iOS device - iPhone, iPad etc. as an audio playback device

[Carl]

Hi Mike,
@Brian posted these comments in the Roon 1.2 Feedback Thread.
So long term yes it’s a possibility.

@brian

Since Roon is built on .net, we use Xamarin tools to target iOS and Android. Their garbage collector doesn’t play well in the same process with CoreAudio because it pauses the entire universe, including unmanaged audio handling components when it runs, and that doesn’t sound very good.

Our usual solution is to move audio handling out of process–which we do on all of the other platforms. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t allow us to do the same.

Our backup solution would be to run our audio server as a background process outside of our app…but Apple’s rules surrounding background processes don’t accommodate our use case either.

This garbage collector issue is being worked on by the Xamarin guys (well…Microsoft guys now ). They seem to be on track to clear it in the next few months. At that point, we’ll be able to see where things have landed.