ARC Still Getting Corrupt Media Playback Failures

Hi @Ben_Thompson , @Abrahams_Bogere, @Eric_Streefland,

We merged a fix for this issue several builds ago, and have since implemented several additional stability changes around downloaded tracks in ARC.

Are you experiencing stable playback with downloads in ARC? Let us know if you have any issues and we’ll take action accordingly. Thanks!

Hi @connor, I still experience playback / download issues. For example Arc can’t find the songs (FLAC format) from the Arctic Monkeys AM album on my server. When in the “normal Roon app” I still find the songs which I can play in the normal way.

Hi @Eric_Streefland,

Diagnostics confirm attempts to load this album failed, but there don’t appear to be broader warnings beyond poor connectivity. Can you please confirm whether this local album is visible in your library within ARC by sharing a screenshot of Library → Albums?

If you’ve recently added the album to your library and hadn’t connected ARC via WiFi recently, then it’s possible ARC hadn’t finished syncing before attempting to locate the album.

Logs don’t appear to show any download failures, however. Assuming the phone has available memory, do you have any issue downloading files?



I added this album more than one year ago. Even playback in ARC causes the corrupt media failure. Playback in the original Roon app is still possible.

Hi @Eric_Streefland,

Thank you for confirming - diagnostics confirm a playback error at that timestamp and we’re investigating internally.

To verify that a corrupt cached version of the track isn’t playing, please take the following steps to stabilize conditions:

  1. Reinstall ARC, deeply deleting the app’s data on Android

  2. Redownload the track to ARC

At your convenience, please also upload a copy of the affected album for our QA team to investigate using this media uploader.

Hi @connor,

I just uploaded the files.

I reinstalled ARC after deleting app and data. After that I could playback the songs from the album untill I tried to download the files to my iPhone. After that it was impossible to playback the songs from the album in Arc.

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Hey @connor , thanks for digging into this

I “Reset My Roon Arc” in settings thereby deleating all previously downloaded content and downloaded a single album to test it. Upon trying to play any tracks from this album I get “Corrupt Media” as before, whether playing from the “Downloads” or the Roon Library itself. ARC will play any songs/albums not downloaded however and the desktop library seems to work fine.

I deleted and re-installed the app and am currently downloading the same album to see if the problem persists. (For what it is worth this is my first time downloading this album as I wanted a completely new album to test this)

**Edit: The fresh install of the app has not garnered any different results and it still comes back as “Corrupt Media” as before.

Any other steps you would like me to take to try and troubleshoot this?

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I haven’t played with downloads since I got VPN Tailscale working. If it occurs again I will let you know.

Thank you @Eric_Streefland. We’ll report back here once we’ve reproduced the issue in-house.

@Ben_Thompson, are you also able to supply us with the affected files using this media uploader?

We’ll be syncing today and tomorrow and should have a better understanding of the error shortly.

@connor I uploaded the first track from the album I cited above. Did you want all 10 tracks from that album? (I wasn’t sure that having all 10 tracks was any different from a single track as the problem exists either way on my end of things…)

@connor So I delated ARC from my iPhone 14pro and reinstalled it to get a clean install of the new build. I downloaded one album (Pink Floyd - Animals 2018mix) to test it and am still getting a “corrupt file” response when trying to play it.

Would it help to upload a song from/or the whole album at the link above to assess this one as well, or should I/we just sit tight?

Hello @connor, I have the same issue on my iPhone 13 mini. Some of the corrupt files are highres, 192 kHz/24 bit or 96 kHz/24 bit, some are CD quality 44.1kHz, 16 bit. Hope you can help.

Just wanted to check back on this topic before the month lapses and we close this thread. Any news on this front?

Hi @Ben_Thompson,

We’ve shipped several stability fixes in the last few builds. Are you encountering these symptoms with the same frequency?

We’ve reviewed logs from this week on your Core and noticed several warning traces related to a Time Machine active backup on your Backup or, more likely, your Watched Folders location. Since it appears your library consists of local content, there’s a chance corrupt media errors are resulting from difficulty mounting a drive that MacOS is backing up to the cloud.

Do you encounter any difficulties in Roon playing back content from these locations, independent of ARC? What about issues backing up?

Thank you for your patience over the last several weeks. We recognize this issue is long-standing, and we hope to resolve it for you as quickly as possible.