After waiting more than five years for mobile access to Roon, suddenly ARC appears. Hooray! But not so fast. Implementation required extra time and money to troubleshoot and acquire a dedicated IP address, which raised my monthly recurring charges from my ISP. OK. Fine. It’s working on the server side. Just a matter of downloading and using the ARC app on my iPhone 14 Pro.
Woops! The iPhone application is largely a failure. Where to start? ARC fails to update automatically when the Roon database expands with additional albums in the library. Eventually it does, but there is no way to trigger that update from the mobile app.
And then there is the Apple CarPlay experience. At best, the CarPlay implementation is unstable and erratic. ARC fails to play the downloaded music files with reports about no connection, unable to stream. Stream? The only connection involved is between the iPhone and the Car via Apple CarPlay. No failure there. The app lacks reliability and stability. Plain and simple.
Add to that the problems with downloading music selections from the Roon library to the ARC app on the iPhone, ARC is a complete failure and should be an embarrassment to the Roon brand. You could fry an egg on the backside of my iPhone while it SLOWLY downloads track (often with errors). Give me a break.
I did not purchase a lifetime Roon license to spend countless hours troubleshooting and going through Beta testing deployments. I expected a stable, finished product that would become even more reliable and fully functional with version updates.
I’ve waited to reserve judgment on ARC hoping for an update that would solve ALL the MANY bugs, but it has not been forthcoming. It’s not as if the problems are unknown. They are rampant!
To sum it up, the Roon ARC looks pathetic. It is not at all up to the task of supporting such a great and highly developed platform like Roon.
Complete restart might be a good next step. BTW, Flexamp’s mobile implementation puts ARC to shame.
Anybody else agree?