ARC: very low-res artwork in offline use, lockscreen shows wrong artists [Known Issues, Ticket In]

Roon Core Machine

ROCK 2.0 1169
ARC 1.0(92), iPhone 13 iOS 16.1.2

Dowloaded some music today on my iPhone to listen to on a flight. Went to use ARC when airborne and noticed that all the album artwork was very low-res when accessing the full-screen version of the now-playing view. My library is well curated and the artwork is all good, but what I was seeing in ARC was terrible. Can’t be a space issue as my phone has 100 GB free.

Also, on the lock screen of the phone, the thumbnail artwork for the now-playing tracks was always missing even if the (very low-res) artwork was available within the app.

Indeed, same here. (I’m on earlyrelease build 98, on Android 11).

I just downloaded many albums over the weekend (using the previous earlyaccess build). the artwork is embedded in the files with high quality.

However, the artwork quality becomes poor in Now Playing as soon as I enable offline mode in the ARC settings.

It returns to normal when I disable offline mode in ARC, even if I enable airplane mode on the phone. So the good quality images are there, locally on the phone (as they should because they are embedded) and offline mode needlessly reduces the quality.

(And it’s also normal in online mode)

Couple of screenshots of Arc’s broken artwork issue from a journey today. Playing downloaded content on a train, Arc not in offline mode. Here’s an example of artwork when the train went through an area of weaker signal, note also that in addtion to being low-res, the background wallpaper does not pick up a colour to match the artwork.

Couple mins after taking this screenshot of playing a downloaded track, signal improved and I get this (note that the background colour now matches the colour theme of the artwork:

Also, regardless of conditions (as far as I can tell so far), thumbnail art is missing from the lock screen:

Finally, having tested Arc in conditions where mobile signal was intermittent, I was struck by how dim-witted Arc is in dealing with playlists that have a mix of downloaded and stream-only content. I shuffled such a playlist while in a dead spot, and by chance the first track was a stream-only title. Arc simply hung around waiting dimly, when I’d have expected it to figure out there was no signal and try the next track. I had to go into settings and enable offline mode to get useful behaviour, disappointed Arc could not figure that out.

All shots taken via Arc 1/0(92), iPhone 13 iOS 16.1.2 and ROCK Core 2.0 (1169)

1 Like

I’m hoping this thread will be acknowledged by Roon at some point, issues persist with Core 2.0 (1182) and ARC 1.0.28 (106). And with my phone in airplane mode I just got this for some downloaded content that has perfect artwork, but ARC doesn’t show it in this list. The moment I disable airplane mode, the artwork works.

There is a similar topic in earlyaccess. At first, tracks were missing for some people when offline, this got fixed, then apparently missing pictures occurred, but only under some circumstance, it seemed. Though IIRC this was when offline, but the airplane and offline modes seem to have something to do with it, so it appears possibly related:

thanks for pointing me to that thread, agree there are some similarities. Hopefully Roon will comment on this in due course.

In earlyaccess they haven’t replied to every posted issue (which is fine) but it seems they are reading all and many things that were mentioned have been fixed quickly. The link to this thread will appear there, I’ll point it out. I’m optimistic.

1 Like

ARC B111 earlyaccess

Just now (11:26am CET) I had some artwork missing completely when offline (I first enabled airplane mode and then noticed the covers having disappeared. I think they were previously there after I downloaded the albums. Then I enabled ARC offline setting, no difference). Other artwork was there. Repopulated when back online.

As with the poor artwork resolution in offline mode, there is no reason for doing this because the artwork is embedded in my downloaded files.

1 Like

Disappointed not to see any acknowledgement as yet from Roon on this issue. Problem with low-res artwork in offline mode still present in ARC 1.0.30 build 128 / Core 2.0 build 1193, iPhone 13 iOS 16.1.2.

1 Like

I posted a reminder in Early Access as well

2 Likes

The low quality offline appears to be fixed in the latest earlyaccess update. However it seems to require new downloads to make a change.

Unfortunately, it still fails to display some artwork (grey placeholder instead) when offline, although the files had it embedded

See:

Thanks for the update. I’m on the production release channel so will look out for improvements at the next update, but sounds like there is still work to do.

A request to folks at Roon - any chance you could at least acknowledge this thread please? Just installed Core 2.0 (1202) and Arc build 138, and here is an example of what I get in off-line mode for a downloaded file that (on my core at least) has perfect artwork, but on my iPhone is low-res.

Second screenshot below shows an interesting new issue, lock screen is showing totally incorrect artwork, albeit at full-res, with Barry Gibb appearing as Billie Eilish.

See the thread in earlyaccess that I linked a bit further up. There, I provided a link to this thread as well. There was an acknowledgement on the other thread

Hi @ACvitus,

Thank you for the report. Low-res cached mages will appear in the Now Playing screen when ARC never actually cached a high-resolution copy of the artwork. This can happen under one known circumstance at this time: if this track was downloaded to the phone, but you hadn’t visited the Artist or Album Details page while online. In these cases, the lower-quality image (from the queue, playlists, etc.) will expand to fill the Now Playing screen. The team is investigating this issue and will report back in the EarlyAccess thread @Suedkiez linked above (here).

The second issue you’ve reported - lockscreen displaying the incorrect artist - is a known issue for which we have a developer ticket. We aim to resolve that swiftly within the next several builds.

We truly appreciate your diligence and precision - thank you for taking the time to type this up and provide screenshots. We’ll provide an update here once the ticket makes motion, and I’ve retitled this thread accordingly.

1 Like

Thanks for the detailed reply, appreciated.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 45 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.