Roon & ARC have become incredibly unreliable for me - what is going on?

[Booker]

Quite close to each other, the first one this Monday and the second one yesterday.

[GalaxyGlider]

Thanks for the reply. Seems to be happening for me also. See below.

Update September 17

I had three crashed within the last 24 hours.

1. Yesterday ARC again crashed my Roon core after playing a couple of songs remotely. A Core restart brought back the connection and I was able to resume playback.

2. This morning ARC crashed my Core twice within 5-10 minutes.

Both times my Roon endpoints on Mac, iPhone and iPad were also not able to establish a connection anymore resulting in the blank screen as shown in my first post above. Both times a restart helped the issue but after the first restart a second crash followed shortly after.

This is after spending the entire week without experiencing a crash once. So the issue is still very much present but appears more sporadically.

I don’t know what it worse, this crashing or Roon Support’s ongoing silence on this topic (outside the single response I got in 2 months and 81 posts in…)

[Marcelo_Bulgueroni]

@GalaxyGlider

I don’t know what it worse, this crashing or Roon Support’s ongoing silence on this topic (outside the single response I got in 2 months and 81 posts in…)

If you read Support’s answer again, it is very similar to the answer I got on my support thread. They chalked the problem to our systems and network. It is as if we asked about repetitive engine failures on a car, and their reply is that we are using the wrong tires.

The issue is CLEARLY common throughout different users. Unless Support comes in again saying now they detected this issue happens in very different systems and setups and therefore is not each individual setup fault but something to be better addressed in their software I am completely giving up on Arc (as I have done for the past weeks).

I love Roon at my home and was very happy at the prospect of bringing the same experience on the road and my office. But I will have to rely on Plex for that, which does a decent job, and never crashes. Although I would prefer Roon… if they only let me.

[Booker]

Again. This morning I was at home listening via roon. I paused the playback and turned off the DAC.
After moving to the office, the roon ARC does not work, with the same symptoms - the upper progress bar moves, and info about bad connection.

@connor , is there any root cause analysis going on to fix this problem for good?

[GalaxyGlider]

Update 2 October 2023

Also the latest update to Roon ARC seemingly did not fix the problem. I had numerous crashes of the core over the last few days all requiring the core to be restarted to enable music playback again. If anything the latest update made it worse again. I experience multiple crashes a day whereas with one of the previous updates the crashes went down to once or twice a week.

[Booker]

Exactly. Yesterday I had a problem after two songs. And today I only played one song and then it crashed.
The whole day is gone because I must restart when I get home.

This is not great, since this problem occurred at the beginning of July, we have October!

[GalaxyGlider]

As a workaround, do you have the possibility of setting up a VPN connection to your home network? That way you could reboot the core remotely. That is what I do and it works well enough to at least get ARC working again.

[Booker]

I have such an option on my Mikrotik router, but I keep putting it off. Due to recent events, I need to dive into it this week. Roon could add such an option (system restart) to ARC if the core seems to be responding.

[James_Cortez]

I’m having same exact issues esp since latest updates to my nucleus and app

[GalaxyGlider]

@Booker

I have such an option on my Mikrotik router, but I keep putting it off. Due to recent events, I need to dive into it this week. Roon could add such an option (system restart) to ARC if the core seems to be responding.

Yes. That might be worthwhile for you as restarts are required so often with ARC… And good idea for a feature but I suspect the ARC app loses any connection to the core so also the ability to remotely restart. But who knows what is going on in the background that is causing these issues/crashes in the first place.

@James_Cortez

I’m having same exact issues esp since latest updates to my nucleus and app

Thanks @James_Cortez Even though I do not like seeing more people with these issues it is good to get more voices in here so that this needs to be addressed by Roon Support with more urgency.

[Marcelo_Bulgueroni]

Try https://www.jumpdesktop.com or https://www.pulseway.com - Pulseway in particular has a free tier (which I use) and it allows you to reboot the server and check its vitals on a simple mobile or web interface. I use it a lot (specially when I did bother trying make Arc work, used it to reboot the server a lot of times). Hope it helps.

[Booker]

I just found two other topics where the symptoms are very similar to ours.

ARC Connection Not Stable

Hi again @connor, As an experiment I set up a new core on a different machine, which has double the RAM and a better CPU. The storage drive is also different. At first I tried restoring a backup from the previous core and then I tried again with a completely fresh DB. The result is that ALL of my usual problems are still happening with the new core: The core freezes regularly and requires a restart Most of the time, album titles are not reported to Bluetooth metadata Roon Radio forgets its o…

Skipping tracks via Bluetooth on ARC crashes core

I also started having these core freezes recently. I think for me it started happening only after I reinstalled my core with a fresh DB (with/without restoring a backup later) in an attempt to fix a different Arc issue. It’s gotten so bad recently that I installed TeamViewer on the core machine and wrote a batch file which exits the Roon Server app and restarts it so I can do it from my phone when I’m not home… Hope the next set of Arc performance improvements will make it go away (latest upda…

And this morning it crashed again.

