I really hope they could reach out and explain this to me, but I know it won’t happen. I was surprised when I visited the thread to find it closed.
I understand they have a small team, but the lack of support on experience-breaking crashes is frustrating sometimes. For the time being I returned to plexamp for listening outside my home. This makes the problems with the library less common (but they are occurring weekly even if I do not fire ARC app on any device…).
Currently, this is my first issue with roon. Let’s see how stability lasts with the latest update. I updated all my devices yesterday.
Since the update, I did not need to reboot the server due symptoms described in this thread.
Thanks for the feedback @Booker. I was unable to thoroughly test the latest update but will do so next week and report back also in any case.
Unfortunately it seems the issue still persists with the current Roon versions (ARC 1.0.42, ROCK 1.0 Build 259).
Hi @GalaxyGlider,
Thank you for the post. The team has reviewed diagnostics available from your ROCK for the duration of the period covering your recent post history. Here’s what we can conclude is going wrong in this setup:
There appears to be a large volume of tracks queuing to at least one Zone, sometimes in the realm of 800 tracks. The team has an open ticket to investigate hanging behavior when attempting to initiate playback from an Album Details page (Play Now + button) when several hundred streaming-service tracks are queued. Do you encounter any hanging when either playing to a large queue or adding additional tracks to the queue?
Multicast is failing on your network. Multizone playback in particular relies on stable multicast, without network filtering or too much packet loss. We need to review the hardware involved in your network, and we need to confirm how you’re using the VPN you appear to have configured for remote access to your ROCK.
UPnP is not properly routing discovery traffic between your ROCK and Sonos endpoints. Specifically, the subscription request time is too short, and Roon can’t retain sight of the Sonos IP address. You’ll need to enter your router web GUI and try to change the UPnP device subscription time (it’s likely at thirty minutes or less).
If the UPnP stack is outdated on your router, this will also interfere with ARC unless you’ve manually configured port forwarding or rely on IPv6. I recommend you double-check that you have up-to-date router firmware and that any VPNs or firewalls on this network aren’t interfering with UPnP.
Put simply, there appear to be two issues underpinning the symptoms you’ve experienced. The first is an unstable connection between your ROCK and your Roon Remotes and endpoints, possibly as a result of network security or hardware configuration. The second issue is an upstream connection failure to Roon ARC, possibly with the same cause.
Additionally, are you able to reproduce any playback failures or poor connection popups if you queue one track at a time to the System Output of a Remote?
The more specific details you can provide about your network and how you’ve configured it, the more positioned the support team will be to assist you.
Here the situation showed some improvement, but the problem persists. My thread was re-opened and connor also initially pointed to my LAN as being responsible for arc’s bad behavior. Waiting for help and clarification to better diagnose that.
Hi @connor,
thanks for the reply. I will try to reply to each of your points separately:
The issue I described in this thread happens with smaller queues as well. It can be an album-sized queue of 10 tracks or several hundred tracks when I shuffle a playlist. The size of the queue to me does not seem to make a concernable difference.
This must be a separate issue unless it affects ARC as well. I use Sonos streaming from Roon to a pair of Play:5s. The connection seems very stable without any hiccups.
Regarding VPN: I do not have a VPN configured to access my Rock specifically. I have set-up a VPN on my Asus Router for remote access into my home network. Rock happens to be accessible that way also but that was not my primary concern to set-up my personal VPN.
I have disabled UPnP on my router and handle all port-forwarding manually. But I do not know how the traffic between my local devices is handled. I can check whether Asus allows for such a setting change. I can confirm that the router is on the latest firmware also.
I can check for logs in my router but generally I would describe my network as very stable. As I said the issue only appears when using ARC, remotely or with a direct connection on my local network. My Roon endpoint on my Mac, Naim streamer, iPad and iPhone all work without any hiccups for hours on end as well as streaming to my Sonos endpoint. Only the ARC connection after the second-to-last update clogs up the core rendering all endpoints unable to connect to the core anymore without a restart.
There’s not much more information I can provide. It is a fairly simple setup. Rock connect by LAN with Asus router. All endpoints are using WiFi in viewing distance of the router. Rock is accessible by ARC through manual port-forwarding. Roon streaming on local network works without any problems. ARC remotely or on local-LAN causes the issues.
As others have experienced similar issues since the later updates I doubt it is an issue exclusive to my network configuration.
Thanks for the additional info. I do not really see the LAN being the culprit here. I can stream on my local LAN for hours on end without any issues but once ARC is introduced remotely or locally the issue appears.
Same here, @GalaxyGlider . the same network and servers allow me to stream 4K remux files without a hitch, strange that a FLAC stream would struggle. Just posted out of frustration on my thread. Giving up on Arc, at least for now, after this “you’re holding it wrong” approach.
I understand your frustration…
Unfortunately I do not really like any of the alternatives so I’ll probably keep using ARC and stick to restarting the core every once in a while. It is really annoying when it happens in the car though…
I really love and prefer Arc in comparison to alternatives. And would rather keep all my music library management centralized on Roon. But the service is so unreliable now that it brings me anxiety instead of pleasure while (trying) to use it.
Just wanted to say, that’s a very detailed report. I wish some of my vendors could do that! Also thanks again for the ROCK info. It has been flawless since I installed it.
Good Luck @GalaxyGlider hope you’re getting close!
Update 5 Sept 2023
Hi all,
just checking in to report that I had only one issue in the past 1.5 weeks which resulted in a required restart. Otherwise ARC and my ROCK seem to be working better together again since the latest ARC update (1.0.42).
That’s good to know, thanks for updating us! Maybe I’ll give it another try.
Since I complained here, I will share my experience after the update. It lasted 22 days without any issues.
But yesterday the symptoms appeared again. Rebooting the core fixes it, just like before the update.
Thanks for your update also. Maybe the intervals get longer since the new update. Which is not good but better than before. I’ll anyway keep testing but still hope for more feedback from Roon support (@connor) and a future update that completely fixes this.
My experience seems to back this up. Similarly I’ve had this occur only once since the update on 14 August to Roon and Arc which while not perfect is definitely a big improvement.
I have had two recurrences of this problem since my last report. As described here. In the roon ARC, the progress bar in the upper area takes an infinite loop, instead of the play button there is a spinning circle that ends with the info Poor connection, Try again, Retry. When switching to the roon remote, only the hamburger icon menu appears with playback controls at the bottom. No home page, no album art.
Hi @Booker, thanks for sharing. Did these two recurrences appear closely together or over a longer timeframe? I have not noticed this issue nearly as often as before the latest update. Still not gone therefore not good but in my case definitely better.