Hello Everyone,
This week’s Early Access release includes new functionality in both Roon and ARC – not everything is available in (or applicable to) both apps, so read on for all the details.
Note that if you are not seeing the new functionality, you may need to restart your Core and/or your remote once or twice.
Wikipedia browsing - Roon
Since Roon launched, we’ve featured artist biographies, album reviews, and composition descriptions from TiVo, whose data previously served as the basis for the AllMusic guide. This content includes extensive coverage of popular music, particularly in the United States and UK, but not everyone has been happy with it being so prominent in Roon.
Some users have requested a more unbiased source, recoiling from reviews that malign their favorite albums. We’ve heard from a few users that they’d prefer to never see this content, while others – particularly international users and those that don’t primarily speak English – have complained about the paucity of coverage for artists in their country, or the fact that the coverage is so slanted towards English-speaking artists.
We invested a great deal of effort looking for a source with broader coverage – beyond the classics, and beyond the Top 40 – which has an unbiased, detailed, factual take on artists from around the world, in all the countries and continents where people enjoy Roon.
And so today we’re excited to begin testing our integration of Wikipedia in Early Access. Whether you run Roon in English or localized into your native language, Roon will now be featuring artist biographies, album reviews, and composition descriptions from Wikipedia when available.
In many cases, Wikipedia’s content includes even more detailed information than was previously available, with photographs and details about the artist’s life, the recording of the album, or the background of the composition.
Note that our long-standing TiVO editorial content is still available when you expand the article from the set of links on the right.
You can also customize your sources by visiting Settings > General > Editorial sources, and choosing not only which sources and languages you want, but also the order in which Roon will prefer them. For example, an artist that’s famous in France but relatively unknown in the United States might not have a biography in any of our English sources, but you may get a detailed write-up if you turn on “Wikipédia en français”.
There’s still some work to do on this feature (including adding support to ARC), so it will likely stay in Early Access for a few more weeks. That means we’re looking forward to hearing everyone’s feedback! Whether you prefer the old or new content, speak 10 languages or just speak English, we’re interested to know about any issues you come across and, most importantly, how our integration of Wikipedia is impacting your experience.
Find Downloads - ARC
Now you can easily find all of your downloadable content directly from ARC. Simply go to your downloads page and look for “find something to download” and you will see a list of all of the music in your library which is available for download. And if you see something you’d like to have available offline, you can download it in a single click.
Note: this will only appear if you have local content.
Note: we are addressing a few issues which may cause a delay in the initial display of your downloadable content.
Android USB DAC Driver - ARC
Roon ARC now supports bit-perfect playback to USB DACs on Android Phones with a custom USB driver. This is similar to the approach used by other apps like UAPP, Neutron Player, and TIDAL. With the USB driver, ARC bypasses the normal limitations of audio playback on Android, and allows full access to your DAC’s capabilities.
You can enable the USB Driver on the settings page. Then, when you plug in any USB audio device, you will be prompted to allow ARC to access the device. Once you have confirmed, ARC will switch over to the USB driver. As always, you can confirm what is happening by looking at ARC’s signal path.
Thank you for your continued support,
The Team at Roon Labs
What’s new in this release?
Build Numbers
| Application | Version |
|---|---|
| Roon / RoonServer | 2.0 (build 1159) earlyaccess |
| Roon ARC | 1.0 (build 81) earlyaccess |
| Roon Remote (Android / iOS) | 2.0 (build 1159) earlyaccess |
Changes
- Introducing Wikipedia browsing into Roon
- Introduced Find Downloads into ARC
- Introduced Android USB DAC Driver into ARC
- Added Marquee effect to the text on the Now Playing screen in ARC
- Resolved an issue where Roon Tested AirPlay devices were not displaying the user-defined “Descriptive Name” anywhere in the UI
- Resolved an issue where Search functionality could stop working for users with big libraries
- Resolved an issue that could cause some internet transactions to fail
- Numerous usability and stability improvements to Roon and ARC
Installation
Cores, remotes, and ARC installations already running earlyaccess should update automatically. If you need to reinstall, the latest earlyaccess builds can always be found at the following links.
| macOS: | Roon | RoonServer |
| Windows: | Roon | RoonServer |
| Linux: † | Easy Installer | Full Package |
| Nucleus / ROCK: | See Help Center–needs link | |
| Android APKs: | Roon Remote | Roon ARC |
† Information on loading Roon on Linux can be found here. Please use the files linked here in place of those from the help center article when loading earlyaccess.