Server
Nucleus Titan
Roon Server 1459 early access
Port Forwarding for ARC - Enabled and Working
Phone
Pixel 8 Pro (Android 14)
ARC 298 early access
Summary
There appears to be an ARC buffering like issue when playing Qobuz albums in original format on cellular… or Google Fi is throttling the same.
Details
This issue seems similar to other cases, but I didn’t find an exact match. As summarized in the title, while using ARC to play Qobuz albums in original format on a strong 5G cellular connection at work, the tracks either momentarily pause or just stop. Higher sample rates and/or bit depth have more issues. It feels like it is trying to buffer the song and failing. CD quality will play without issue, but anything greater than that has issues. I’ve been able to replicate this on the last three or so ARC early access releases. Prior to that, I was playing downloaded albums at work and rarely tried to stream directly from Qobuz.
On the other hand, if I play local albums in original format in any quality on the same 5G cellular connection at work, the entire album will play without a single issue. This includes local 352/24 FLAC albums. Therefore, overall bandwidth of the 5G cellular connection is not an issue, and it shows my port forwarding setup is working properly.
A final clue is that when on WiFi at my parent’s house (so I’m remote) I am able to stream the same Qobuz albums to ARC and it works fine. This includes Qobuz albums up to 192/24. This suggests if there is an issue with ARC, it’s not happening with Qobuz content coming over WiFi.
This all leads me to believe that ARC itself has a buffering like issue with Qobuz while on cellular playing albums in original format, or my cellular provider (Google Fi) is messing with this stream.
More likely the cellular signal is not as good as you think it is. Cellular data isn’t fixed and is up and down constantly. Signal strength on a phone gives no relation to the quality of data you’re receiving. High latency (a big issue with cellular) can cause all sorts of issues. FYI I can sit in the station waiting to leave in central London have 5g and full signal on my phone and get no data at all. That’s the nature of it. Try reducing the bandwidth and it will likely work. Expecting to stream high bit rate media over cellular is still a bit of an ask, especially in certain areas where it is over utilised.
A couple months ago, I was thinking that the signal was not good enough. That’s why I downloaded all my albums and used those at work and didn’t think too much about it.
However, at some point I had to reset ARC and thus losing all my downloads. That’s when I thought, let’s see what happens if I try to stream my local albums from my Nucleus Titan at home to my phone at work. To my surprise this worked flawlessly. From my office on 5G, I can stream any rate including 352/24 on any day at any time and not have any issues. I can play complete 352/24 albums without issue. (Yes, I’m burning through my data but it’s worth it to test this. I’m on one of those unlimited plans that actually has a limit.)
As soon as I switch to Qobuz, I can’t even stream 88/24 through ARC. To be fair, I tested the Qobuz app itself today and it also struggles with anything over CD quality. I’m leaning toward my cellular provider is either throttling Qobuz streams and/or it has low priority compared to other traffic.
All I would really like to be able to do is play albums from Qobuz at CD quality or slightly higher without buffering like issues. I’m just using the higher rates to show there’s a definite difference between what Qobuz is able to deliver and what streaming local files can deliver… at least with my setup and mobile carrier.
Yeah, mine is set to CD quality also. Original format takes too much bandwidth for cellular especially when in the car and moving between towers. I’m running dual SIM on US Mobile, one line on Verizon and the other on AT&T and I switch off depending on where I am… I have a pretty high data cap on both lines and I never come close to hitting it.
I’m averaging 12.59 GB Verizon hotspot usage per day for the past 8 days running Roon server on my Dell laptop at the MIL’s house this trip. Of course that also includes hanging out here and other internet usage.
I also use Speedify that allows me to utilize 3 Verizon cellular devices at the same time with internet bonding. This way, I use a lot of “throttled” data on my iPads that would otherwise be unusable.
So far I’ve used 55.05 of 30 on my iPad Mini 6, 43.87 of 30 on my iPad 8th Gen, and 49.74 of 160 on my iPhone 13 Pro Max. I only paid $50 for two years of Speedify which will probably be all I will need.
EDIT: This is 100 percent streaming from Tidal and Qobuz. I have a second Roon subscription for this and use my iPad Mini 6 as router to connect to Dell and RPi4 via WIFI. I listen with Mojo 2 and Focal Clear headphones.
That’s really not bad, I’m assuming you are accessing most of the music locally or is this pulling down from Qobuz/Tidal at the same time?
Personally when I’m out I’ve gotten my home VPN working pretty well with Roon so I either use that, or I have a VM running at home that has Roon remote running on it that I connect to with Parsec (a low latency remote desktop app) which will capture the audio and output it on my laptop which is more reliable with weaker connections since it compresses the stream also. I tend to use that solution a bit more now when I want to listen through laptop speakers but I’m not on my LAN. It’s much cheaper than buying a second Roon license although I’d see why you’d just want a second license.
Just saw your edit, just so you know Windows has a built in hotspot tool that can create a WiFi network off your PC using the internet connection you already have, it just uses the unused band on your WLAN NIC. Super easy to turn on in settings, and then you don’t need to use an iPad as a router.
Yes, I was using that but found it a little smoother (user experience) using the iPad Mini 6 as the “central network router” that everything connects to via WIFI. It works, but I prefer the iPad method.
On another point, the RPi4 has to be setup to connect to either the Dell XPS 15 or iPad (2) as I have it named. It’s a little bit of a pain changing that trying to use Fing on my iPhone to find the ip address of the RPi4. I find it easier to just leave it on iPad (2) and not use the Dell hotspot.
They both work, but this is a better user experience for me.