I am looking for a way to make my Android phone a standalone Roon player, without the need to have my PC powered on and connect to it, for travel listening.
How do I do that?
Using Roon ARC away from home requires you be connected to your Roon core. That’s how it works. Otherwise, you need to download some of your music files to your phone.
Roon General generally needs a server, „the Core“ and it must be running because all streaming at home goes through the Core. This can be a laptop or PC, or a dedicated device. You should read here:
For travel listening there is the Roon ARC app. This also works offline IF you first downloaded files from the Core to the ARC app, but for online streaming with ARC the Core at home must also be running
In general, Roon needs a running Core for most things and if that’s not your cup of tea, Roon is not a good choice for you
I think ARC has an offline mode, but you’d need to download what you want to listen to ahead of time. If, for some reason, you don’t want to keep the Core running all the time… I’d just copy files to the phone and use UAPP (or LG Music if you get a V/G series) to take advantage of the built-in high-rez DAC.
Guaranteed not to work if you go that route and turn off the core. I have found arcs offline mode to be highly unreliable with downloaded content often not allowing you access to it without having a sync back home. Not just me as it’s happened to others. Tends to be after an update to the app and you haven’t done a recent sync.