Thank you for the support you gave, Suedkiez. I see you are responding to all manner of problems on these boards, so if this is not your job, I hope it’s somehow worth your while! To be frank, the problem I had loading Arc could have been solved by a professional support team in short order. I have never had this problem of having to block all cookies logging into another app. It is only Roon that has had this issue, and if it’s necessary for the app to create the problem, they should provide the support to work around it.
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And about time, this issue isn’t anything new for a lot of us and has been happening for quite some time and has been ignored. First time I created a post about it was October last years again in February with a new one and then added to the others out there since. It’s happened with most prolonged ARC usage.
Happier people and learning about Roon 
I don’t want to get into an argument here, but for the sake of possible future readers, as far as I know you had to turn off the cookie blocker. And web-related things all get into trouble when cookies are blocked. Cookies have a purpose - they can be misused, but they exist for a reason.
Yes, Roon support should have been there and stayed there to help, but in reality they also just could have suggested to turn off cookie blocking or other browser filtering.
Like I said, maybe the login process can be made more resilient to cookie blocking and similar things, and I have brought that up in the Early Access testing area.
Sure, just saying that knowledge about the problem is now probably best pooled there and not spread over 10 threads
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Not “best”, but “less bad” i’d say.
I think Discourse forum software is a really lousy ITSM alternative…
Still, thanks for your efforts to survey the forum and “herd” the issues into something manageable.
Well, I meant best considering what’s available…
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I take your point about the cookies. The support that would have saved me all the time figuring it out would have been a step by step for the settings on the iPhone. In any case, this morning, yet a new problem. Arc doesn’t connect to my intended audio zone. I wonder how it is that you’re not having issues, but many others are? Everything about the mobile app has not worked as intended in my experience, which surprises me, given all the hype.
But there are no zones as such in ARC as we discussed in the other thread ARC is for mobile usage primarily and outputs to the phone, and then the phone outputs to whatever is connected to the phone like headphones, Bluetooth, Airplay, USB
If you want to control actual domestic Roon zones from the phone, you need to use the Roon Remote app on the phone, not the Roon ARC app
Well, I guess you have to consider that Roon probably has 250,000 users or more, of which only a minority are on the forum, and probably only a minority of those are posting about the current issues with ARC.
It’s impossible to know what this means in absolute numbers. Are those who don’t complain about ARC crashing their Core simply not using ARC? Or are they and it’s working? I don’t know.
But one thing I know is that if ARC crashed my Core every day, I’d probably be posting about it a lot, like others justifiedly do. But I don’t post every day or every week that ARC did NOT crash my Core. So the posts on the forum will always have some inherent bias towards what is not working. And that’s a good thing because Roon should predominantly see these kinds of posts.
I am not a hardcore ARC user but I do use it every Saturday when shopping, and it has always worked for me for months. Am I just lucky? I don’t know.
As for other general problems with Roon that are not ARC, I probably am a little more computer savvy than many others, and that helps. Though I’m by far not the only one, either. And just like with ARC, you’ll see more posts by users who did things like blocking network traffic and then forgetting about it, rather than from users who install Roon by following the instructions and it just works (who I am convinced are the large majority)
Thanks, Suedikiez. To clarify, when I wrote that Arc doesn’t connect to my audio zone what I meant was through airplay which had previously been working. The screen shows the song is playing, but no sound is coming out of the headphones. The day before they were playing through airplay via Arc which recognizes my Poly. My issue is not crashing the core. It’s that the downloads are slow, or not possible, and the connection is mangled. So my question is how does it get fixed? If I am doing something wrong I’d like to know how to correct that.
If you are playing to a Chord Poly using Airplay, you’re not doing yourself any favors.
The Poly is Roon Ready, and as such it should be used that way.
I’m not convinced of the Poly’s network stability either, there are quite few posts about that.
But still, please start a separate thread, easier to track and follow up on, and it’s a different matter than what this thread’s about.
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Ok, but I don’t think ARC is even involved in this. The Airplay is between the iPad and the headphones.
Does sound come out of the iPad speakers if I you play ARC without any Airplay, headphones, etc?
And by the way, if you are at home and your wifi is good (and your Roon Core running), you can use the regular Roon Remote for the Airplay as well. You should even find your Airplay headphones under Roon Remote > Settings > Audio, at the bottom. Enable them there as output.
Or, as @Mikael_Ollars says, if the Poly is Roon Ready, use it as a Roon Ready output over the network via the Core and the regular Roon Remote.
Good it’s just that it’s a common issue right now that people are complaining most about, in this thread and others. And rightly so
Yeah, that’s ridiculous. Roon posted a few months ago that they would start a project to improve this and other performance issues. Let’s hope they are making progress, because indeed this should have worked better from the start.
On iOS for downloading to ARC you have to keep the ARC app in the foreground and prevent the device from sleeping, and there seem to be better ways to program this as well.
