Update: With the Samsung S8 and 700K+ tracks, we’re getting 6/7 hours of use at home with only 4G+ network at 99% in Bluetooth with various devices such as headphones and in-ears and the portable Flip 6 speaker. I did a few reboots to recharge the battery and I only had 2 small problems: 1) on 2/3 discs (both from NAS and Qobuz) it happened that the next track did not continue automatically but it was necessary to select it. 2) After ARC had been playing for a few hours on the Bluetooth of the Flip6 speaker, the signal started to drop (and I noticed that switching to direct playback from the phone returned the signal to normal). From that moment on, I switched from CD quality to “best automatic quality” playback and I haven’t had any more problems. Sometimes there is some very rare small lag in the app or some very brief and rare interruptions in playback, always in Bluetooth towards the in-ears. Android currently says average RAM usage (by ARC) is 1 GB, frequency is 95%, and maximum RAM usage is 1.7 GB. At this point, the only things missing are out-of-home use in the car and for running.
I should also point out that generally the ARC software remains normally fluid and so far I have never had to restart the phone or uninstall/reinstall due to malfunctions…
I agree, but at this point it seems like 700k tracks and an older phone running Android 9 aren’t a big deal. I’m posting this to try to constructively help the Roon engineers, not just as a criticism. This test with an older phone is taking a toll on me, too. Please understand… Thanks.
It’s indeed interesting how much better the old Samsung works.
Well, your first post‘s tone didn’t seem very constructive. By the way, feedback should go to Feedback. Roon staff doesn’t routinely monitor user discussions here under the Roon Software Discussion category.
Recently I tried to install ARC on my SP-3000 and there was a captcha issue that I’m told AK is working on; I’m also told that ARC works with the new model – SP 4000
Update: So, I tested the S8 by taking a drive around the city streets, and aside from a small initial issue where it reported “poor connection” (I rebooted to fix it), it remained stable, with acceptable heat, no crashes or overheating, no need to restart ARC, and the software ran smoothly for about an hour. Most of the time with the iPhone 13, ARC closes automatically, there are occasional interruptions in the music, the phone overheats, and can crash. Unfortunately, I can’t continue using my old Samsung S8, so the test ends now. I have some important conclusions to draw.
- What ARC/Roon support is reporting is incorrect. The width of the library doesn’t prevent even an older phone from working well. Therefore, the advice given to customers and the entire concept need to be reconsidered.
- There’s a major problem with the iPhone. ARC isn’t fully compatible with iPhones, and the problem probably gets worse with large libraries. However, this is a problem with the inability to make ARC suitable for iPhones, and this is incomprehensible. The iPhone is still the most popular smartphone on the planet. At this point, support and the engineers who work on ARC must kindly provide some explanations. Do they intend to improve things? Can we stick with our iPhones or do we have to change devices?
- Regarding the upcoming iPhone 17, what is Roon’s position? Will they make an effort to make the app fully compatible? Or do we have to buy a Samsung phone or another brand?
I’ll proceed by reporting the 3D to support; in the meantime, we’ll await a response. Thanks.
As mentioned already 
I’ve already reported this to customer support, but I’m also pointing out this thread I recently started here: ARC is not stable (very large library): what to expect from iPhone 17 Pro with 12 GB RAM, Test on Samsung S8 - #28 by Mr.Flibble
Thank you
To be fair, I was out running for 2 hours this evening with my iPhone 13, and ARC worked perfectly. I can’t figure out if there’s some variable that’s affecting it one way or the other. Could it also depend on the core’s performance, which isn’t always perfect? For the main app, I’ve never found any connection between the core’s state and its performance.
The term “would be serious” for the users that have 700,000 tracks, is a bit much no? What is that like 70,000 albums (going on 10 track per album)? I would say as a list of priorities if it works fine for people who have 100,000 tracks or less on an iPhone would make this problem a lower priority and not even a problem at all for most users. If you’re just outlining your observations it’s fine but to state it would be serious IMHO a bit dramatic.
You did an audit of roons code? Call me impressed
No need to troll, it’s just the number of bugs in ARC on Android. I’ve actually been providing feedback to them for a while and did an interview. And it’s just, at least on Android, something that could easily cause a car crash with Android Auto. There are bugs in Android Auto that make it fundamentally dangerous to use in a vehicle, where it should be safe.
Perhaps the experience on iOS/CarPlay is great and nothing to be concerned about, but on Android, and I’m talking about a Pixel device, so a reference Android device, Android Auto is fundamentally unsafe to use. I’m also someone who paid $700 for Roon. I made a significant investment, so I would hope I would be able to use it to its fullest extent, but unfortunately, this state on Android Mobile is something that could get me killed.
