Suppose I am using ARC while driving and listening to downloaded music. When the end of the album is reached, something unfamiliar starts playing. What is it? Recommended music, I suppose. But I didn’t download it and so I realize that ARC has switched from playing downloaded music to streaming (indefinitely?) over my mobile data.
Is there any way to prevent this behavior? Turning on Offline Mode is not the answer, or at least not a good answer, because when I then pull over to Starbucks I want ARC to be able to stream over their wifi without the need to go back into Settings.
How about a new option Don’t Allow Cellular Streaming? It would complement the existing Download on Wi-Fi only.
I don’t use ARC for playing music locally on my phone. I only use ARC to stream. There are other issues for me with ARC and local playback that are more serious for me and prevent me from moving all in on ARC, like not being able to use music that already exists on the phone or having everything you’ve downloaded in ARC wiped if you need to reset the app.
Thanks for the suggestion but I don’t think it works. I am happy to be corrected if wrong. See below.
I switched on the option Limit Roon Radio to library. Then I disconnected from wifi (but not from mobile data) and played one of my downloaded albums to the end. After it finished, ARC immediately started playing a related album not in my library (by which I mean my library of downloaded albums). It was, therefore, streaming over mobile data. I confirmed this with GlassWire, which showed that tens of megabytes had just been downloaded over mobile data by Roon ARC.
Maybe I don’t understand what the designers mean by “limiting Roon Radio to library.” As far as I can tell, it does not mean “don’t stream using mobile data.”
I think it means your Roon library which would include Tidal and Qobuz links as well as local files in your Roon library, not necessarily on your Roon ARC device.
Not what I wrote. Limit Roon Radio to Library, well, limits Roon Radio to your library, but your library can contain tracks that were not downloaded in ARC.
I meant to simply turn off Roon Radio. Then it won’t continue playing at all after the current (downloaded) album ends.
Go the to Now Playing screen by tapping the play bar:
Agree that if we look at ARC alone this would make sense. However, putting it onto the Queue screen is consistent with the regular Roon app, where the Roon Radio switch is specific to individual zones.
I.e., in regular Roon you can have Roon Radio enabled for, say, your Kitchen zone for continuous playing, but have it disabled for your main listening room where you listen to individual albums. Putting the Roon Radio button on the Queue for the individual zone makes sense in this scenario.
So if it was in Settings just for the ARC app, there would be other complaints about the inconsistency between the Roon Remote app and the Roon ARC app.
And one could argue that ARC is really just another Roon zone, in this case a mobile one. In the future it’s possible that it will become fully integrated into regular Roon, so that you can move a playing queue between ARC and regular Roon just like you already can in the regular Roon zones.
Fair point! I have to confess I’ve never used Roon Radio, probably because I always seem to have a long mental list of things to listen to next. But the option for using Radio in just one zone is pretty appealing so maybe I’ll try it out.
I also totally agree with you about eventually integrating ARC into regular Roon. There’s so much overlap this seems like a no-brainer. And it would solve my other requested feature of being able to use regular Roon to choose albums for downloading to ARC (which alas only got 1 vote).
Roon said it may happen, either by unifying the apps into one or by tying them closer together. It makes sense of course. A separate app was for now simply the quickest time to market because it allowed parallel development, e.g., without having to consider a thousand things that might disturb the main app (either technically or considerations like what to do in the UI if a feature is only available in the home) and I suppose having separate teams.
