I see mentioned on another post that only a “smallish” amount of Roon users use ARC. How true is this?
Do you use ARC?
- No
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
0
voters
For those who answer no please see supplementary poll.
.sjb
3 Likes
I want to use ARC more and will when traveling.
But the crux is the time when ARC is most likely to fail is when I am Traveling. 4 holidays in a row it hasn’t made it past 2 days and twice it has stopped working at the airport 
Last October while I was away for a month at least offline continued to work. So I see reason for positivity for the future of ARC, but I know many users have given up on it completely.
It is the app I reach for first though when playing music while out and about. Though I keep PlexAmp, Tidal and Qobuz as backup plans.
7 Likes
No. Too many problems, not enough features. I use Plexamp instead.
5 Likes
I only use it on my phone in the car via android auto. Works without any issues streaming from ROCK. I dont use offline mode, have no use for it.
If im out on foot or travelling i prefer to use my DAP with with 500GB of ripped mp3. I use USB Audio Player Pro on my DAP. Used to use Poweramp but it started to crash all the time.
3 Likes
I use it in the fitness centre to listen to podcasts. It’s failed on me just once since it first was released to Production.
1 Like
Every day i love it always worked flawlessly for me i just wish they would hurry up and allow you to save to an external card instead of just internal i have a 1tb SD card waiting
2 Likes
I know, I sound like a broken record, but: I would use it daily, if only it had Chromecast support on iOS …
2 Likes
I use it daily as my music source in my office (away from home), nearly daily/weekly in the car, and monthly on my phone in other settings (headphones, etc.). It has become indispensable for me.
Currently, I personally have no use case for ARC. I tend to listen to music away from home when there’s no or only unreliable WiFi or mobile data connection available. This is often the case on trains, airplanes or even more remote hotels. Thus, no way to make use of any tiny bit of data in the air 
I read that ARC recently supports pre-downloads from your library in a common codec like AAC. I also read that it would somehow try to download all files from your library. If this is true we get other problems regarding free space on your mobile device and some (yet unavailable?) precise selection of tracks you actually want to be transferred from your local library to your mobile device. And SD cards are not yet supported? And using a mobile 
device you definitely are limited regarding free memory. So, how could this make fun with ARC in RL?
roon has never been interested in providing some functionality that would really assist you in actually organizing your music (files) beyond your roon environment at home, and partially even within this.
Maybe anyone here who can shed some light on this experience in RL?
I organized all my music (file) processes completely independent from any roon software. It gives me total control and overview of everything happening to my files. And for me this is also the best way to organize offline files on mobile device. I simply get what I need, without any compromise or limitations.
I feel it’s safe to say a good number of us folks who have used Arc have had issues. Mainly having it stay connected to the brains at home.
This time around, since a fresh install of Rock (instead of Windows Server), I have had perfect use of Arc. This was before yesterday’s update as well.
Been using an iPhone 13 in my van today and it’s been a real joy.
Tomorrow I’ll be using my Android device 
I’ve had a few moments of bad mobile reception today, but Arc didn’t fail on me. Nothing was downloaded and streaming in lossless/original format.
One section of my journey today is a mobile dead spot for a few seconds. Usually Arc (and others FWIW) drop out. Today it didn’t. Not experienced that before the update.
Maybe they had put a new mast in that area, nope, my phones bars for reception were down to the same single bar.
As I’m fully off streaming services I want Roon and Arc to work flawlessly. Thus far it is…jinx
I hope others share the experience I have and enjoy Arc as it was designed for.
2 Likes
In my line of work, redundancy is a must. So having a backup option is required and nothing wrong with that.
2 Likes
PlexAmp is my backup 
What features do you feel Arc lacks over PlexAmp? 
Roon ARC is working great now.
3 Likes
I do not use it.
For my use case, I travel to work only 2 miles and I am in a position that I can load my music library and Qobuz on my office PC and play locally.
I’m also not a fan of opening ports on my firewall, especially for UPnP.
2 Likes
Was this conjecture by a user with an axe to grind? I saw something like this mentioned once and the answer by RoonLabs was that this person couldn’t be more wrong.
I use it every week when I go shopping and on every vacation trip, which are only in Europe and not often enough, but I did have 3 in the past 9 months, and ARC has never failed me fatally during these.
I did have to reinstall too often and lost downloads, but never during my trips, and it seems to have stopped in recent months.
With all its warts I still prefer it a lot over streaming service apps because I don’t have to think about missing an album that isn’t on streaming, because I have credits (including the stuff I fixed), and it’s up to date with my play history.
(If it failed me, I could still use the Qobuz and Tidal app instead of being without music, so that doesn’t bother me too much)
Lots of incorrect stuff in this part.
- You can configure a maximum space that it may use for automatic downloads.
- It chooses automatic downloads based on your listening history, but you can also download specific albums and you can convert an automatic download into a permanent one.
On iOS, there are no external SD cards (built-in), so this part of the population already doesn’t care. And many phones today have hundreds of GB. I reserve 30 GB (out of 256) for automatic downloads and even using CD quality this means that I have several days of continuous offline music of everything that I am currently listening to. If I chose lossy compression (which is an option), it would last me months.
That‘s fine. I choose to do other things with my limited time on this ball, and I can find everything I need in Roon, with the option to help it along where metadata is not great, without dedicating my life to it.
So you would be less happy in a world where the only option is Roon. I would be less happy in a world where the options don’t include Roon. Both is OK and now we both have reasonable solutions.
To this I must agree
I do not like to spend such an amount of time to circumvent some limitations roon does have. But once I found a solution I’m happy or happier 
.
Nothing is perfect for all.
1 Like
My option: whenever I leave the house and I’m alone so can listen. Could be once a week or a few times a day as I work from home.
Unfortunately, when I really needed ARC back in February 2023 (spending 4 days away from home for the following 6 months) it was still highly unreliable, giving the ‘poor connection’ error even when on good wifi at home. A reinstalI made no difference so I just reverted to the Tidal app, which has worked solidly ever since. Further reports of it crashing the core reinforced this decision. I’m sure my wife using Roon at home whilst I was 120 miles away appreciated this.
The last few releases have been very ARC focussed which, given the issues with the rest of Roon have not been particularly appreciated by me. There are ‘bigger fish to fry’, as indicated by the recent Roon statement and I hope they concentrate on those to the benefit of all users, not just the ARC subset.
I use it every day for my morning walk
1 Like