There have been many posts about ARC power consumption, but seemingly all in topics now closed. I’ve started to use ARC seriously this week. The battery drain is severe, to the point that the app isn’t useable for me.
I had hoped that ARC could replace my Apple Music app on my iPhone. My use case is simple–I download my entire library and listen either on planes (via Bluetooth earbuds) or in my car (via CarPlay). I rarely stream, nor do I use an outboard DAC. I have no special DSP enabled [just Max PCM Rate (Power of 2) SRC]. I have Smart Downloads disabled.
This morning I listened to an 11 minute track (Autumn Leaves, by Cannonball Adderley on Something’ Else, 96/24 in my Roon library), downloaded as “Balanced” (OPUS compressed), on Bluetooth earbuds. No other apps were active. My battery went from 68% to 62%. Then I played the same track with the Apple Music app (presumably using AAC compression), and the battery went from 61% to 60%. Finally, I re-downloaded this album to ARC using “CD Quality” and repeated the experiment. The battery went from 58% to 52%.
These are crude measures, but it’s clear that ARC is using much more power–a multiple on the order of six–to perform simple playback from my downloaded library when compared to Apple’s native app, and it doesn’t appear to be very dependent on the track format.
I’m hoping there is a fix for this. Otherwise, ARC is simply unusable for me.
There have been many posts about ARC power consumption, but seemingly all in topics now closed. I’ve started to use ARC seriously this week. The battery drain is severe, to the point that the app isn’t useable for me.
I had hoped that ARC could replace my Apple Music app on my iPhone. My use case is simple–I download my entire library and listen either on planes (via Bluetooth earbuds) or in my car (via CarPlay). I rarely stream, nor do I use an outboard DAC. I have no special DSP enabled.
This morning I listened to an 11 minute track (Autumn Leaves, by Cannonball Adderley on Something’ Else, 96/24 in my Roon library), downloaded as “Balanced” (OPUS compressed), on Bluetooth earbuds. My battery went from 68% to 62%. Then I played the same track with the Apple Music app (presumably using AAC compression), and the battery went from 61% to 60%. Finally, I re-downloaded this album to ARC using “CD Quality” and repeated the experiment. The battery went from 58% to 52%.
These are crude measures, but it’s clear that ARC is using much more power–a multiple on the order of six–to perform simple playback from my downloaded library when compared to Apple’s native app, and it doesn’t appear to be very dependent on the track format.
I’m hoping there is a fix for this. Otherwise, ARC is simply unusable for me.
I have tried both suggested fixes (DSP SRC change and display change). Neither affected my phone’s power draw (I got the same 6% battery drain for the same 11 minute track). I have posted to Support.
I use Tailscale, and this morning found that it’s relevant. After disabling Tailscale on my iPhone (but remaining on my local network, with my Nucleus+, via WiFi), I found that the 6% /track battery drain is reduced to 4% (with other conditions as above). I see the same 4% with networking off (WiFi disabled and phone in Airplane mode) and ARC in local playback. So some of the excess battery drain can be ascribed to Tailscale (and I hope that can be fixed), but ARC is still draining at about four times the rate of Apple’s Music app under similar conditions.
This morning, I connected ARC conventionally via UPnP, and connected to the cell network (i.e., disabled WiFi) on my phone. Under these conditions, I see the same (roughly) 6% battery drain when I play my 11 minute test track. Hence there appears to be no difference in battery drain between Tailscale and UPnP connectivity. The differences reported yesterday appear to be related to offline playback.
