ARC fails to transfer metadata I use ARC on Android with a 2013 Lexus which only supports AVRCP 1.3 for Bluetooth metadata. It seems ARC only transfers metadata if I start a new album after a fresh connect to Bluetooth. If the connection was recently active on the phone or if the album is already playing I get no metadata. When I do get metadata, no matter what the song # it is always displayed as 1.
Describe your network setup
Bluetooth AVRCP 1.3 MAP 1.3 (though 1.4 may work) Android 14, Pixel 9 Pro XL, though the problem also happened with Android 13 and a Pixel 8 Pro
Thanks for reaching out with your report. Can you please let us know the exact local time + date + track when you next observe this issue? If you can please share a screenshot/picture showing the issue as well, it would be much appreciated. Thanks!
With a screenshot/photo the support team can look at yous logs time stamped by the info you provide and compare it with what’s being displayed. Sometimes a photo speakers a million words.
Android 14 defaults to 1.5, I’ve never seen metadata with 1.4 or above, the recommendations I’ve found suggested older cars needed 1.3 which worked fine until recently (like maybe a month ago).
This is my library, tracks are ripped like “05 Mind made up.m4a” (ALAC in this case). The title shows up properly (when it shows up), but no track number.
Just reproduced this problem twice. I’m on my computer so I won’t copy the phone screen shots over, but 1st time I used AVRCP 1.6 and time was 2024-08-30 21:40. Second time I closed out the app, switched to AVRCP 1.3, restarted ARC, time was 1 minute later. No metadata either time.
Thank you for the report. ARC temporarily lost sight of your RoonServer machine around the time you connected via Bluetooth in the screenshot above. Is this around the time the phone handed off connectivity from WiFi to cellular? When you reproduced via AVRCP 1.3 in the second reproduction, did you have different connectivity conditions on the phone? What did the server connectivity status in ARC settings indicate?
We can see ARC receiving empty metadata in diagnostics, but we first want to ascertain the root cause of the connectivity problem in logs
II can’t say for sure what connection I had, that’s not on the screen shot but typically this happens every time I start up ARC, whether I’m near WiFi or only on Cellular. The only time I get metadata is when the 1st track from a new CD starts up and then metadata will continue to be shown for all tracks until I stop the car and I reconnect. I will not always start getting metadata with Track 1, but I cannot really see any consistent pattern as to why not. Today I got Metadata for track 1 (likely around 4:00 CT) but I may have already been off the property and on cellular when that happened.
Don’t have a time and track for cellular, but I may have figured out something. At 2024-09-11 16:42 it failed to transfer metadata for the track “Control” by Mutemath. I was connected to my home WiFi at the time. At 21:15 it successfully transferred the Metadata for the track “Progress” from the same album. The difference was that I was connected to the WiFi at my daughters house at the time. I have also had the metadata transfer work when connected to a friends WiFi. When it fails it is connected to WiFi 6, when it succeeds it is connected to WiFi 5. However, I have also had it fail when connected to WiFi 5 so there’s more to it than just the 5 / 6 difference.
Same behavior with the APK unfortunately. Had to uninstall the previous version to get the APk to install (package in use, could have likely just killed it) and as a result I had to download my downloads again. Would be nice if it could auto-discover any downloads… I do use App Tester for a couple of Beta programs if you push releases that way?
With the most recent update I get the following behavior:
If I stop the app in the middle of a song and restart it I do not get metadata for the current song or any subsequent song
If I then terminate the Bluetooth connection from the car controls and reconnect to my phone (leaving the app running the entire time) I start to get metadata upon the new connection being established and I continue to get metadata for subsequent songs.
I believe this is an improvement from previous behavior where I think the pattern was that I would only get metadata if a song was starting directly subsequent to the connection being established.
Thanks for the update, I am glad to hear that there is a slight improvement. Can you please let us know the exact local time + date + track when you next observe this behavior? Having timestamps + track names greatly helps us pinpoint issues, if you could please provide this info moving forward it would be appreciated, thanks!
@noris - I may be able to contribute to this if @Peter_Hunsberger no longer can - metadata transfer hasn’t worked reliably for me for months on a 9yo Ford Mondeo but used to be fine.
This mirrors my experience. Almost invariably if I stop the music, leave the car, and return later, there is no metadata.
