Well, I’ve yet to have a successful session with ARC CarPlay
The interface loads, but no artwork at all. I can see lists of albums, playlists, etc., but if I go into ANY album or playlist, it just sits at “Loading” forever; i.e., no matter how long I wait, it never loads.
I tested this again today in an area with 300Mb+ 5G connectivity, and my home upload is 30Mb+. Same result: connected, see lists of albums, etc., but no tracks ever load, so it’s impossible to play anything
FWIW, it works fine on my iPhone; i.e., if I just pull up my iPhone and access ARC, it behaves exactly how I’d expect, with full artwork, interactive browsing, effective search, etc. - it’s only with CarPlay that’s it’s unusable.
I don’t know if this will work for you, but most of the time when I first get in my car, ROON ARC kind of works in CarPlay, but a lot of the album artwork is missing if not all. Plus, my Daily Mixes don’t usually update right away in CarPlay.
What I simply do is, after my phone connects to my car via CarPlay, I open ROON ARC on my phone if it isn’t open already, then close it out completely right away. Then give it about 5 to 10 seconds, then click back into ROON ARC via CarPlay directly, not on your phone, and it should hopefully work fine again. At least this is what works for me. Maybe it will work for you.
I hope you don’t mind - I’ve split your two posts into a dedicated tracking thread, given the similarity of the symptoms, so the tech support team can help pin down what’s wrong and restore CarPlay performance.
First off, are you on the most recent production build of Roon and ARC? We’ve shipped a few hotfixes in the last two weeks and we want to verify you’ve received them on your devices.
Secondly, are local tracks you’ve downloaded to ARC playing successfully in CarPlay, or are you unable to play any content at all? Specifically, I’m referring to the endless loading @jhwalker reported here.
Lastly, do either of you have any issues with port forwarding, or any diagnostic warnings pasted in Roon → Settings → ARC? Diagnostics from your accounts seem to indicate that cellular connections are working fine, but we’ll want to verify ARC’s connection to the Core isn’t being filtered even with a strong connection.
Yes, using the most current production build BUT I haven’t re-tested since the latest builds were released late last week. I will be out and about TODAY (Tuesday, 21 March) and will give it a try now - at this point, all of the parts / pieces are up-to-date and I’ve already launched ARC, so it won’t be stuck on the startup screen (as I expected, perhaps falsely, to have been a problem once before).
I was only trying to stream tracks from the library before, so haven’t tested playing downloaded tracks / albums. I have downloaded three albums (two stereo, one multichannel) today, and will give this a try this afternoon.
Testing in Roon shows successful connection to ARC. I have Roon Core running on a Sonictransporter with a fixed IP address (192.168.1.###) and have set up forwarding on my router just to make sure. I’ve just confirmed connectivity via cellular in the APP (not CarPlay, just the ARC app running on my phone here in the house but with WiFi turned OFF), and it’s working fine, both for streaming and for the recently-downloaded albums.
Will let you know how CarPlay behaves when I’m out and about later today.
UPDATE: OK, I tried Drake’s workaround, and it worked a bit; i.e., now I could see icons, and I was able to initiate playback for ONE track. Nothing else worked.
HOWEVER, I thought about it a bit and decided to try the connection WITHOUT my wireless CarPlay adapter; i.e., plugging my phone DIRECTLY into the car via USB instead of using the wireless adapter I use for everything else.
Bingo. Now, everything worked exactly as I expected it to - icons appeared, I was able to browse and pick tracks to play, etc. So it appears the wireless CarPlay adapter was preventing the application from performing properly, even though it works for EVERY OTHER application I use (e.g,. Maps, Music, Messages, Qobuz, Google Maps, Wayze, etc.).
So where does this leave me? Well, it appears I can either use my wireless CarPlay OR I can use ARC LOL. Perhaps you guys can do some testing / workarounds with wireless adapters so ARC will perform better with them?
PS - Not making a statement about wireless adapters in general, or ARC in general … just stating that taking the wireless adapter out of the loop worked for me.
Thank you for the precise detail of your posts! This feedback is incredibly valuable to the team as we work to improve ARC compatibility with CarPlay (both via USB and wireless adapter).
I’ll pass this along to development and we’ll parse some routine diagnostics from ARC to determine where the adapter failed.
For my system, I’m on the most recent builds for everything including the one that came out just for the server. My server is the Sonic Transporter i5.
I had port forwarding setup on my router since the issue with automatic port forwarding started about 2 weeks back but I since turned it off on my router as of today and the automatic setup seems to be working again just as it did before. I’ll have to test to see now how the refreshing of the screen goes with CarPlay. I too use a wireless receiver from CPLAY2air but I will try testing out the issue both connected and wireless to see if I still have to refresh the app. But before refreshing the app, ROON ARC still works for me, it’s just really the DAILY MIXES that don’t refresh automatically on the screen in CarPlay.
For me, I’m also able to play downloaded content just fine with no issues up to this point via CarPlay. And once it starts playing, it keeps going with no issues. The album artwork seems to refresh with no issues as well for everything.
Overall though, I have no troubles playing music over Wi-Fi or Cellular while driving or at work or at home via ROON ARC.
ARC in carplay has been playing fairly well recently, but artwork is definitely hit or miss. Sometimes I’ll get all the artwork, sometimes no artwork. Sometimes I’ll get artwork for albums in my library but the playing now artwork never changes. Very inconsistent.
I also use wireless carplay in car and Arc loads, usually has correct artwork, will play current song, either a downloaded one or not, but my issue is I cannot forward or back or even stop a song. If I hit forward it plays current song again. Back does nothing but current song again. And stop it either goes back a song or keeps playing current song. Plex Music does not do this, nor Apple Music. But Arc sounds better and I would like to use it but too much of a hassle. Hope there’s a fix.
