Any news? It has been years since I’ve seen any acknowledgment of development of a lossless version of Roon ARC for android DAPs. It sounded like this (understandably) took a lot of work, but progress was being made.
There’s so many nice DAPs on the market now and it would be great to be able to take my library with me and listen to it without ARC re-sampling songs.
Roon don’t usually comment on Feedback > Feature Suggestions, and do not monitor the Roon Software Discussion category.
Ok so how do you suggest I get an answer? I don’t think it is unreasonable to ask if they have any news considering this was something they said they were working on years ago.
Even if they did say something, it wouldn’t be a sure thing to come to fruition before the feature is actually released. Planned features were cancelled before, not just by Roon.
So it’s best to rely only on features that, well, actually exist, and treat others as not existing.
All I’m looking for is an idea of it it’s still being worked on. I’m perplexed why you’d give a weird roadblock type response to such a reasonable ask.
I’m just telling you what it is. They won’t tell you if they are working on it and even if they did you shouldn’t rely on it becoming an actual reality.
Roon neither publish a road map nor say what is in the current pipeline. This is how it is.
However, I imagine DAP manufacturers would also need to have a commitment to Roon since these devices don’t use the standard Android audio platform (for instance, I have lossless audio on my Pixel 7.)
Makes sense, but I am a little perturbed about the fact that Plex already have bit perfect working on android DAPs and it is not even a priority for them. Bit perfect is half of Roon’s entire identity and those of us wanting it are twiddling our thumbs.
Assume it will never happen and you won’t be disappointed.
I would be surprised if this ever happened, the app is still a complete mess and I would rather them work on that instead.
Battery drain is ridiculous, it lags so much compared to similar apps, takes way too long to load anything compared to other music apps pulling from the same places, even “Listen Later” is often out of sync or broken, play/pause via headphones is still unreliable and broken most of the time, you can’t even seek in the android notification. So many problems that have been an issue since launch and frankly glacially slow development for the amount that the app costs. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, is all I’m saying.
I may be oversimplifying but it seems that Roon Arc & Roon force lock output to 48k rather than just passing the audio to the ‘audio output’?
All/most DAPs bypasses the limitation globally so that any audio app can play Hi Res.
Every app I have tried on my DAP works with playing Hi Res audio with the exception of Roon Arc and Roon.
How come things like Apple Music just work with Hi Res audio on a DAP out of the box but Roon - a Hi Res audio player - can’t?
This is the bit I don’t understand. Is seems to just work for all other apps?
I am sure Apple Music wasn’t coded to work specially with DAP that bypasses the 48k resampling but it works.
Maybe Roon likes to do things differently to get better audio quality and control and doesn’t want to just send audio to the Android audio system but at this point I wouldn’t care as it would give me Hi Res. It could even be configurable so people could make a choice.
There appears to a contradiction here. The OP was calling for lossless audio on DAPs, i.e., bypassing Android Audio, which downsamples all sources to 48 kHz 24-bit (which isn’t regarded as Hi-Res audio).
ARC uses Android Audio by default unless the beta driver is enabled.
I was also referring to lossless audio on a DAP too.
With most DAPs - or a least my DAP - the bypass is done at an OS level. You still send audio to Android Audio but it doesn’t re-sample to 48k as that is the bit that has been bypassed.
This is why all apps work without any special work arounds.
So for Apple Music, for example, it sends the full 192/24 audio to Android Audio. In a normal situation, Android Audio, would re-sample to 48k. However, in my DAPs case, the re-sampling has been bypassed so it plays at 192k.
In Roon Arc (and Roon)’s case. It is Roon that is doing the re-sampling to 48k. It assumes that because it’s Android it’s locked to 48k and does it itself before sending the audio to Android Audio. That’s why all other apps work and Roon doesn’t.
There is probably a lot of nuance missing from the above but I think this is generally the case.
This is why side loaded apps often don’t work with a DAP. Roon builds are for standard Android, e.g., Android 16 used on the Pixel, where the bit-perfect beta driver does work.
Roon cannot build for a custom version for Android DAPs without the involvement of the manufacturer. For instance, Eversolo does work with Roon on their Android builds, and these are certified Roon Ready.
Since music is loaded on to a DAP, it would seem that DAP manufacturers see little point in such a collaboration. At the end of the day, the only guarantee is to buy Roon Ready devices, such as the Chord Poly / Mojo.
It does this because Android Audio will downsample, and Roon can achieve this with greater accuracy.
Yes, all totally understandable. And I didn’t mean to be critical. I understand the circumstances. Being selfish, I just want it to work as then I’d have the perfect situation. Roon for around the house. Local storage playback and/or Roon Arc for travelling. I want my cake and I want to eat it 
I wish Harman would release a DAP that works perfectly with Roon 
Not an unreasonable ask, particularly when Plex have managed to overcome this, but Roon - a dedicated audio streaming company hasn’t.
Really? When was this? AFAIK, Plex do not use a custom USB driver, and bit-perfect playback is entirely dependent on the DAP / Android version used.