Skipping tracks via Bluetooth on ARC crashes core

Support
1

Roon Core Machine

ROCK on NUC 8i3
8gb RAM
Local storage ON HDD

Networking Gear & Setup Details

ROCK wired to LAN
300/300 broadband

Connected Audio Devices

NA

Number of Tracks in Library

30,0000

Description of Issue

When I have ARC on my phone connected to my car (Toyota RAV4), and I use the skip buttons on the car head unit or steering wheel it crashes the core and playback stops. Only a reboot of the core will resolve the problem.

If I skip directly on the phone this doesn’t happen.

3

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

Thanks for writing in!

As a good next step, can you please reproduce the issue and share the specific date, time, and track playing when the issue occurs?

I’d also suggest doing a fresh install of Arc on your device. To avoid having to manually select and re-download content, I would first make a playlist of all the Arc-downloaded content to make it easier to re-download after the reinstall.

I’ll be monitoring this thread for your reply. Thanks! :+1:

1 Like
4

Hi @benjamin

Thanks for getting back to me. I’ll try and reproduce the issue today and let you know the details.

FYI I have a new phone so the ARC install is a new one already.

1 Like
5

I couldn’t reproduce this today, which on the one hand is good but also annoying! I’ll keep trying, including in the other car.

6

Hi @benjamin

So I have reproduced the problem this morning although the trigger for the issue was different to the OP.

This time I was connected via BT to my ear buds and was playing a queue of local files streamed to ARC as lossy (Balanced). It played for about 15 minutes.

The signal was fine at all times, but on an attempt to advance to the next track in the queue the playback stopped. I was able to skip back and play previous songs but couldnt play any new tracks at all. The app would not load any content either, I couldnt browse albums etc unless they were previously cached.

The issue started happening at around 0935 (0835 UTC) today (22nd July) and is still ongoing now even on my home network.

Here are some screenshots. This is how the issue presents, it just spins on the next track and no matter what you do you cant advance.

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You get a Poor Connection message but the connection is fine. The Core is just not responding.

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And finally even when I got back home and the phone connected to the WiFi it continued to behave in the exact same way.

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Only a reboot of the Core will resolve.

8

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

Thanks for the update! After discussing your issue with the team, we have a few follow up questions:

  1. How long do you go in between Arc sessions before the issue arises?

We’ve released a handful of performance fixes for Arc over on Early Access that may help you with your issue. If you’re interested in giving this a try and updating to Early Access, I’ll share more information below:

Thanks!

1 Like
9

Hi @benjamin

Its hard to answer your question accurately. The issue does not happen every time I use ARC, but it has happened often enough that I have seen it multiple times. If I had to guess I’d say it happens maybe once a week, but I dont use ARC every week so as I say its difficult to be accurate.

Historically I have had my NUC set to restart twice a week, but in the last few days I have set it to restart every night. Im going to see if this reduces the frequency of the issue further. I’ll report back on what I find.

Thanks for the details on the Early Access program. I was on it previously but I opted to go back to Production because of the higher frequency of updates and reduced stability in Early Access.

Thanks
Tim

1 Like
10

Hi @benjamin

So the issue has happened again today at 1545 BST (1445 UTC);

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and again it continued even when I was at home on the same LAN as the Core;

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A Core reboot was required to resolve.

T

11

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

Thanks for letting me know! At this point, I would suggest waiting until the early access build moves over to production - this shouldn’t take long. After this, please let me know if you still run into the above issues! :+1:

12

Hi @benjamin

I’m pleased to say that first impressions of the new release are good. An hours walk this morning and no issues with ARC or the Roon Core. I’ll continue to report back on my experiences.

Thanks!

1 Like
13

This topic was automatically closed 36 hours after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.

15

Hi @benjamin

I saw that you closed my previous support thread here

But this issue is still happening with the latest builds so can you please continue to assist me in resolving it?

Today I was using ARC on mobile data for about 30 mins. I was driving and it was playing a Roon Radio selection. I think I went through a poor signal area and it stopped playback. But after that it would not play anything at all until I restarted the core at home…

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Soon after I was able to use Apple Music with no issue but ARC was completely inoperable

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This is the exact issue that I was seeing in my original support thread.

Thanks.

16

Hi @Tim_Rhodes,

The thread auto-closed since there was no activity for a month, and with your last reply:

I’ve reopened the thread for you, and we’ll take another look at your core diagnostics for additional information. Thanks!

1 Like
17

Thanks @benjamin

19

Hi @Tim_Rhodes,

After further investigation, I can confirm that your server is not crashing when the poor connection error appears in Arc. Outside of some memory pressure on the mobile device, there isn’t any indication of error from both Arc diagnostics as well as your server diagnostics. To confirm, are you on the latest Arc production build?

We do have a handful of performance improvements with Arc that should be released soon - I think they may help with your issue, considering your server isn’t crashing, but you’re still not able to recover after the ‘poor connection’ error pops up.

Outside of this, if you’d like to share one more timestamp or screenshot when the issue happens, we can take another look.

Thanks!

20

Hi @benjamin

Thanks for your response. As far as I know I’m running the latest production version of ARC and of Roon core.

I don’t see what the difference is between a crash and my not being able to use it at all (even on the local network) until I reboot it. Please can you clarify what you mean? To me it makes no difference, either way it’s inoperable until I reboot it. Which when I am not at home is highly inconvenient!

Il report back next time it happens with the time stamp

Thanks

22

Hey @Tim_Rhodes,

A few additional things to test out:

  1. Can you please reproduce the issue with Roon Radio over Arc (like you typically would) but this time only play to the system output of your phone, or device that you typically use when connecting to your Bluetooth devices?
  2. Can you please disable your third-party Roon extensions and see if the issue occurs? A good thing to note on this - these extensions fall outside the scope of our support, and therefore we’ll need you to keep them disabled while we continue to troubleshoot.

Thanks!

1 Like
23

I also started having these core freezes recently. I think for me it started happening only after I reinstalled my core with a fresh DB (with/without restoring a backup later) in an attempt to fix a different Arc issue.
It’s gotten so bad recently that I installed TeamViewer on the core machine and wrote a batch file which exits the Roon Server app and restarts it so I can do it from my phone when I’m not home…
Hope the next set of Arc performance improvements will make it go away (latest update was pretty great).

1 Like
24

Hi @Tim_Rhodes and @Chikolad,

the issues some others and myself describe here are somewhat similar to your experiences. The result being a Roon core crash with only a restart fixing the situation temporarily.

2 Likes