I guess this is not the first you hear about this but it has to find a good way out.
I am using roon at home and roon arc outside. I never connect roon arc on the internet ; only by WiFi at home but very rarely. I got three playlists (quite large) taking a 13.5 Gb on my phone.
I got one major issue and a little one
major one is that after some time without connecting roon arc or after some update on roon core, my roon arc ends up “unauthorised” when I want to connect to roon core to update my playlist forr instance. The only solution so far is to uninstall and then install again roon with a special bonus : all the music to download again !!! You would probably agree that this is not acceptable at this level. Either there is a far more efficient way to reconnect or you have to make it happen. It looks awkward from outside to get the burden to make a full reinstall just because you didn’t connect roon arc for a while or because you missed or delayed an update
the little one is that the cover (images) are very often not visible on arc when disconnected. I wonder why ? Is there something I missed ?
Thanks in advance either to guide me to a better use of roon or to introduce an easiest and efficient way to reconnect whatever occured as long as you’re a legitimate customer.
It’s a bug that I and others reported many times. It’s likely that some variants might have been fixed but it still happens. E.g., see here most recently:
thanks for your feedback. It makes me tilt that I didn’t mentioned I am on a android smartphone. Let me add one positive and one negative comment :
great idea to select the quality of the download you want on your phone and let it change format on the fly. This heavily reduce the size of the download (still 13,5Gb for me) and his fully acceptable for listening in a car or a train !
I did organize my playlist by “situation” : in the car, working, needing energy,… and therefore my usage is to select a playlist and shuffle it. I don’t know why but often one playlist on three is not visible and sometimes shuffle is not achievable from Android auto which push me to take the phone and do it from the phone. Very close to a simple Bluetooth connection to speakers indeed.
Thanks for your report. The “Unauthorized” screen occurs when the unique IDs associated with the ARC instance or the broker ID of the RoonServer machine itself has changed. This can happen after migrating your RoonServer between machines, reinstalling on either device, or if several updates occur without having synced ARC on WiFi.
This is an inconvenience for users who take ARC on long trips, migrate their server frequently, or have lots of local downloads on the phone. The team has a ticket in to improve authorization retention so you don’t experience this as frequently in those circumstances.
This depends on whether ARC has cached this album artwork yet. If you’ve not yet visited an album in your library during an active ARC session and the app goes into Offline Mode, ARC won’t have cached the artwork yet. As mentioned by other users above, there is a ticket to improve caching in Offline Mode.
Whether or not Shuffle is available in Android Auto will depend on the model of head unit and whether you’re using a USB-C or BT connection.
We’ll watch for your response in case we can clarify further. Thanks!
Thanks all for these replies. Let me reformulate what I understood :
about album artwork : Does it mean that if I was playing roon ARC connected, each time I play a song the artwork would be cached and the accessible even when disconnected ? If so it means that considering my usage (well, when I am home, I use roon, not arc… ), I have no real hope for getting proper artwork to be displayed under ARC. But I understood that there is a ticket on this, so it’s just a matter of time
about desynchronisation : @connor , I only update my server when roon ask for it (pop up under roon). I understand that my usage is not helping (arc always deconnected when I use it EXCEPT when I have added several songs to playlists and expect to get them when out. It’s at this moment that I get the unauthorized message and get blocked. Trying several manipulations I ended up getting fully blocked with ARC not usable at all. uninstall - reinstall worked fine but it took me one hour and a half…
about shuffle : “the model of head unit and whether you’re using a USB-C or BT connection” : I connect my phone by USB-C but it also automatically switch on the BT when connected. Is it possible to only be connected to android auto - roon arc with only one ? If the head unit is the car system, it’s an european VW sharan.
For local content that has been downloaded to your mobile device, yes, artwork should remain visible when in offline mode. We’re working on improving this, so if you see albums without artwork in offline mode - thank you for your patience!
Glad to hear things are back to proper functionality here, certainly let us know if this changes.
This functionality is also tied to the vehicle specifically - I would investigate the systems settings and see if you can disable the auto-BT connect.
Quick answer. I got roon arc 1.67.360 and it’s working again.
So far, I didn’t find how to avoid the BT to automatically switch on (european VW Sharan). I did not extensively test the shuffle but it worked on one playlist.
I am now testing frequent sync (by connecting ARC when at home) with roon to see if it improves both avoiding the desynchronization and allowing to get the artwork but I guess the most simple way is to refuse any update proposal when I am not at home.
