If I try to get ARC synced (once again it’s a complete waste of time and fail, so I need to find a time when I’m not listening to Roon to try and get it to sync again for the first time and then hopefully it works but likely with a lot of my time wasted), Roon breaks. If I try and listen to something and search at the same time, it breaks.
The only solution to this for me is to restart Roon. Can Roon create an on going list of things that they know are broken and are working on? It’s sort of like getting how many minutes it takes to get somewhere you are going on the freeway. At least, if some expectations are set, then the road rage is diminished.
The stuff you are describing doesn’t at all seem to be a common issue or it would be everywhere on the forum. I certainly don’t experience any of that.
And we have been told often enough that they don’t usually comment on what they are working on, or timelines. Working in a software company myself, I totally get it. All it does is create unhappy people.
If I may, you seem to be unhappy a lot. Maybe it’s just time to throw more hardware at the problem or get a fast NUC with ROCK if your library is too large for what you have? I mean, you may think that it should not be necessary and Roon should be more efficient, and whether that’s true or not: is that really worth it?
Well, yes, Roon should be better. I complained consistently about the lack of mobile. Luckily, they got a PM who asked what do you customers care about and I responded. Last summer, when I was away from home I beta tested ARC and it was glorious. While that was serendipity for me, I’m sure many sounded like me before me. The fact it worked better back then, than it does for me now is going to be a perennial problem for Roon as they scale up and try and consume more data and services. Building multi-platform software that works is hard, and I subscribed to lifetime because after 20+ years of internet/network based music I finally saw someone with right vision to succeed in magic. So, I’ll keep complaining and I’m sure they’ll keep listening. Plus, countless people have complained about search over time and Roon does respond including with improvements.
I think they may be getting to a new tipping point with ARC and specifically the problem my large library provides. If they can get it working for me, then many many more people should have no issues.
I recognize throwing hardware at it may be a solution. I appreciate you caring to respond. I do think the stuff that I’m describing is a problem:
-search failing
-first arc syncing causing playback and search to fail
-any of the three described above causing the other to fail
-using shuffle too much causing fails
-any of the above being related to super slow playback loads or searches/movement to different parts of the app on any device
-noticing that when any of the above takes a long time or fails that there is zero to little network traffic which must mean something broke and/or there is some inefficiency somewhere in their technology stack
The fact that it gets better and worse and better as they rollout features and scale means they’re building continually improving software. If they were more transparent about the issues I describe above, then I think that would be better. I’ve seen too countless times people complain about Roon not working for them and leave. They are hopefully and likely a vocal minority considering prices are still going up.
Thanks for the explanation. There are certainly frustrations that I have as well, and in total I can subscribe to “Roon should be better”, but I think they know
ARC is one thing, but what you wrote in the OP does not seem to be about ARC alone? The thread title seems to say that whenever you try to do more than one thing, you have trouble. The first paragraph then is about ARC, but the screenshot and “If I try and listen to something and search at the same time, it breaks” seemed that it was not about ARC?
To be clear, your ARC issues are a pain, though I have no idea what it’s about. I don’t have this and I don’t see other users with large libraries (and yours is considerable but not among the largest) suffering so much.
Sorry, I didn’t want to derail the thread right away. Just thinking that it’s much frustration. The transparency is up to them. Sure, people leave in a huff, I don’t think it can all be avoided. Maybe (probably) people have to decide based on what Roon does for them now. I have seen the frustration caused by publishing intended roadmaps that inevitably are not fulfilled. Public roadmaps and failing to meet them also puts huge pressure on development teams, and while we all hope for progress, developers have lives and families, too. Long-term we are better off if experienced developers love working at Roon and don’t leave.
What i noticed is that if you try and sync arc for the first time and use Roon desktop and listen to computer room or use it, something breaks down. The network is not showing traffic and playback hangs. This happens at times in what i described above. This is about stability and buginess. The fact that they still have lifetime subscription is the only reason they are able to get away with delivering this experience.
Sometimes if I hit play and search quickly they work slower than if I hit play, wait for the playback to start and after that start searching (or loading home page) but not always and I did not figure out a pattern that leads to this.
I use ARC once or twice a week. ARC gets sync after the week off and always freeze/quits. The music on roon does not stop. I restart ARC and the sync is done and works flawless until next week. But I blame my old (very old) phone.
I’m not on life, not yearly… I’m on monthly payment
I’m only streaming, no local files. I have not tried many apps, only Roon (year ago audirvana) and the tidal app. Tidal app (comp and phone) works better but I rather deal with Roon/ARC few restarts than go back to tidal app ugly library management.
Looks like it is true. I’m on m1 mini used only for roon. Roon works ok but it gets slower when HQP is running and the cpu is at 80%. But to my logic this makes sense (later much later I’ll throw a dedicated HQP comp)
A lot more say and discuss on the items raised here and I’d still encourage folks to go lifetime, as I don’t see anyone going after this niche in the way Roon is.
So I had to unplug on my computer laptop to take a call. I plugged the Dac back in after and when I tried to play it just hung with the time bar moving back and forth and not playing. I skipped to the next track, then stopped by clicking play, and then double-clicked play and it worked immediately.
