Roon ARC doesn’t work properly on the EvoAria Evo One DAP.
The Evo One is a recent Android DAP. I can start ARC on it, but as soon as I try to play music, the play button icon becomes a spinning wheel and all I can hear is some light background clicking as the track repeatedly attempts to play, but fails.
I think the problem is likely due to a mismatch in sampling rate. The Evo One’s software bypasses the resampling API of Android for bit-perfect reproduction of the music. I suspect this is confusing ARC.
I have heard through the grapevine that Roon certification for the Evo One is pending, and with that should come a solution for this issue, but full certification shouldn’t be necessary just to be able to use ARC, so I was hoping that someone here might have found a workaround for the issue. Unfortunately, ARC isn’t very configurable, so I haven’t been able to find a way to make it work myself.
Your reasoning about the audio path is plausible, and the symptom you describe, a spinning play button with faint clicking, is what an app looks like when the output device will not accept the format it is being handed.
ARC has no output configuration at all, so there is nothing in it we can ask you to change. And we are not able to comment on certification status or timelines for any device, so please treat what you have heard as unconfirmed rather than as something we can build on.
What is worth trying is on the Evo One’s side. Players of this kind normally offer a choice between a direct, bit-perfect output path and the standard Android audio path, often labelled something like “Android audio”, “shared mode” or “system output”. If the Evo One has that setting, please switch it to the standard Android path and try ARC again. Bit-perfect modes work by taking exclusive control of the output, and an app that cannot get it usually fails exactly the way you describe.
Three things that would help us:
Which Android version is the Evo One running?
Do other streaming apps play on it normally, for example Tidal, Qobuz or Spotify? If they fail in the same way, the setting above is almost certainly the cause. If they play and only ARC does not, that is more interesting and we would want to look further.
Additionally, we can try enabling the USB beta driver if the DAC uses USB. See How to Enable the USB Beta Driver
Open the Roon ARC app on your Android device.
Go to app Settings.
Locate and toggle on Enable USB Driver BETA.
Accept the hardware permission prompt for your connected USB DAC.
The main Roon app actually suffered from the same issue, but I was able to fix it there by changing the Max bits per sample (PCM) setting from its default of 24 to 16.
ARC probably has the same issue, but no output setting to fix it.
Understood. It’s all hearsay until it’s officially announced.
Sadly I can find no such setting on this DAP. They may have hard-coded it into the firmware.
13, build TKQ1.231222.001
Yes, Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz all play normally on the device; as do third-party players like Symfonium and USB Audio Player Pro, even when streaming from the aforementioned services.
The only two players that have given me issues are Roon and Roon ARC, and as I say, I soon found a workaround for the former. I’m currently on a six-week triip away from home, so ARC is the more important app to me at the moment. It’s a real hindrance not being able to use it from the DAP.
I’m just using IEMs plugged into a balanced 4.4mm port on the DAP. I’m not using the DAP as a USB DAC.
I do actually have a separate amplifier with me, however, so I might try the experiment anyway. I wouldn’t want to actually listen like that, though; and not just because it would be cumbersome, but because the Evo One is a high-end DAP whose amp section is superior to that of the Quloos MUB5 I brought with me.
Thanks for the detail, that narrows it considerably. Your own test is the useful part: dropping Max bits per sample to 16 fixed it in Roon, which points at the output refusing 24 bit rather than anything about the network or the app itself. Roon ARC has no equivalent setting, which is why you are stuck there.
One thing worth checking, and it does not need the external amplifier. Please enable the USB Driver BETA toggle in Roon ARC settings with nothing plugged in, and tell us whether Android shows a hardware permission prompt. Some players wire their internal DAC to an internal USB bus, and if the Evo One is one of them, that driver may be able to take the output and avoid the path that is failing. If no prompt appears, the DAC is not on that bus and we will stop pursuing it.
Thanks for the suggestion, Vadim. I was excited to try it.
Sadly, however, no permission prompt appeared when I toggled the USB driver setting and ARC remains unable to play.
I do wish that ARC offered the same bit depth setting as Roon, as that would doubtless fix the issue, but I understand that the design concept of ARC is different.
I suppose I have to cross my fingers and hope that the rumoured Roon certification for this device will eventually come through, at which point all such bugs will presumably have been squashed.
I know you can’t comment about that, of course, so I’m not asking any questions about it.
Thank you for testing it, and that result closes that avenue: no permission prompt means the internal DAC is not on a USB bus, so the beta driver was never going to reach it.
Your own finding is the useful part of this thread. Dropping Max bits per sample to 16 fixed it in Roon, which means the output is refusing 24 bit, and Roon ARC has no equivalent setting. That is the whole of it, and it is a gap on our side rather than anything wrong with your DAP or your setup.
We have passed that to our product team: specifically that ARC has no way to limit bit depth, and that there are devices where this is the difference between working and not working. We are not going to give you a timeline for it.
We will close this thread here, as there is nothing further we can do from support while you are away. If anything changes, or if you find something new when you are back with your own system, please open a new thread with a link to this one and we will pick it up.
Thanks for the quality of the report. Working out the bit depth yourself and confirming that five other players are fine on the same device is what made this diagnosable at all.