I don’t think you’re doing much wrong with ARC, it’s up to Roon to improve it. I do think they are working on it, I just think they should have waited with ARC’s release until it is more mature.
In general, I think it would help if you learn more about Roon. It’s a powerful system and can sometimes be a little complex, but exploring how it works will do you more favors over time than jumping to the conclusion that it’s broken every time it doesn’t do things exactly like you think they are. The documentation is generally there on https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/home, even if not always 100% updated, and the forum will help with questions
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Hell, I was about to write a post that I have not had too many issue with ARC. But alas, ARC is now giving me a message “Unathorized”! Followed by a “Poor Connection”! In my home, on WiFi! I have complete home coverage with 5 mesh routers, and ISP speed is solid 300mbps up/down.
It was working a couple of hours ago!
What is the architecture of ARC, can #support or someone explain? Is it constantly relying on a connection to Roon servers? If yes, why? Can it not “phone home” once per session, or better per elapsed time?
Ahhh, this is extrememly frustrating to hit issues like this unrealiability.
On another note, I do not like the amount of messages ARC is giving in CarPlay mode, it is distracting. Driving around, we all hit a dead spot of cellular coverage.
- ARC displays a message “ARC is offline”
- ARC displays a message poor connection.
When driving, I don’t care to see these messages. ARC should buffer the playlist, and avoid showing these messages, full stop. Afterall, connection is restored in a couple of minutes, how did this message helped me, other than distract my driving?
Buffering is essential, Roon team should work on that!
Also, I’ve never seen such messages from Apple Music CarPlay. And in Europe (Bulgaria) Apple Music CarPlay shows all my albums and all my artists, sorted in alphabetical order. If there is a rstriction in US what to show in CarPlay, I don’t really care. The short list sorted by most recently played, is to say the least annoying, and causes more issues, since: 1) I want to hear a different album/artist, not my recently played; 2) It adds to the distraction, since I am searching for an album/artist in a not alphabetically sorted list.
Yea, I am beginning to convert into unsatisfied customer… otherwise I have not experinced core crash or other major issues with ARC.
I just deleted ARC app from my iPhone - with the state it is in it was unusable - first I was getting the “poor connection” and “Unauthorized” messages - so I reset ARC but now it either says “something went wrong” when I try to login or it just cant find the Roon core. My setup has not changed in any way. I give up - dont need this hassle when there are other more reliable options.
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I am beginning to think ARC is overly engineered, and hence has all these issues. It should be simple:
-
Can it connect to the Core? Yes - all is good! No - then try again in sometime, don’t give me immediate crap.
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Can it connect to Roon server, i.e. “phone home”? Yes - all good! No - then try again in some time, don’t crash and give me messages on my car screen
Why is it that ARC craps out immediatley if something is wrong? Why can’t it maintain its previous state of working perfectly fine?
Afterall, when driving, we should not baby sit the ARC app, it should cure itself, by having a large enough buffer, to resort to in case of a sudden connection drop.
It’s maddening when it crashes & I am driving & can’t fix it. The solution is to use Tidal or Plexamp for me when out of the house.
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From usability perspective in CarPlay mode, if all goes bad, i.e it ran out of buffered music, no cellular connection, all I want to see is:
Arc is offline, switching to shuffling downloaded music. - and one big OK button. Nothing else, minimum distraction.
If there is no downloaded misuc, then: Arc is offline, music will continue when connection is restored. - and one big OK button.
Right now, it gives me the messages that it is offline, but there is no clear message what will happen next, and whether or not it will auto-correct the issue.
Hi S, Thanks again for your input. I discovered that Arc is working outside the house if I just play it on the phone now. I’m guessing the problem now has something to do with the way the Poly is configured that’s preventing me from engaging the headphones. So there are many things I’m getting wrong here and I understand that there is a huge amount of documentation that is available. To be honest, that is part of the problem. I’m not adverse to doing some homework, and I’ve done a lot here, but do you think it’s reasonable to expect a user to have to spend days and days digging through documentation to figure out how to do a basic set up on their own?
Thank you, Mikael. If I want to use Roon for mobile listening with the mojo/poly which does not require the phone and mojo to be wired and requires Roon Arc - and the Poly is Roon Ready - how can that be done without airplay or bluetooth?
Maybe don’t try to do it all at once, would be my suggestion. I don’t know your computer experience, but together with different remotes, the network, and various hardware peripherals it’s a powerful and complex system, maybe more so than any one you ever used. You wouldn’t expect to learn all about Excel or Photoshop in a week either, nobody ever has.
You don’t really have to dig through documentation for days and days either, it seems to me that gaining a solid understanding of the fundamentals would go a long way, and that’s a few pages really. Go to the help homepage, click on Getting Started and read the short articles linked from there
If you want more about a specific topic later, the Knowledge Base link on the same page lists topics by category