· My roon arc will not reach the high quality zone while driving. Assuming it’s a cellular access issue. Roon server always says not ready but I’m using tailscale and I’m being told that’s not an issue, please advise. Only receiving lossy in my car which has a premium system and was using high quality previously
Tell us about your home network
· iMac M1 chip using an iphone newest model and tailscale
mjw
(And I'm standing in your doorway And I'm mumbling and I can't remember the last thing that ran through my head)
2
Do you have PLAYBACK set to Automatically pick best quality in the Settings?
That said, with road noise etc. lossy is probably the optimum setting while driving.
The most potent factor here will be the phone’s available cellular connection. Do you have good cell coverage where you are driving when you experience this problem?
Another factor will be the latency in the upstream connection from the server. You mentioned you use Tailscale. If you don’t explicitly need Tailscale for NAT traversal because your ISP blocks port forwarding, you may want to try a direct port-forwarded connection instead. The “not ready” can also be caused by local network factors (like two active routers).
The network path Tailscale takes will depend several factors, including your ISP’s routing, NAT behavior, and your physical location. In some cases, Tailscale is unable to establish a direct peer-to-peer connection and will fall back to a relay (they call them "DERPs,” see more here). While this allows ARC to maintain connectivity in situations where port forwarding might fail, it can also introduce additional latency and reduced available bandwidth.
In your case, that added latency may be enough to cause ARC to step down the streaming quality when it is set to automatically select the best format.
Following the suggestions from other users above should give you more granular control over ARC’s quality selection.
Original format is the format as stored on your local Roon Server disk or as it comes from the streaming service, without any conversion. (Whether your cellular connection supports a sustained 192/24 data rate is another matter).
CD Quality converts to 44.1/16 if the source has a higher resolution. (The conversion happens on the Roon server, so this helps with cellular data rate).
The FAQ link posted by @connor answers all questions in detail.
New issue. I turned off my iMac and now the server will not reconnect. I have a iMac with the M1 chip issue 26.2. This seems to happen every time and i have to go through some machinations to get it back up and running. Can someone please lay out the proper way to connect roon to my Mac which will also allow my arc to work. I understand the Mac is a little more complicated than the pc but i shouldn’t have to go through this every time i reboot. I am aware that i have to keep it on for arc use. Love the product when it works and admittedly I’m a little tech challenged but not samba these issues with other streaming music apps.
So glad to hear you were able to get Arc sorted out!
How is your iMac connected to your router?
Do you have Roon listed as an exception within your macOS firewall? The easiest way to test if firewall might be blocking your connection would be to temporarily disable it, and then run through the same process above and see if the same issues occur.
