Downloading music to ARC is slow

Roon Core Machine

Sonictransporter i5

Networking Gear & Setup Details

Ethernet. Spectrum modem and router.

Connected Audio Devices

Number of Tracks in Library

Description of Issue

I have no issues when streaming local files from my core via Arc. But downloads are painfully slow most of the time or just do not work. This is even when my phone has a fast wifi or cell data connection. Please help. Iphone 14 pro max. Thanks.

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Most reports I have read do say that downloads are fairly slow.
Now I guess it depends on what you term painfully slow truly is.
How long on average for an album would you say?

My experience is if an album doesn’t download in a few minutes it just freezes/stops downloading. Also, some albums will show a check mark as if downloaded, but the files will only stream and not play as if downloaded (have tested this being offline).

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Downloading is not only slow but on iOS devices you must also ensure that the screen does not turn off and the ARC app does not go to the background, else it seems to stop downloading because of background battery saving.

On Android it’s possible to turn off battery optimization on a per-app basis and then it continues downloading in the background.

It’s slow to download on both platforms though. Don’t ask me what’s going on there, both valid complaints have been there since day one. Many threads about this, see the search option :slight_smile: E.g.,

I moved it to this more relevant thread.

Thank you. I appreciate the responses. I also appreciate there are other threads about this issue, but I wanted to create my own support ticket to help resolve my issue lest I be accused of just piling onto a complaint thread without opening a ticket for my own issues. Thanks all.

I appreciate that and it’s very welcome usually when details of support cases differ, but I believe in this case the issue is fundamental and the same for everyone, so @AceRimmer will know what’s best. It’s about time that something is done about this!

Thanks, yes I just hope it’s fixed as Arc is a great app.

You can be absolutely sure Roon are very well aware of this concern.

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Since the release though

Hi. Are others still having problems with downloads? I am.

Yes. Apparently it is finally going to get addressed:

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Greetings, Roon family… I just wanted to report that I successfully downloaded my entire owned (non-Qobuz) library of 9,305 FLAC & ALAC tracks to ARC on an iPhone 13 Mini. Ended up using 352GB, but so worth it!

I have a very fast Mesh WiFi system (Netgear ORBI). The entire playlist took ~24 hours to download and yes, the phone got fairly warm throughout, but the whole process was absolutely bulletproof. I needed to leave the house for a few hours, so the downloading stopped when it went off of WiFi, but it picked up right where it left off as soon as I reconnected to WiFi. Also, not sure I needed to do this, but I disabled the screen timeout feature, kept the ARC app at the forefront and dimmed the screen all the way. Also, kept the phone connected to the charger during the downloading.

Of course, 95+% of my ARC listening will still be done over the cellular network, leveraging my entire Roon library, including all added Qobuz tracks, but it’s fantastic to have a local copy of my purchased music on the iPhone for road trips, camping, hiking, power/netwrok outage, etc., or whenever the cellular connection is spotty or non-existent.

Great job with providing this feature, Roon Team!

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Glad to hear it. Perhaps they have at least improved the download performance in recent builds as my experience from a few months ago was much slower.

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A question I have is whether any newly added tracks to my complete – and already downloaded – “iPhone Downloads” Playlist will get downloaded by themselves, or will I need to re-download the entire playlist just to get them included?

Download speeds are unfortunately still painfully slow.

Pixel 7 Pro here, wifi6 with 2161 MBit/s download speed right next to the router and the core is connected with 2,5 Gbit/s via cable. The core is running ROCK and internal storage ist on a fast SSD.

I turned off battery optimization for ARC, but the display turned off after 15 seconds.

One 44/16 album took more than 45 minutes so I had to quit downloading because I had to leave.

Any news on this?

5 posts up I linked a post with Roon caring and working on it

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Similar issue here on my Galaxy S22 Ultra; I’ve disabled battery optimization and left it to download with slow as hell progress (it gets to 3 songs downloaded in my 152 song playlist and then just gives up). I wish there was at least a progress indicator to let us know that the downloads are happening since I don’t even know if they are anymore.

There is a progress indicator on each album in the download queue, though no overall indicator

I just read this message, checked my progress again, and found that it downloaded 0 songs :{

I then clicked on the playlist, navigated back, and saw it show 2 songs downloaded.

I just want a damn notification to see “x out of 152 songs downloaded”, just so I can know that things are being done.