As discussed above in detail, the regular Roon apps have more features than ARC. So if you value those in your second home, you may want to use a second Roon server in your second home. If you are happy with what ARC can do, e.g., because you just want to play stuff and aren’t concerned with, e.g., database editing or Focus deep dives when at the second home, you may want to stick with ARC.
Other considerations that will influence your decision:
ARC requires a reasonable network connection to your first home server.
ARC requires that your home server runs. If it fails, you need some way to log into your home network to restart it.
A second Roon server in the second home adds the possible hassle of carrying the database backup back and forth, and restoring it, if you want to maintain edits that you make in both locations. (Though if you only back it up once to the second server and then just use it for replay, you don’t have to bother.
Be aware that you don’t necessarily need a second license for the second home if you don’t use Roon in both locations at the same time. You can just switch your one license between the two servers.
It’s not great for exploring music through your connected services. If you know what you want to listen to, it’s great. But if you want to explore playlists or different recommendations it’s not.
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I don’t think so.
I just asked about Roon Ark how it works with Roon Radio feature - is it correct to estimate the continuous play in that case. This is not a bug or issue.
(The setting is always on the queue screen, in the regular Roon app as well, where it can be enabled/disabled for each queue / output zone individually)
Roon ARC doesn’t support lyrics embedded in files, which means no lyrics when you are offline or they are not available on an online service.
On the other hand some mobile DACs (like moondrop) are not recognized by Roon but they work fine in Roon ARC.
Finally, Roon ARC is only available for Android and iOS.
This might sound a bit blunt, but for someone who mainly streams Qobuz (I rarely touch local files), the only real advantage of using ARC over the native Qobuz app is access to saved Roon data, such as playlists, listening history, and play counts. I’m sure others may disagree.
Beyond that, I do not really see the appeal of ARC. It is surprising that ARC still does not support full Qobuz browsing the way Roon does. Is this limitation due to some agreement between Roon and Qobuz? Whatever the reason, it really limits the app user-ability. Music discovery takes a massive hit.
Honestly, if your bandwidth is solid, running a VPN with tunnelling so you can use the native Roon app outside your home would probably give you a much better experience.
Satisfied user. I have never had stability issues and it integrates perfectly with Android Auto. Having access to my personalised music selections is all I need.
I think the upside is good even if I was a 100% streaming user. The tags/playlist and library management in ARC beats both Tidal and Qobuz (in my use case)
