When I use ARC on my iPhone and an external DAC then ARC plays bitperfect. But on my Android smartphone it can´t bypass the internal audio as it seems. Bit perfect is not possible. Is this correct? Why?
Yes because the Android Audio path used doesn’t support bit perfect it and it never has. The OS will resample to 48k by default so Roon does this before as it does a better job of it. They are looking at the more recent updates to Androids audio and how other apps tend to get round this so it can allow bitperfect but not in this version and likely not a small undertaking. Its a full time job for devs of Apps that bypass system audio on Android to keep them up to date and keep working, Roon has a lot more going on than any of those so needs to allocate its resources wisely. Currently Roon goes the most stable path thats supported by most devices.
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Sigh. This is unfortunately the sad state of audio on Android. I wish Google would realize that audio is the most important thing for a phone. After all, its primary function is to make phone calls so audio quality should be the top priority. I don’t want to be relegated to purchasing a boring iPhone just to have bit perfect audio. All that being said, the audio quality isn’t bad, so I just live with it. If I want bit perfect, I just listen to my 2 channel setup in the living room.
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Yes, but it somewhat makes ARC irrelevant for Android. Why use ARC instead of Tidal own app for example.
Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon Music, Apple Music and many audio players (UAPP, Neutron, Poweramp…) all support high resolution audio on Android. I have never understood why Roon doesn’t make any effort to bring in the user base of Android DAPs and modern phones.
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If you dont subscribe to Tidal want to play your own versions of albums and albums that just dont exist on streaming platforms. Also not everyone is hung up and precious on this and I am hard pressed to tell ant difference to files played over UPnP on my DAP which are bit perfect or Roon which resamples all to 44.1k> most use cases this is music on the move where there is tons of background noise anyway, I wont snub it if they do it but hey, tidal only recently added this after many many years without. They likely have a much bigger team to.
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Amazon music always resampled on my DAP as does PlexAmp, on phones they all pretty much resample still except Tidal but even thats limited. On my Pixel 4 I could not get Tidal to play bit perfect. Roons currently playing safe as it will work the same and reliably on all Android platforms but they are looking into it. I can imagine the support tickets for each and every dac out there will be horrendous, UAPP is updated all the time to cope and thats pretty much all that ever changes on it. DAPS are fixed hardware that have an OS specially modified to bypass androids limitations and each DAP does it differently. So again a support headache. But i get it I want it to but its not the end of the world every Android user seems to make out.
How come ARC do not resample on an iPhone? What makes it possible on iOS but not on an Android. When I connect an external DAC it plays bitpefrect (The apple dongle is only 48 khz, so when using an Apple dongle i resamples)
To keep things simple. I would never use Tidal because you can’t purchase Hi-Res music. MQA is a joke in my opinion. I’d rather use Qobuz. I personally like to buy the albums that I like and store them on my Nucleus and then download them on ARC. My entire library fits on my phone so I don’t have to use cellular data. That way I don’t have to use multiple music apps. Previously, I used PowerAmp for when I was in the car and Roon Remote for when I was at home. Now I just use ARC for both.
Fair enough. You are correct about Amazon Music, I forgot it resamples to 192 kHz on my DAPs. Oddly, Roon resamples everything to 384 kHz on my M11 Plus but not on other DAPs. You can trick it sometimes by playing a high-res track before starting Roon Remote as well.
The operating system, supplied by Apple or Android, dictates how software interacts with the media library of that OS. Apple does bit perfect. Android resamples everything to 48khz. Why Android continues to do this is bewildering to most of us but that’s what they do.
The Android media issue… There are ways around it but it requires building custom audio paths to bypass the OS mixer. Some applications have done this. Roon has not. It’s good they did not withhold ARC because of this but I expect it is on their roadmap.
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Having both remote library access and bit perfect playback via ARC on my Android DAP would be Nirvana. I hope they work the Android issue with high priority.
Ask Android its a limitation of their OS that Apple doesnt have if you use a USB audio device it does without.
Mine its 44.1 but up to 24bit. Which covers 95% of my music.
Several android music players bypass the OS limits and provide high res original output, including the FIIO player you can use with the BTR5 and BTR7. I hope that Roon will decide to go this route in the future. They might be able to license the code and/or drivers from someone already doing it.
Everybody interested in this topic please vote here:
Hi-Res on Android? UAPP integration? - Roon Software / Feature Suggestions - Roon Labs Community
The blue vote button is on the very top of the page:
I know I have one and have used UAPP. I am saying what the state of play is on normal Android which roon runs under not a bespoke audio path.
Seems arc for android that bypasses the system resampling is on the way, according to Brian from Roon
I haven’t tried ARC on my AK SP-3000 [Android 9] but have been told that an iPhone [and therefore Car Play in a Porsche with a Burmerster system] are limited to 24/48
I have tried ARC on sp3000, and it’s resampling so not bit perfect