What debacle? I think there weren’t actually that many issues. I have seen many launches over the years with way more issues. Sure, some people have had difficulty setting up their routers, but that was to be expected.
the only answer can be that it is for some, and isn’t for others.
what is disappointing and shocking is that roon would run a media campaign telling paying subscribers that the update ‘WILL change the way you use roon FOREVER’. well newsflash for the roon marketing department but the updates and new app WILL NOT change anything about how i use roon - EVER - because it doesn’t cater for my needs - not even 1 single bit. it is clunky, outdated and seriously lacking in the most basic of functionality needed to listen and manage music on the go. so i wont be using it, at all.
next time you (roon) decide to make an announcement, with a factual statement, maybe think about it first, before over promising and under delivering again
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I don’t think the era of high-capacity storage on mobile devices is dead because of Roon ARC, at least not for everyone.
I can see that streaming is great for people in the office where neither battery life nor data usage are problems since they are presumably on work WiFi and can plug into a charger at any time. For people in a car power will also never be a problem assuming they have a car charger and data for many won’t be a problem if they have a plan with unlimited or very high monthly data allowance. The issue I see though is people who are away from a WiFi connection and don’t have masses of data on their plan, or just as problematic people who are genuinely mobile, i.e. not in a car or office who don’t have immediate access to a charger.
I took Roon ARC out for my first real test of it yesterday beyond just playing with it at home on my local WiFi network. I went for about a 1 hour walk during which time I played a single 45-minute album. It streamed flawlessly the whole time but it did consume more than 10% of my battery for that one album and that’s on a brand-new iPhone 14 Pro Max which is an absolute beast when it comes to battery life. For my normal use, i.e. without streaming but only local playback, ebook reading, messaging and a few shortish voice calls I only need to charge it about every 3rd day when it gets down to about 30% battery remaining. Losing over 10% in an hour is an unacceptable hit on my battery especially if I am out on a much longer hike of 6 hours or so. And this is with a phone that has the 2nd best battery life in the industry, for people with phones with shorter battery life who find themselves spending a lot of time with no access to a charger, and who don’t want to be carrying a power bank with them all the time,
I really do think that locally stored music is still very important, and some people (like me) will want that locally stored music to comprise their entire library of CD rips and/or purchased downloads,
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I think you’ll find this is called Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify etc etc. ‘The future’ preceded Roon. That is why Roon is sometimes accused of pandering to those old fashioned types (such as myself) who persist in having music stored at home.
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It wasn’t expected for some of us who don’t touch our routers as we don’t know how to, but find we face security risks relating to an upgrade that cannot be easily rolled back or the new bit permanently switched off.
I don’t use any hardware or software that requires me to delve into IT, even my Ubiquiti wireless system is remotely managed by a third party supplier. 2.0 has caused me a lot of problems and I now have to get a QNAP engineer in to check my server, that was delivered set-up some years ago and I’ve not changed anything since.
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Something tells me your living in the wrong country for Roon.
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There’s an irony with Roon 2: offline mobile access, and online local access. I’d actually prefer it the other way around. I’ve no need for ARC.
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Most of the time it’s fine , just now. The aged generation capacity keeps breaking, hasn’t been maintained properly for years and it’s showing
Vive the SD card 
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There missing a trick considering they love generating add on sales for things they omit on their products on purpose. It would have to their own type of memory card though to keep you walled in.
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Not a game changer but a good start to something that could be built on more. Hopefully Tidal/record labels will allow Roon to cache music for offline purposes.
I use Tidal and don’t particular like their app layout and have no need for music videos. I’ve used Qobuz before and find their app quite terrible for user experience.
I use Roon at home instead of other systems I own native apps. Having a similar user experience and UI on ARC is cool when away from home.
With iPhone I can use my Dragonfly Cobalt DAC as I do at home.
I don’t get the hype at all. I guess any Roon user has a Tidal or Qobuz account. So there is the music anyway. Even in better quality sometimes than my personal library. So ARC would be only for the playlists for me. But I’m stuck to Vodafone Germany so the whole port forwarding thing doesn’t work anyway.
No ARC for me. I can live with that. There are things way more important for me. (Qobuz new releases take too long to appear, the search is still a mess etc)
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Well it was possible to provide the ‘streaming from your local library while not on the home network functionality’ before, it involved setting up personal VPNs etc and a heap of networking overhead.
It was possible to load files onto the iPhone as local and play them while away from the home network or without service - certainly have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 & iPhone 5 with lots of music stored on them - but it was a pain to update etc.and you needed to be managing your Library in iTunes.
It was possible to do this with the Tidal app, but it is a separate Music Library within Tidal, and if wasn’t on Tidal, tough.
However, Roon ARC makes it easy to do all of these functions - stream while away from your home network all of the music in your library, manage downloaded versions for offline playback and being from your home library, not having to manage another library in Tidal.
So for me, Roon ARC is the way forward from something I already have, as a subscriber (lifetime) - they have taken something that was possible, but complicated and made it much more simple and user friendly - that changes the game.
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We’ll see but clearly this is the direction:
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If ARC will have DSP integrated, than it will be a game changer for mobile listening, as than I have DSP capabilities independent from my mobile device and they are the same as at home. So my headphones will sound the same at home and away.
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Interesting if that is something could be undertaken on the Roon Core before the stream is delivered to the mobile device, or this needs to be undertaken on the device itself.
Power consumption affecting battery life is something Apple watch very carefully as part of the iOS App review/signoff process and high levels of DSP take CPU cycles to undertake.
Maybe future Apple silicon will have an Audio DSP core for off-loading this to specialised processing pipes, as they have with graphics and image processing.
If you simply don’t open the port on the router, there is no actual change at all
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I would guess DSP is done by the core and then streamed.
Too soon to tell. Apple Music does what ARC does in terms of accessing my ripped music so I don’t need it at the moment.
For me BIG YES. I listen to musics that aren’t on any streaming services or in inferior spec than download. (Yes, I only listen to anime and Japanese musics, I’m filthy weeb.) Having all of them anywhere, in original* quality, is amazing! (*not yet because ARC always do SRC for DAPs) The only downside is that now core always requires online connection.
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