Hosted solutions?

Roon Software Discussion ARC
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Ok please be gentle with me here as I’m a non techy person who struggles to get my head round these things sometimes:)

So despite having Roon for a fair few years now I’ve only just got round to setting up Arc. Mainly because my router wasn’t configurable so I kept giving up. Silly me hadn’t understood about Tailscale. So now I have Arc running with Tailscale and it is fantastic. Has been running with no issues.

I have Roon Server running on a mini pc and no problem just leaving it on most of the time. But is there an option to have Arc running from a hosted server? I am mainly thinking for a use case scenario of when I go on holiday as we have regular power cuts so I am likely to lose access to my Roon server.

Vox music player seems to offer this service for $5 a month but if I can just set up Arc to do this I’d rather just stick with that.

Thanks in advance for advice/sugesstions.

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There are no hosted Roon services, so you will need to run Roon server continually, especially when away from home.

However, you could download a selection of music on ARC, and if your server is unavailable, switch to ARC offline mode.

A more complicated solution is to add a UPS (battery) to your server so it handles power cuts gracefully, and resumes when power is restored.

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You can download music to play while offline, however, the experience is brutal. Needs to be fixed! You also cannot download music to a memory card - which also does not make a lot of sense. Hopefully, one day, offline playback on Arc will be smooth.

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This works for a while but it should probably be noted that there’s a time limit. It’s not documented to my knowledge, but:

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Thanks I will look into this.

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Thanks. Simple answer is normally the best solution isn’t it!

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I wasn’t aware of this. Moreover, I wonder what a flight is defined as … internal city to city (~1 hour), European travel (~3 hours), or longer flights such as London to Adelaide?

I’ve never tried it for more than a few hours, so am surprised to learn this. I don’t think this was “out there” when ARC was launched, but I see this in the help centre.

ARC offers limited offline play with any downloaded tracks, but will generally need to be connected back to your Roon Server for proper functionality and performance.

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Yeah I was surprised too when I read this and nobody knows unless they happened to see this post. Maybe ARC should have a countdown :slight_smile:

My ROCK has been offline for 10 days now (moving apartment) but ARC still plays downloads. (Half of the covers are gone, but this happens immediately anyway, and I’ve complained for years)

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to me - this is such a big flaw with Arc. I get that at some point it needs to reconnect - but I wish they would completely revamp offline mode. I don’t need it much (maybe two or three times a year) but would love a smoother experience with offline. I do travel to remote countries a couple times a year and offline would come in handy.

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The only thing I can offer that hasn’t been said, is to look at alternative options. Options are good.

If you fear your music server could go offline at anytime or Arc decide to do an update and lose your downloaded content, maybe look at iBroadcast.

I’m not affiliated, but looking at this myself.

https://www.ibroadcast.com/home/

Another option is to upload you physical library to Google Drive, Dropbox and use apps like Symfonium (Android only) to play from them.

I’m not affiliated with Symfonium.

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agreed - many other options. However, I like using one system (has my playlists, play counts, tags, etc.). I am really hoping that with the recent Arc survey that Roon sent out they will be making some significant enhancements in 2025. One can wish :slight_smile:

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I do, too. But ARC is sooo unreliable in the UK. Therefore, I have Plex for my backup player, and AIMP for offline.

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Thanks. Took a look at ibroadcast and found out I already had an account. Have no memory of it! Don’t know why I gave up on it - my guess is the upload failed. Anyway I’m going to give it another try.

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Worth having a look. It’s improved a fair bit from my early memories of it.

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Just saw this now. Interesting, but it’s quite vague and I wouldn’t read this as “will stop working at all at some point” :slight_smile:

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Yes, I use Symfonium with my library which is backed up to Google Drive, it works really well.

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Is there an option in bios for the device to switch on when power is applied?

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Hi there from the UK.

I long ago gave up totally on trying to get ARC to work anywhere, and we don’t exactly live at the North Pole.
But I also have a subscription to Qobuz, and I can now use their full Hi Def streaming system on my phone and in my car. Could you maybe try Qobuz? No messing about setting up this or that, changing from A to B, installing any new gizmo or leaving our main desktop computer switched on. Is that any help? Why can’t Roon make this happen?
Good luck.

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Thanks. Actually so far I’ve found Arc reliable. It hasn’t been long I’ve been using it but fingers crossed.

I have been using Tidal for a long time but now I have Arc up and running have cancelled because I wanted to move away from the streaming companies. Having said that if I find Arc just can’t do what I need then I think I will probably give Qobuz a go.

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Not sure why you thought you had to use tailscale to get arc to work. Every router I’ve worked with allows port forwarding and that is all you need for arc. Don’t use the default port