Roon ARC CarPlay and Tailscale Connectivity Issue on Kenwood DMX907 (ref#57HLQS)

What’s happening?

· I'm having trouble with Roon ARC

What best describes your issue with ARC

· CarPlay / Android Auto issue

Describe the issue

Greetings,
Interesting issue with Roon ARC, Carplay and Tailscale. After lots of frustration with “auto-settings” with ARC, Port Forwarding issues, and just inconsistent playback while driving, I downloaded Tailscale to my Sonictransporter i9 and my iPhone 14Pro on iOS 18.2 Beta…it instantly worked and has so far never lost connectivity while driving…seemed like a big win…until I would try to change albums. When using the ARC Carplay app on my Kenwood DMX907 albums that played fine earlier would show tracks that were “grayed out” and would not play…whatever album was playing kept playing and if I looked around albums something would not be grayed out and would play…others remained grayed out (the tracks within the album on the carplay interface)…BUT if I open the Roon ARC app on the iphone itself (not ideal while driving) any album I chose (local or Qobuz) would play—no tracks grayed out! Any thoughts??
Thanks
Doug

Describe your network setup

Router: FIOS with bridged eero 6 pro mesh…1gbs speed consistency
Sonictransporter is hard wired via ethernet to the router

Hi @Douglasmaurer,

Thank you for the report.

If I’m understanding correctly, the symptoms affecting these library objects were limited to the CarPlay endpoint - neither album artwork nor actual playback were limited on the phone itself?

Were the affected albums from streaming services or your local library? Were they local albums downloaded for offline playback to ARC?

How specifically are you connecting to the DMX907 head unit - via Thunderbolt/USB-C or Bluetooth?

If ARC itself doesn’t show any sign of poor connectivity under the same conditions, then we want to troubleshoot ARC’s connection to the head unit itself.

When you installed Tailscale on your RoonServer machine, did you either a) migrate the database between machines or b) restore a Backup or your database? These can cause ARC to expire authorizations, since it will have a connection to an extinct server.

Try reinstalling ARC or fully resetting the head unit to manufacturer defaults. Please let us know an approximate timestamp of when this event occurred or next occurs and we will pinpoint it in diagnostics.

Thanks!

Thanks Connor…let me answer one at a time…

  1. Correct…album display and track playback not impacted on phone app…only on carplay app…and then seemingly hit/miss.
  2. Impacts both streaming and local library files.
  3. I have no downloaded files as this is about to be my 15th deletion or more of the arc app since joining early access a yr ago… tired of redownloading at this point!
  4. I am connected to the head unit via USB not bluetooth
  5. I did not migrate or restore any backups…i just followed the roon help directions of setting up the tailscale account, downloading Tailscale onto the sonicorbitor (they include it now in their apps section) and then the Tailscale app on the iphone and voila they connected to one another instantly and it has been the most stable arc experience so far!
  6. I will reinstall arc now and then retest in the car on cellular to see if still a problem and get back to u in a few minutes
    Thanks
    Doug

Hi Connor,
The reinstallation of the app seemed to work! At least for the moment! If you look at my logs, you can see that I tested a number of albums, both local content that I own, as well as streaming content and went back-and-forth multiple times between about 10 or so different albums and none of the tracks showed up right out and everything played flawlessly. I didn’t even have that strong of a cellular signal in the garage either so we’ll take that as a win! Thank you for your help and I will try it out while I’m on the road tomorrow and see if the problem creeps back up and let you know what time it happens if it does.
Thanks!
Doug

1 Like

It’s great to read that Roon is working for you again. If no further issues occur please let us know and we can close this thread!

Things seemed to be working ok today whenI was out on the road so I think u can close this.
Thanks
Doug

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