Hi everyone, my ARC continues to be unstable. With an iPhone 13 with 4 GB RAM and a large 700k [track] library. ARC loads fine and updates the library fairly quickly, but after a while, which can be hours or days, it starts to heat up the phone like a hotplate, freezes, and the only way to get it working again is to uninstall and reinstall it. So what’s the problem?
It’s a poor program, poorly written, since programs like Synology DS Audio or Plex work very well regardless of the size of the library. Or it’s a problem with the phone’s RAM or processor.
But then again: isn’t it absurd that an app depends on the size of the library?
Please, Roon, fix this application and make it decent for a normal user. In the end, we pay!
Thanks.
Now that I’ve read Connor’s response, would it be fair to say the design of Roon and Arc is flawed if its performance is limited by the quantity of tracks a user has. The software after all is only music.
I had wondered for a while how long Arc will work well for me. iPhone 16 Pro Max, with 8gb of RAM. my local library is now 130k tracks and grows weekly at different rates.
If the figures are anything to go from, 100-200k tracks for 4gb RAM suggests I can increase this to 250-300k tracks before potentially seeing issues.
As @guimx mentions, Plex/PlexAmp works with high track counts.
I’m starting to realize that there are just major design flaws with Roon, particularly with ARC. The underlying code quality is not as robust as it should be.
I don’t know. My first request for ARC when it was announced was the ability to edit metadata on the go, and have it synced back to the server. I don’t know if they have planned for this in the future, but in this case it would immediately stop being just music.
(Edit: And you already have crosslinks for credits, genres, and others, so it’s already not “just music”)
I also think people have to be a little realistic. Tidal has a 10,000 favorites limit probably for a reason, and people expect 70 times as much to work in Roon on a phone.
I have approximately 200000 tracks. And had all of this in Roon but found the performance, especially in Roon to not be the greatest. Mind you this was over a year ago and a lot of performance improvements have occurred.
I had probably really only listened to a quarter of these tracks, so about a year ago I changed what I have in Roon. Have just over 50000 tracks now and add new albums every week. Either new stuff or stuff from my 200k library that hasn’t made it in to Roon yet.
I find Arc almost flawless now (except offline mode - that needs to improve). And Roon works great (no lagging etc).
I don’t think a 700k track library is a “normal user”. I could be wrong? I have thousands of tracks - but nothing close to your library - and ARC is pretty much flawless. I use it daily for commuting and running.
Shock Test! I had an old Samsung S8 with 4 GB of RAM (2017 Model), and I reactivated it. I updated to the latest Android software available (version 9), installed ARC, and it synced to the Roon Rock server in the same time it takes with the iPhone 13. The sync was completely successful, which means everything is fine. So far, it’s been running smoothly for 1 hour with CD quality settings. The only problem is that the phone heats up quite a bit, although less than the iPhone when it freezes. It also drains battery like crazy. But the app doesn’t crash, and music sounds great. So, in the next few days, I’ll be testing ARC intensively on the Samsung S8 to see if it freezes. I should point out that so far, the test has only been done with a data connection (obviously not 5G, but an old LTE 4G+). Android tells me that the ARC app’s average RAM usage is around 260 MB, while the maximum has reached 1.4 GB, and the frequency is around 40%. If it were to run for days without a hitch, it would mean that the file size has nothing to do with it, nor does the RAM, nor the data transfer capacity… but perhaps the ability to program for iPhones? Also, I wonder why the phone gets so hot?
It continues to run flawlessly after 2 hours, the system reports 465 MB average RAM consumption and 1.4 GB RAM maximum consumption, 72% maximum RAM frequency…
I have about the same number of tracks. For a time ARC was working and I was able to download about 50 albums for offline listening [which is my only need when I am waiting for someone at a restaurant and only want one device with me] but it was painfully slow and months ago I gave up trying to sync my iPhone 15 Pro with it. Fortunately, I have an AK SP 3000 to listen to albums from my library downloaded onto an SD card when I’m walking the dog.
Hi, I’ve read some of your discussions in the past about the same issue. While the Samsung S8 is still running without any issues, I’ll be trying it out these days, even away from home, for running.
Since you also have an iPhone, initial findings suggest ARC can’t run on an iPhone system with a large library, but it can on Android. This would be serious and would mean that the Roon/ARC engineers aren’t capable of making the app compatible with iPhone (and for large libraries, that’s probably impossible, considering how iPhone manages system resources).
Unfortunately, in this case, either you’ll have to change your device and go with Android, or the ARC team will have to seriously work on iPhone.
The comparison with Tidal’s limitation doesn’t seem very relevant to me, Roon is another type of service more similar to Plexi or Synology’s DS Audio, to evaluate Tidal mobile you have to compare it with Qobuz, Spotify, etc.
Of course it’s not literally the same. If anything, Roon will require more resources than Tidal because it does more, generally and in particular locally.
Same goes for Plexamp. You’d have to do a feature by feature comparison. For starters, as far as I can tell, Plexamp only reads (one) Artist and (one) Album Artist, it doesn’t read any other fields and you can’t click a credit on an album to jump to other works by this artist. This alone is a huge amount of data that ARC needs to manage for a 700k tracks library.
The point remains that a little realism is in order when running huge libraries on NUCs and phones that are several times as large as what the Roon specifications recommend. And as you found, the phone OS and hardware may well have an influence as well, with iOS and Android perhaps managing things differently.
Anyway, you got that answer already just a month ago, and Roon is working on improvements, but such things can’t be changed in a matter of weeks.
I have thousands of tracks - but nothing close to your library - and ARC is pretty much flawless. I use it daily for commuting and running.