I’ve been reporting these bugs for probably a year now, and the major ones still have not been solved, and it’s at the point where I just don’t use ARC anymore. I do use the Roon client at home, and I also maintain a Roon Docker container that I have published on the Unraid Community Applications store. I’m very much invested in the platform. My disappointment lies in ARC on Android.
The ARC discussion is near to my heart, because I do half of my listening in the car. Up until sux months ago I had given up on ARC, but realized I could get it to work again once I restarted with a new library. I love having the Roon Radio on the road in particular.
That said, I’m disappointed that it isn’t more robust. I have about 600000 tracks, 15 TB library. As others have noted, Roon performance degrades over time, necessitating a reinstall.
I agree with mackid that the software is flawed. I don’t have to do a code survey to know that. It’s flawed because it doesn’t do everything it should/could do for its price.
I get the feeling that ARC suffers from being based on the underlying Roon software. The ARC server interface wants to retain a bunch of the same functionality as local app, which ends up over loading the phone cache with history or whatever metadata it needs.
As a user, I don’t use local functionality in Arc. All I care is that it plays my library, and plays Roon Radio after my selection is finished.
I can understand wanting full functionality in ARC, but it seems I could get my slimmed down functionality without going to the effort of having to create a special ARC optimized version of my library.
There are several possible solutions, that I would pursue, if I were troubleshooting this.
Examine the caching algorithm that is causing the slowdown and memory stress on the phone. You can’t have a caching solution that doesn’t clean up as it goes along. If you want the functionality of a personalized metadata library, put that data back on the server. I know this has been looked at in the past, as there used to be clear cache functionality in settings. It never worked, but I wonder if this wasn’t the problem that was trying to solve.
Failing optimization of caching, I would look at what makes ARC work better with smaller libraries. Is there a way to present a smaller library to Arc, virtually? Do thru software, what you are suggesting we do physically by creating a smaller Arc store. If that limits the functionality you want for Arc, you could make a “Large Library” setting for people who don’t care about full functionality.
At minimum, it would be great if I could set up my Arc library as a subset of my whole library. Have it be a different source, that I could have Arc use. But, physically be blended in to my Roon library, so I can manage it via metadata, versus physically moving it around myself.
Thanks to anyone who’s read thru all this.
My point is I just paid a lot of money for Roon, and I would expect to hopefully get full use out of the product. And right now I simply can’t on Android.
It simply comes down to a safety issue when I use it in the car, which is primarily my main use for it. Roon is wonderful in my home, but when I’m in the car, on the go, listening, I’m going to get into a crash. So I use Spotify.
It’s only because the Android Auto experience is so unreliable. I mean, I’ll get into the car and a five-minute song will be stuck playing for 10-15 minutes on the timer. And there is no way to restart the song and get back to a state where ARC is working without interacting with the phone.
Not to mention the situations where I’ll get out of the car and ARC will start blasting music out of my phone speaker, which has never happened once with Spotify or Qobuz. I’ve reported these issues, God, probably at the beginning of the year. I mean, they’re not major bugs. These are things that can be fixed. This is expensive software.
I mean, if Spotify HiFi ever comes to fruition, at this point in time, if they don’t get things under control, I’m probably just going to pay for that, use it everywhere, and use Plex for my local library, which has been incredibly reliable.
I paid a lot of money for this, and it’s disappointing that I can’t get full use out of it, and I truly hope that the team will be able to reorganize and fix this issue. Again, I can’t speak to the experience on iOS because I am not an iPhone user. I’m sure it’s much more stable, but again, I’m using a reference Android device. It’s a Pixel. That’s what they should be developing off of, for the most part. If a Pixel is totally broken. I can only imagine what the more obscure Android phones function like.
I would strongly favour of the idea of being able to present a smaller library to ARC virtually or otherwise
Yeah, the heating up can’t be good for the phone either.
My phone doesn’t heat up, I just mainly have a lot of long-standing reliability issues that need to be hopefully taken care of in the next couple of builds, or ARC 2.0, Roon 3.0, something like that.
Personally, I would love to see a Roon 3.0 that behaves more like Plex does, where it’s one app and you take it wherever you go. So I have the app on my laptop and I can go to work and play Roon at work and it’ll transcode based on the network connection, just like ARC does on mobile, same experience like we have now, but with the network stack of ARC built into the main Roon app, that would be wonderful. Plus, a little bit more reliability, but I think merging the two applications would solve a lot of problems because you have two teams working on two different apps, most likely.
I imagine having two separate apps really puts a damper on development.
Maybe, just maybe, you cannot build perfect code on an imperfect platform.
Exactly my point.
Plex has PlexAmp that is a separate app. It seems to be optimized for remote access.