First of all, congratulations for your amazing work. I’ve been using Roon throughout the past year and I truly think it’s a fantastic solution. My subscription came to an end, so I’ve gone back to testing other platforms over the last ten days, and it’s clear that Roon remains ahead in terms of interface quality and overall user experience.
But.
I recently purchased a FiiO M11S DAP and was hoping to use Roon ARC on it. Since the device doesn’t support 4G or 5G connectivity, I was counting on your Smart Download feature to listen to music offline. Unfortunately, I’ve encountered two issues that I haven’t been able to work around.
First, Roon ARC only seems to recognize the internal storage of my device for downloads. I’ve tried everything to get it to accept the microSD card I installed — including merging the internal and external memory into a unified space — but nothing works. As a result, the number of albums I can store is severely limited.
Second, there’s a playback issue. With UAPP, the DAP can play files up to 24/96 via wireless LDAC headphones, and even native DSD playback through wired headphones. UAPP appears to bypass Android’s audio layer and push audio directly to the DAC. I’ve experimented with various settings in Roon ARC (including choosing "original format" for downloads), but I simply cannot get it to play anything above 24/48.
I’ve searched extensively for solutions to both of these issues — in FAQs, forums and community discussions, even a couple of AI — and came up empty-handed. If you do have a workaround or fix to suggest, I would be very interested :)
Kind regards,
Describe your network setup
- router: Freebox Delta (France) - server installed on a i7 12th gen, 32 GB of RAM, dedicated to Roon and Jellyfin - files stored on a Synology 1621+ NAS - home player: Cambridge MXN10 - portable player: FiiO M11S
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts here in the forums.
ARC doesn’t have the ability to select storage locations in its current implementation - there’s a feature request below where you can add your vote and voice if you’d prefer. This remains a priority of the Product team and there’s a ticket in the pipeline - we don’t have a status on the timeline to release at this point, but this feature is on the roadmap.
Concerning UAPP, Roon ARC on Android does not support bit-perfect playback or direct communication with the audio hardware (e.g., via ALSA or a custom USB driver). Instead, it utilizes Android’s standard AudioTrack API, which routes audio through the system mixer. This layer typically resamples all audio to a system-defined rate — usually 48 kHz — unless the app is explicitly engineered to bypass it, as UAPP does via its own low-level drivers.
On Digital Audio Players (DAPs), this limitation is compounded by the fact that Android implementations vary significantly between devices. Some DAPs (e.g., those from iBasso, Astell&Kern, HiBy, or FiiO) include customized firmware or proprietary APIs that allow apps like UAPP or HiBy Music to access the DAC directly and configure it for native sample rate or DSD playback. ARC’s audio output will be constrained by the Android audio pipeline on a per-device basis. Achieving bit-perfect playback on a DAP requires an app to either:
Provide a custom USB driver
Build out internal DAC routing logic tailored to each DAP.
When Roon first released ARC in 2022, we were a small team, and accumulated a backlog of these one-off fixes for each particular DAP firmware (often by brand, or by DAP). The feasibility of these point-and-shoot fixes varies by firmware. At this time, there’s ongoing work to bring compatibility up to par for major market DAPs as much as possible. We can request from the ARC Devs whether there is any specific ongoing work to address bit-perfect playback on the FiiO M11S.
Thank you again and we’ll watch out for a response.
I completely understand your point. I work for a crowdfunding platform, we’re a very small team, and I know firsthand how a feature that looks simple (either because it’s “just a checkbox” in the UI, or because some 10-euro app offers it) can actually be incredibly complex to implement—especially in your case, if I understood correctly, where developing a custom driver might be required for each DAP model.
That said, this is a real issue for Roon. I bought this DAP as a meaningful upgrade, and never would I have imagined that the weak link in this hardware upgrade would end up being… Roon. Especially considering this DAP has a Roon app natively installed—I honestly thought (and I should have checked, granted!) that Roon ARC would be able to leverage that “engine” to stream Roon natively even when I’m away from home.
It’s a real stone in the shoe, because given its price point, Roon really has to be a complete solution. And the combination of the two limitations makes Roon ARC essentially unusable for me: I might live with the audio quality if I could take all my music with me; or, conversely, I might accept the need to load albums in batches of five if they were in full native quality. But as it stands, I carry just a few albums, and in middling quality.
I’d be genuinely interested in a future upgrade of Roon ARC that at least allows storing music on an SD card—and ideally, supports bit-perfect playback. That would truly make Roon the ultimate solution. If you ever launch a beta program or anything similar, I’d be more than happy to help however I can.
Anyway, thanks again for your response—fingers crossed this all becomes possible someday
Have a great day!
Hi @connor That maybe true for UAPP needing drivers and workarounds on regular Android devices but with these DAPs it’s not needed, the standard apps from google playstore for streaming services work without issues at all res switching automatically sample rates, no specific drivers required here they just let the device get on with it. Deezer, Qobuz, Tidal, Kkbox all work with no resampling as the app just hands it off as it should. Even Apple Music works at native sample rates on Android DAPs. I have 2 Android DAPs different manufacturer and they both manage it with regular Android apps from the AppStore as does my Eversolo. It seems hard to believe ARC still needs bespoke drivers for each DAP to work when these apps don’t.
Yea, having recently bought a FiiO M23 for the same reason, I think the OP has put it very nicely. I bought this non-cheap device because I thought (incorrectly) that the DAP issues had been worked out. Now it’s a lovely device, but because ARC is doing all this unnecessary resampling work to 48khz it burns through battery way faster than it needs to - I just want bit perfect, and I want to be able to access the content on my SD card.
So now I’m still using it - but in pure audio mode (FiiO native app) and via the Qobuz app. So this device that was meant to bring Roon out and about with me has actually drawn me away from the platform paradoxically. I’m a lifetime member - and Roon is core to my home listening, but man I want ARC on DAP to work better!
