I don’t want to give the secret sauce away too early, but stuff you like and listen to gets prioritized. SDL is meant to be more of a “stuff I like just appears” feature. If it’s precision you’re after, I recommend using tags and download all!
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We like secret sauce, Roon flavoured 
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I think this could be expanded to newly manually downloaded items as well.
I have not enabled Smart Downloads.
I’ve been playing around, so I probably erased proof that this actually happened. With ARC 222, I started with 0 downloads. I got to a point where I had downloaded about 90 albums. Around that time, I started doing multiple actions - download / remove from queue while downloading / delete album while downloading.
I then focused on deleting albums. The “Remove XX downloaded albums from device” seemed to be stuck and I don’t think it removed anything. I also could not individually remove one of the last (maybe the last) albums I downloaded. I was able to individually remove all other albums. It seemed to me that it was just the one album that was causing problems. I think at that point, even “Reset Roon ARC” seemed to do nothing.
I “fixed” things by going into the Android app settings and pushing “Cleare cache” and “Clear Storage”. I may have also restarted my Nucleus+.
Thanks for the rigorous testing! Glad to hear things have improved 
How are you checking this? I currently have ARC open and am switching the DL quality settings from the settings page and it seems to be taking on the SDL page. 
Right, a new manual download does show the format info.
If most downloads are FLAC 44.1 then the sort order within this format, if sorting by format, still makes no sense to me. But maybe it follows some order that I just don’t see because I just downloaded 30 GB in one session a few days ago
Ok, I just got a different result than I was expecting. Changing from Downloads > Smart Download page synced back to settings, which I thought didn’t work.
However, I think I narrowed it down. It may be a refresh and/or timing issue. From the settings page click Smart Download - Settings. Change it there and then hit the “back arrow” in ARC to go immediately back to the settings. It doesn’t match but leave the settings and come back and it does.
I just did that very quickly and I need to leave, so I’ll double check later if that is accurate. As a side note, I “reset” various things this morning. I’ll explain later in another post what I mean about that.
6 posts were split to a new topic: Blank screen in Roon ARC after updating to build #222
I did a test: disabled smart downloads and re-enabled them.
That started download process and this time only 9 albums were downloaded. More or less the same set as previously without 1 album. Logo changed colour, so process seems to be finished.
Does that mean that I like only those 9-10 albums?
Why did I pay for all the others ??? !
Rightio, back on EA for Roon Server and Arc.
Battery set for unrestricted to ensure background use possible.
Smart Downloads are very slow for me.
Happy to implement changes on my end if you can suggest any, full Unifi network.
The secret sauce is just downloading my recent listens.
Been up and running for approx an hour maybe, and 7 albums downloaded.
I’ll try an iPhone for comparison
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Update:
- to eliminate my Unifi network with the older USG being a possible cause, I took down the network.
Put in place my Google WiFi equipment. Retained my Unifi switches but reset to factory and setup 3 of Google WiFi nodes with ethernet backhaul.
Downloads are marginally, but noticeably quicker.
May look to upgrade my USG
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initial login remains quicker than previously experience since the launch of Arc
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the secret sauce is downloading more than recently listened to
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background downloads do appear to be happening now (Android)
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reducing my phone’s font sizing has made Smart Downloads text fully visible. Although my phone’s text is now smaller than I like. Can you look to reduce the font sizing in the app so this isn’t required to make it fit correctly.
Reduce text size on phone, not how I want it
Font size as I want it on my phone (increase of one in Samsung A54 settings)
Roon 2.0 B1355 ROCK Core on NUC10i3
ARC B222 on iPhone 12 Pro, iOS 17.1.2
The update went smoothly on my core and remotes but I can’t get Smart Downloads to initiate, I think I have it set up correctly:
Edit: I’ve seen the message in my screenshot saying SD only works on WiFi! Why? I have unlimited data so I should have the option to use mobile data, please
I added Qobuz to Roon last night and turned on Smart Downloads, but set to balanced as no need for lossless with Bluetooth headphones whilst away this weekend.
Put phone on charge.
Woke up. No downloads from my own library.
Left the house and Arc lost contact with Roon Server. Reset the app. Now playing again.
Now travelling, and allowing downloads over mobile data and Smart Downloads isn’t working.
Having to do manual downloads, which are fairly quick, in balanced mode I’d expect this.
So bugs seem to be
- Smart Downloads didn’t work after adding Qobuz
- Arc lost connection with RS despite being setup the night before correctly
- Smart Downloads doesn’t appear to work with mobile data allowed
Like others my smart downloads is limited to a few albums.
ARC isn’t showing up in my Android Auto, I’ll rest my AA wireless dongle when I’m finished driving for the day and see if that brings it back.
The ability to go on and offline without having to restart the app is good. It’s in marginal reception when I toggled it that it used to crap out and need a reinstall.
As in a previous comment, I really like that Arc seems capable of apparently effortlessly continuing a streamed and subsequently paused album playback using (smart) downloads.
but 
…
With possibly a bit of schizophrenia in my thinking and preferences, I just noted that when I start to stream an album, this is clearly encouragement for Arc to download it, storage allowing. This in itself strikes me as fine and reasonable, but the result is that one or two track later into the album, rather than streaming now the local copies are queued for playback.
Why don’t I like this very much?
For reasons of download speed and on-device storage limitations, I prefer to choose the lossy, most compressed format (Opus). In contrast, I prefer set my streaming to ‘best quality’, typically have a good WiFi or 5G connection when using Arc, and my files tend to be 44/16 uncompressed.
In my thinking it should in scenarios like this be possible (and the default) to continue the requested higher quality stream, whenever possible, unless there is a same or higher quality on-device download. After all, I asked for the full fat version!
As it is, I don’t think I can access my - potentially higher quality version (at-home or on streaming service) at all, as long as a downloaded version exists.
Would a playback preference toggle (prefer download / streaming / highest quality) make sense here? Maybe more elegant solutions exist.
Disclaimer: my 50+ years old ears and crappy earbuds are unlikely to ever truly worry about any of this. But mileage may vary for other Roonies and setups …
Well, yesterday I added a new ripped CD to the ROCK and played it a few times at home. Can’t recall that I did much if anything with ARC to have it in the foreground since then, but just now I saw that the new album had been smart downloaded anyway somehow. Loving this feature already.
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I bought several albums yesterday and played them, but I have not been into ARC until just now. As soon as I opened ARC it started to download the albums which is neat. It also downloaded a number that I would not want but I removed those and swapped a few from being smart downloads to full downloads which is also a useful feature
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Just to say, THANK YOU! for all of you Early Access testers.
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I hadn’t seen that option. Neat, thanks for pointing it out
I hadn’t seen it mentioned and I found it by accident on my first testing session.
Finally ARC looks to be making some real progress towards being a good experience and these underpinnings and newfound reliability are huge progress.
Let’s hope it continues this way
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I was able to confirm that if I go to Settings > Smart Download - Settings and change the quality, it is not immediately reflected under the main Settings quality when I hit the back arrow (upper left). Leaving the main settings and coming back refreshes the quality to match.
The “reset” I mentioned in my previous post involved resetting the Roon database and restoring from a freshly created backup. I also clicked “Clear cache” and “Clear Storage” in the Android app settings for both Roon Remote and ARC on my Pixel. Finally, I removed all entries (around 10) from the MobileSync directory after the database restore, but before starting ARC.
[Note: I’m okay if I completely break everything and need to rebuild from scratch, including my library. Try at your own risk. 
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