· I'm having trouble with Roon ARC
· Other
Can not play Tidal tracks from my phone via ARC. Wife's phone works fine.
Frontier ONT, Pakedge router RK-1, switch Luxul XMS-2624P, WK-2 APs.
Further information:
Tidal music works on any Wi-Fi, home or away.
Does not work cellularly.
I have Verizon Wireless.
Samsung S24 Ultra.
Hi @brainspasm13,
Thanks for reaching out to us about this issue. There’s a few possibilities about what is causing this. So I’d like to ask you to check a few things.
No Errors on Roon page. No errors reported in arc. Can play any NAS tracks, no problem.
Also, for what it’s worth I used to be able to turn on the VPN to my router to bypass this issue, but my VPN no longer works.
Hi @brainspasm13,
Tidal playback involves a direct up- and downstream connection from the phone to Tidal’s servers via your cellular provider network.
Diagnostics indicate two failures in ARC are occurring consistently when connected via cellular data and attempting to play Tidal content:
Tidal API authorizations still pass through RoonServer, although streaming with ARC is direct from Tidal to the phone. So, either condition 1 or 2 above can cause the issue you’re encountering.
I recommend using Tailscale instead of your router VPN for NAT traversal with ARC. Since you have a RoonOS machine, this will be as simple as creating a free Tailscale account, downloading the app to your phone, and logging into Tailscale from the ROCK RoonOS Web UI directly.
This will prevent ARC from losing RoonServer access during periods of cellular connection, which should prevent authorizations from failing and allow for more regular syncing.
In the meantime, I recommend you resync ARC on WiFi with your RoonServer machine or even reinstall the app to ensure authorizations are complete.
I’ve attempted tail scale with no success 
.
I went as far as taking my phone to a repair place and flashing the firmware. No change.
New info. I do get a notification on the Tidal app that a stream started on Roon and stops playback. But it just seems like it doesn’t reach my phone. Not sure that’s helpful… But…
I know it seems simple by comparison but please try this.
Step 1:
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/tutorials/device/samsung/galaxy-s24/topic/settings/restart-device
Is it functioning? if not let’s proceed to the next step
Step 2:
Please make sure that your phone is running the latest version of Tidal.
Is it functioning?
Hi @brainspasm13 ,
If you can tell us when that happened we can try to find the event in logs. It may yield some information.
I’m am not sure when that was. I will recreate the issue and send a time when i can.
Hi @brainspasm13,
Thank you for your post. We’ll keep this thread open pending a response.
From what we can see in diagnostics, ARC’s attempts to download tracks to the S24 are failing on the cellular network due to insufficient throughput and bandwidth. The buffer eventually encounters a catastrophic failure and can’t attempt to download the track further.
If you’ve made any changes to the APN on this phone or changed carriers/SIM cards, you can try resetting the APN. Navigate to Settings > General management > Reset > Reset mobile network settings; this will revert your APN settings back to the default provided by your carrier.
If the phone is having difficulty reaching Tidal’s servers via cellular connection, this may help.
Here is a screenshot I took of Tidal after an unsuccessful playback on ARC, 12/4/24 at 7:58.
I tried to reset my cellular settings as suggested, no dice. I just got a SIM card for my phone today. I haven’t been able to activate it yet. Currently using an eSIM. Not sure if that would make any difference.
I’m wondering if there just something wrong with my phone.
I don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with your phone.
I believe the solution to your problem lies in why was it necessary for you to use a VPN in the first place to access Tidal/Roon ARC? Tailscale as suggested by @connor would and could resolve this issue but why can’t it be activated now? Before I go any further please understand that it’s not my intention to offend but only to try and help solve this puzzle.
I could be wrong but by all appearances it would seem that your ISP is no longer allowing you to take this approach of using a workaround to combat the throttling which they have initiated. It looks like along with throttling they are now blocking VPN access. Were you ever contacted by your ISP regarding throttling? Are you aware of this? Using a VPN as a workaround would seem to indicate that you were.
There’s no right or wrong here but that information is pertinent. You can sometimes workaround throttling by using a secondary app but that won’t work here:
Again, these are just my observations and you have my sincerest apologies if I’m mistaken but again has your service been throttled? Seeing as you took your phone to a repair center and you’re contemplating the purchase of a new phone I guess you’re not aware. I would suggest calling up your ISP and digging for answers.
Possible workarounds
Option 1:
Open Tidal then navigate to settings and change your mobile data streaming from Max to Low. Turn off the Dolby Atmos playback option.
Option 2:
Download your music and play in offline mode.
Option 3:
Open Roon ARC then navigate to settings and change playback (cellular) to Bandwidth Optimized
Option 4:
Change your cellular plan or your carrier.
Hey @brainspasm13,
Since some time has passed, I wanted to check in and see if you were still running into issues since activating your new SIM card?
