I want to add a specific, concrete data point to this discussion. Yes, I know this has come up in many ways over the years.
I’m running Roon ARC on a FiiO M21, a dedicated DAP with a fully balanced 4.4mm output and hardware explicitly designed for bit-perfect playback through its headphone jacks. The FiiO M21, like several other modern DAPs, implements system-level SRC bypass so that compliant apps can pass audio directly to the DAC without going through Android’s 48kHz mixer.
The Tidal app can do this bypass. Right now, on this device, Tidal delivers bit-perfect lossless output through the 4.4mm balanced jack. This is not a phone-specific complaint about a compromised audio stack; we’re talking about a consumer streaming app beating out a premium audiophile app on lossless playback.
Roon ARC resamples everything to 48kHz out of the headphone jack. The USB audio beta driver workaround exists, but that requires a USB connection and does not help those of us using the device as a standalone DAP through its native audio outputs, which is the primary use case for a dedicated music player.
Furthermore, the M21 is Roon Ready certified. When the FiiO Roon app is running, it presents as a proper network endpoint and delivers bit-perfect playback from the Core over RAAT, bypassing Android entirely. FiiO have done the work twice over to make bit-perfect possible on their hardware. Roon ARC remains the exception.
For those of us who use a DAP as our primary ARC listening device, and that use case is growing as this segment of hardware matures and becomes more accessible, this is the most significant gap in the ARC experience. ARC is a fantastic app and runs so well in 2026. The streaming is fast, the smart downloads are excellent, and I don’t want to use anything else on the go.
Please prioritise native bit-perfect output through the headphone jack for DAPs that support it.
Thank you!