So now Roon has incorporated a massively flexible and complex DSP into ARC (Muse) but still can’t handle audio ducking like any free player app from 10 years ago could?
Seriously? None of us can even listen to music in our cars properly with this problem, which I imagine is the primary use case for ARC.
Agreed. 
Had the pleasure of attempting to use Roon ARC during a 9-hour car drive recently, the GPS interruptions from Google Maps stopping ARC playback were thoroughly annoying.
So we have extremely powerful and flexible EQ but still no audio ducking for notifications and navigation directions? It’s a joke that ARC just stops playback for interrupts instead of having variable ducking like any free music player app has been able to do for over a decade.
If this is considered “off-topic”, there is already a months-long thread about this issue with ZERO response from Roon. So, maybe Roon could address this extremely basic problem?
Very strange experience recently as I’ve also had this issue with Arc completely stopping the music when notifications come through, rather than just continuing to play and lower the sound a bit. This is on a Samsung S23 Ultra.
However the other day it just suddenly started working?! Instead of gaps when using Arc through Android Auto, the sound ducked. This was happening consistently, and I assumed I’d had an Arc update again.
Fast forward to today, and I’m now getting pauses in the audio again.
Doesn’t look like there have been any recent updates of Arc, so how can this be?!
I suspect they have some codepath that is “enable exclusive mode [for the audio device] if possible, fallback to shared if not”. Exclusive mode would preclude ducking, shared would facilitate it (although without code in Arc to do the volume lowering, this must be a native thing in Android? 
).
All we really need is for that control (exclusive vs shared) to be a user-configurable option.
All we need to do is wait for Roon to implement software design that literally every other music app developer has implemented to allow for variable ducking…this isn’t rocket science and the complete non-response from Roon is very frustrating.
Any news on this yet? I have to use Qobuz or Tidal while on a run (AfterShokz bluetooth headphones) as any audio notifications from my Garmin watch stop Roon Arc but not with Qobuz or Tidal - what gives? This is surely an easy update, no?
To be fair, with the recent updated it’s less of a problem since the playback resumes quicker after the pause. But would still be nice to have the option.
On the contrary, I was reminded about this issue the other day when I tried to use ARC on a quick 15 minute walk; unfortunately a Slack thread was active on my phone as well, and people kept replying frequently. The Slack pings kept interrupting the music and I just gave up in the end. Sad times.
In those cases I just switch to vibrate or silent, but yeah. Definitely a needed feature.
Just switched to a Samsung S23. And here I am searching why Roon ARC pauses music on notifications instead of lowering volume for a bit.
For the history I’m using a Zoorloo Ztella USB-C DAC too. Very frustrating that I can’t answer calls and hear through it. I have to remove the USB to release it from ARC and then answer.
Yeah, this is almost a deal breaker for me. I don’t like having my phone on vibrate on the go because it’s not always on my person (and it’s definitely not on my person a lot when I’m in my house and I don’t want to have to remember to change from ringer to vibrate or deal with automation triggers to handle that for me). This is a necessary feature for a mobile music streaming app IMHO.
Hey all, this is in testing and should land in production in the next release. Thanks for the feedback and reports. 