evaluating new music. This has worked great for me since around August of this year. PlexAmp supports rating each track with a 1-5 star rating which is critical to my evaluating new music and making playlists for DJ sets. Even if RoonARC suddenly worked great, I’d not switch back to it unless smart playlists and rating per track and genre per track were supported and the sonically similar (“radio”) feature is vastly improved. Oh and Plex has TLS encryption on all the traffic and supports 2FA authentication, which sort of is a basic security minimum these days.
I’ll will relent on RoonARC needing to die, because I now understand that people are using it for the purposes that I replaced it with PlexAmp (or rather returned to PlexAmp). It just needs to be improved to work as well as PlexAmp as most people don’t want to have to have multiple methods to access their music libraries. My anger about it being unable to do that might have made me pretty biased against it, in hindsight.
I still think there needs to be RAAT end-points for common platforms so that Roon can be used as a bridge to existing hifi systems without needing to buy an expensive DAC/streamer. Most people just can’t afford to drop $250+ for a RAAT end-point. I’ve got 4x WiiM Pros and an ARCAM ST60 but music is a huge part of my life.
Yes…I can mirror this with my personal experience. In pre arc days, I did use WireGuard to get Roon working in car. It worked well as proof of concept but the latency in the (then) 4g Network of my country, made it unusable for most part.
And if it’s not RAAT, then arc is the right way… the argument could be for a better (different) ui. But roon remote is going well now. I would not want it to become another ARC in terms of clunkiness, even for a transient period.
Roon and Roon Bridge were designed and built for use across a local network using the Roon proprietary RAAT protocol. They have been around since the beginning of Roon and are constantly being upgraded and enhanced.
Roon ARC was a totally separate endeavor that has been around a few years for mobile use primarily over cellular, but also WIFI. The intent of Roon ARC is not for local, at home use, but for use while away from your local Roon server.
If Roon were starting from scratch, it might make sense to combine these applications into one, but at this point, that makes no sense. My desire if for Roon to continue to improve both as they see fit to meet their business goals.
Personally, Roon server, Roon, and Roon ARC all work well for me and my use case. I hope Roon will keep Roon ARC as light and simple as possible and not bog it down with more and more features that require more cellular bandwidth and data usage. I would like to see a version of Roon ARC for laptop computers.
I like Roon ARC, but I can’t fathom Roon wanting to develop two separate apps except as an intermediate solution. For the end user, it sucks no? Compare to the networking experience you get with PlexAMP: it just works, whether you are at home, or on the go, on your phone, or on your desktop. Connectivity wise, it is seamless. I can’t imagine Roon, being the high-end platform that it is, aspiring for anything less.
I really hope that ARC is Roon’s PoC for a next-gen Roon client. Looking at the software stack they chose (Flutter, Dart), it certainly looks like that.
I’m confused by this discussion. ARC needs to be standalone because it’s a mobile app. Just like PlexAmp, Roon should be able to build ARC as good or better. I’m in the same boat as you and hopefully Roon is capable enough to compete. It would prob help if they didn’t waste time on things like OPRA. Product acronyms can be goofy, but this one takes the cake and hopefully they find a better product leader who can focus on competing with Plex and Apple.
Plexamp isn’t only a mobile app, it can cast to other Plexamp endpoints within the home.
I’m guessing you’re not a headphone user, if you were you’d realise OPRA is far from a waste of time.
I should say OPRA is relatively a waste of time. I have a ton of headphones and appreciate the different sound signatures. I played around with the DSP in the past that was rebranded as MUSE (also lame product marketing fluff from my POV) and you could do everything that OPRA does with a tiny bit of effort already which I did. I always felt that you’d kill a bit of the frequency response you could get out of your gear using these tools, so I prefer bit perfect and good gear to produce the desired sound.
l also would very much prefer a working mobile app from Roon as good or better than Plexamp.