@benjamin
@connor

Help, please.

[Booker]

It gets worse and worse, just today, there are two reboots. To whom may I send logs for review?

@benjamin @connor

[Marcelo_Bulgueroni]

Here’s hoping that @connor , @benjamin and the rest of the team can cross-examine your case, mine, @GalaxyGlider , @James_Cortez, @Chikolad and others, which all have identical or very similar symptoms (concerning core crashing and Arc stopping) and find the real issue.

For me and @GalaxyGlider we were simply answered that the problem “is in our network / system setup” and even after more questions on our side we never got answered again.

Those are all very different systems, @Chikolad even went to the trouble of setting up a brand new server. To no avail.

[The_Incredible_Rook (Luan Gardenalli)]

This exactly issue is happening to me a lot.

Used to be a couple times day, but now I can’t go 1h without it failing.

My core is setup on a high end Windows 10 machine, connected via ethernet to my router.

-I have VERY fast and stable internet connection.
-Issue persists without firewall
-Issue persists no matter the size of the queue
-issue persists no matter if local music or Qobuz
-I’ver NEVER had any issue with the core when NOT using ARC
-I’ve messed with multiple settings on the core app, nothing I’ve tried makes a difference
-resetting the entire computer did not solve it
-restarting the app ALWAYS fixes it, but god only knows for how long

today, ARC was completely unusuable for me due to this. But two days ago it was only a couple times. Nothing that I can think of changed in my system in those days.

[Arlen]

I went on holiday three weeks ago, and already after two days my core was unreachable with ARC. Luckily, I have a lot of music downloaded to my phone (Android), which I can play in offline mode.
I experimented with ARC on my iPad: after resetting ARC there, and even after deleting the app and reinstalling, I get the message that my core is ready, but after clicking connect, there is an endlessly spinning circle. I have tried to connect multiple times over several days, over different connections in different countries (Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, using my phone’s hotspot (5G and 4G by Odido, formerly T Mobile) and Wifi that was offered in different holiday homes).

[GalaxyGlider]

@Marcelo_Bulgueroni

For me and @GalaxyGlider we were simply answered that the problem “is in our network / system setup” and even after more questions on our side we never got answered again.

Those are all very different systems, @Chikolad even went to the trouble of setting up a brand new server. To no avail.

The lack of response or weeks in between getting responses is really bothering. It really seems we are left completely alone with this issue and can only hope it gets randomly fixed in one of the future updates like it was randomly introduced in ARC update 1299 and persisted since then.

@The_Incredible_Rook

This exactly issue is happening to me a lot.

Thanks for your report @The_Incredible_Rook. I can second all the points you listed above. The issue is not really consistent and can happen anytime under any scenario.

@Arlen

I went on holiday three weeks ago, and already after two days my core was unreachable with ARC. Luckily, I have a lot of music downloaded to my phone (Android), which I can play in offline mode.
I experimented with ARC on my iPad: after resetting ARC there, and even after deleting the app and reinstalling, I get the message that my core is ready, but after clicking connect, there is an endlessly spinning circle. I have tried to connect multiple times over several days, over different connections in different countries (Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, using my phone’s hotspot (5G and 4G by Odido, formerly T Mobile) and Wifi that was offered in different holiday homes).

Thanks for your report. It could be a similar issue to the others mentioned here in thread. Simply reinstalling the app won’t work in that case as the Core is crashed and needs rebooting. That is the only short-term fix others and I were able to find.

[The_Incredible_Rook (Luan Gardenalli)]

Hello again.

I have tried out a couple different core set-ups to see if anything makes a difference

-Using RoonServer isntead of the roon app on Windows 10 and/or 11 did not make any difference. Music is still stoping within minutes.

-Using RoonServer on a freshly installed Ubuntu HAS ALLEVIATED THE ISSUE. I can now listen to much longer before disconnection. So far I have not gotten much testing time, but only one disconnection overnight has happened while using Ubuntu as the core. I’ll update after more testing.

To double check, I went back to Win10/11 core right after listenign to ARC with ubuntu for 1h interrupted. Win10 core disconnected within 5m.

@connor, About my internet setup: It’s as simple as it can get. I very recently moved into
a new apartment, bought a router, and have a computer connected to it via ethernet. Other than that, my phone and TV connect to it via wifi, but that only when im home, not outsied using ARC. When outside, absolutely nothing using my home internet other than Roon.

[Formula]

If you’re trying different hardware and getting similar results. Then it must be something in the apartment. If it’s new with a new router, have you asked an engineer to come out and do some logging and test the line along with the router?

[Marcelo_Bulgueroni]

I apologize in advance, but I am curious why it “must be something in the apartment” when we have some dozens of users (myself included) who are facing the same exact problems with different homes and setups?