ARC on CarPlay displays a limited number of albums for each band

[Alessandro_Mazzega]

I’m constantly testing ARC in order to decide to finally switch from Plexamp and embracing Roon even when I’m travelling on my car.

Reliability aside, that unfortunately is still not 100% (last week ARC was refusing to stream from my NAS some tracks of an album that I was listening, while others were fine), I think that there’s an interface issue, at least for my use case.

Let me explain: as probably many Roon users, I don’t use playlists and I don’t listen to single tracks here and there. My listening habits are choosing a band, have a look at all their albums and then decide what I wanted to listen, from the first track till the last one.

If I follow those steps on ARC, I can pick a band but then only a small fraction of their albums are displayed, generally the most listened or recent.

I honestly find it limiting, because if a wanted to listen to an older album, for example, then I’d need to go back, remember the title of the album, go into the Albums category and then scroll, scroll, scroll until I find it.

I can guess that the limited number of albums displayed after a band is selected is probably due to reducing as much as possible any distractions while driving but in my case, it is producing even more!

Would it be possible to show all the albums of a band or, at least, adding an option to do that, with the default setting leading to the current behavior and another one that activate the full list?

I’m also wondering if other Roon users are experiencing my same need using ARC on CarPlay.

Thank you!

[ged_hickman1]

There’s a few threads if you search about this with, as far as i am aware, no definitive answer from Roon.

[RBM (René)]

Not much Roon can do here: list length in CarPlay display is determined by the car manufacturer’s implementation (and often lists are limited even more when the vehicle is in motion).

See: https://developer.apple.com/carplay/documentation/CarPlay-App-Programming-Guide.pdf – Page 21, List.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

B103 ARC feedback [Investigating]

So this is not “broken” per se, but it’s a battle against Carplay limitations and performance. Two things to note here: Carplay itself has a hard limitation to how many items you can show in a list view when the car is in motion. It is around 10-12 depending on display density. All Carplay apps adhere to this limitation. Due to more Carplay limitations and delivering you reasonable load times when you’re driving, we will not be able to display all of the items in a heavy library. (similar mus…

[Alessandro_Mazzega]

Thanks for sharing your thought about this topic, I appreciate that.

I’m sure that the app has been developed evaluating many use cases and balancing opportunities, choices, limitations, etc.

But concerning the length of lists, I’m still not sure that the reasons that you explained are indeed true.
And I’m writing that reflecting with about my experience with Plexamp: using that app, all bands are listed and for each band, all albums are listed.

So, if Plexamp can offer that, even going beyond what seems to be the rules defined by Apple, why Roon ARC can’t do the same?

Are we really sure that the current behavior is a choice and not a limitation imposed by the platform?

I’d love to read an official reply, just to understand and, hopefully, contribute to make Roon ARC better (and finally switch from Plexamp and never look back!).

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

It’s not my thought, it’s what Roon stated. I guess it’s as official as it gets