Roon ARC on Android 14 'Playback' notification problem

I am using the latest earlyaccess and beta builds of Roon and Roon ARC. It has been a lot better in the last month or so, but it does occasionally still do weird things with the playback notification, with playback just stopping occasionally for no apparent reason.

As other have said, a complete closure of Roon ARC and reopening is the only way to fix it.

Hi @Henry_Buckle ,

Thanks for confirming that this is still an issue on your end. I’ve tried to enable diagnostics for your account but this is strange, I am not seeing any ARC logs show up at all. Do you happen to have any services that could be blocking ARC from gathering diagnostics from your Android device?

Yes. It’s possible, since I use a DNS filter for adverts etc. I will try whitelisting ARC and see if that changes.

Hey @therourke ,

I’ve sent you a private messages with whitelist domains, so that logs can come through properly. Let us know here once you’ve had a chance to do so and someone will pick this thread back up again, thanks!

I also have a DNS adblocker but I can whitelist the domains if you send them over

Hmmm, maybe the fact that we are both blocking through DNS is part of the issue here. Seems like an intriguing coincidence.

I just turned off private DNS, rebooted, and I still have the issue with the notification stuck in playing state.
Maybe some logs will show up this time (09:35 UK time)?

Hi @Henry_Buckle, @therourke,

Thanks for your patience. We have the necessary diagnostics at this point to escalate with development and they’re investigating the case. Feel free to re-enable any DNS adblockers, which were interfering with ARC logging. Please keep an eye on this thread for further comment as soon as I have confirmation of a workaround or fix. Thanks!

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Fingers crossed you can figure this out.

I am still having problems with persistent notifications.

I also noticed today that ARC had eaten 50% of my battery over the course of a couple of hours, AFTER I had stopped using it. Perhaps that showed up on my logs too.

Good luck.

Hi @therourke ,

Can you please confirm if there’s been any change in behavior with the latest Roon release, or are you still seeing the same issue?

I will spend some time with the app more actively tomorrow.

I did note today that the background battery usage of ARC was very high.

@noris I haven’t seen the notification problem for a while, which is obviously a good thing.

But as I say above, background battery use for ARC is way way above reasonable. Sometimes after leaving the app and not playing music the app will continue to suck battery, leading to a lot of drainage.

I still have both issues with 1.0.62

  • Notification remains in playing state when playback has finished (this always happens)
  • Notification is not created so background playback doesn’t work (this only happens sometimes)

@therourke - there is a separate thread for battery life issues here ARC B264 High Idle Battery Usage on Android 14

Hi @noris a better update… The persistent notifications are just not coming up at all now on Android 15 on my Pixel. The music at least plays, but it’s not possible to stop it without opening the app directly. Battery leaks persist. It’s a bit of a mess.

I have also had this happen a few times recently: Android actually creating a pop-up to ask me to close Roon ARC. These are really rare, and I only remember seeing them in the past for system apps. This happens when I have finished using Roon ARC and moved on to other apps, by the way.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for diligently providing updates on this issue. Engineering is investigating the underlying interactions between audio transport, interruption management, and the true Android OS on Pixel 6-9 phones. We anticipate that this investigation will result in future improvements that will soon release into Early Access.

Please stay tuned and we’ll post here as updates are available.

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