Hey, thanks for reporting. This shouldn’t be the case.
Could you please put in a support ticket with as much detail as you can offer? Particularly interested to know: what device you’re using with ARC, what streaming quality settings you have, and what streaming services you’re using to try and play music. Keep us posted.
So Apple, for safety reasons deliberately makes Carplay restrictive in terms of what we can show users. The idea is to keep options brief and effective to reduce distractions for drivers. As such, we can only show so many items on a given page, and when you’re vehicle is in motion, the limit becomes much shorter, like 12-15. So unfortunately, this is an Apple thing.
I tried ARC on Carplay yesterday and it worked really well, but I can’t really use it to find what I want to play. The searching capabilities need a lot of work for it to be useable. Until these are added, I would need to use the ARC app on the phone:
Ability to zoom through the alphabet when scrolling through Artists. I would have to scroll through 1000 artists to get to Frank Zappa. You can do this easily in the Apple Music CarPlay app.
Show all of an artists’ albums rather than just four.
Show the Recently Added albums, because that’s what I would usually want to find. Showing Recently Played albums is kind of useless since I’ve already just listened to them.
Siri integration so I can just ask to play an artist or album or playlist
I had to update my iPhone to the latest iOS (16.2) before it showed up in the list of apps in my Volvo. Funnily enough, our BMW accepted it with the earlier iOS.
Hello, I did the setup for Arc this afternoon before leaving home.
That was great to see albums in Apple car play but I was disappointed not being able to change the ordering (last added albums…)
I was also surprised how slow it was however fine on my phone. Strange.
I’ve a technical question. When I select a tune from Tidal and play it with Arc, does it stream from my server or directly from Tidal?
How was I using it before !!! Connected by my Apple cable to my iPhone … I have not done anything different. Before the CarPlay enhancement, I am saying that the sound was superior in quality. I was still using Apple CarPlay to play but I couldn’t get access to my whole library. Using the updated version, the sound quality has clearly diminished. Perhaps other peoples car systems are not good enough to tell the difference of before and after.
Core on NUC10i3
ARC iPhone 12 Pro on Telstra 5G Plan
Wireless CarPlay on Pioneer DMH-Z6350BT with ARC CarPlay App.
I’ve just completed a family trip from Adelaide, South Australia to Thredbo in the Snowy Mountains (no snow at this time of year). And then back home again.
1,115km (693 miles) of driving through rural Australia, with large expanses of very little habitation. We broke the journey into two days and stayed overnight in Albury, New South Wales
For just under 7 hours of the first day’s journey we had uninterrupted play as we passed through areas of 5G, 4G and 3G. Whilst in the areas of 3G play did not stop until we passed through 100km of predominantly 3G with maybe a couple of small patches of 4G as we passed through a small town.
Once we hit the expanded areas of 3G playback eventually stopped and would not start until we got to areas with 4G and 5G, this was on the outskirts of the city of Bendigo and playback was patchy for a few hours.
My son was streaming YouTube from my iPhone to his iPad and at times when he was still watching videos I was unable to resume playback until we passed through a major town or city with excellent signal strength and coverage.
Once we passed through Corryong at the base of the mountains we lost all coverage until we got to Thredbo. Incidentally it was wonderful to drive the small mountain road with the windows down and just hear the sounds of the wildlife and the hum of the car engine
From my experience of using ARC with CarPlay, it doesn’t seem to make that much of a difference if your phone is telling you that you have full signal strength, playback and cover loading times seem just as quick with 2 - 4 bars of 4G as they do with a 5G signal.
5G in Adelaide seems to drop in and out around the city and CarPlay itself gets disconnected in certain spots around the city and suburbs i.e. it always drops out when passing by the radio station on Greenhill Road, the car stereo screen goes black and nothing works properly until we are well away from the station. I’m guessing this wouldn’t be the case if I was using a wired connection to the car stereo.
South of Adelaide where it is less populated we have excellent 5G/4G coverage and I haven’t had a single issue with playback dropping out or covers not loading.
I’m not sure and just guessing here but I am thinking that even if you have excellent signal strength it doesn’t necessarily mean that the network isn’t congested as all the issues I have experienced so far seem to be from network congestion or signal interference.
I played a playlist today, everything worked OK until last song. Then the 2018 CR-V head unit showed a message to the effect “ARK offline.” After that tune I continued to hear ARK-played songs I could see on the phone, evidently from radio mode (not sure how to turn off), and they were displayed in “now playing” on the head unit. But I never could get ARK to work after that: reset app, hit “reset ARK” in app, turned car on/off, disconnect/reconnect cable to phone. Ultimately also got “Loading…” forever. I’m not going to try to enter support information now, just going to wait a while. Nice when it worked but ultimately a disappointment.
Hi,
Audi 2020 w Carplay here, ARC appears on screen but will not load covers or music, only titles.
Works via phone in car just fine but can’t get it to load fully on screen (once I’ve started an album from phone the screen displays title but no cover art).
So basically this is same functionality I already had through Audi MMI…
I have tried to be critical in my listening. But I am sure that ROON in the car with the new ARC sounds better than any of the other formats in my car. I am not exactly sure why? Does Roon have the gain turned up at their base? Or is it some other inherent electronic/software algorithm? It is more clear, more distinct, and just better overall. The bass is tighter. It just sounds much better than any of the other formats—and I have several—in my car. Absolutely brilliant!
I have tried to be critical in my listening. But I am sure that ROON in the car with the new ARC sounds better than any of the other formats in my car. I am not exactly sure why? Does Roon have the gain turned up at their base? Or is it some other inherent electronic/software algorithm? It is more clear, more distinct, and just better overall. The bass is tighter. It just sounds much better than any of the other formats—and I have several—in my car. Absolutely brilliant!
Did about a one hour drive today to the nearest city. Car is a 2020 Toyota Camry with Carplay. Phone is iPhone 8 running iOS 16.2 and ARC 1.030 Build 128.
Roon ARC Carplay bugs discovered today: 1. Now Playing button just quit working on the way home. Touch it and nothing happens. 2. Trying to scroll through lists like Artists or Albums, the screen will scroll 3, maybe 4 times, and then just won’t scroll any further down the list.
ARC works very well with my after market CarPlay head unit. However, I am concerned about how much mobile phone data ARC will use. If I select a Roon 24 bit 192 kHz track, what quality will be streamed to ARC on the road?