Tailscale - should everyone use this for a better Arc experience?

[Matthew_Bowden1 (Matthew Bowden)]

I generally have had a pretty good experience with Arc. Sometimes it has trouble connecting but generally it has been ok. Wondering though, do most people see a much better experience using tailscale? Or do people typically use tailscale if they have significant issues connecting to Arc?

[Wade_Oram]

I don’t use ARC very often but when I do, I do not have any issues - at least when I have a good cellular connection or other internet access.

I do not use Tailscale. Port forwarding (manually configured) works fine for me - but I have both a static ipv4 address and I have full ipv6 configured.

Obviously, if your ISP uses CG-NAT then Port Forwarding is not an option so Tailscale becomes the only viable option.

If you employ two or more routers (many ISP ‘modems’ are also routers) then Port forwarding is still possible but becomes more awkward to setup and must be done manually. UPnP and natPmP automatic port forwarding confirmation will not work.

Edit: My library is also quite small and well within the capabilities of ARC. Those with huge libraries may well have a different experience.

[Torben (- A Dane living in Hamburg, Germany - Roon Lifer)]

I am using Tailscale with DietPi and It works just fine

Torben

[mikeb]

Tailscale is an ‘option’ for those having trouble connecting without it. Don’t need it, don’t use it. There’s absolutely no need to add extra layers of complexity if it’s unnecessary

[PixelPopper]

I might also add that, for those of us that live in less “urban” areas with average to poor mobile networks, ARC is unreliable at best. CGNat was a problem for me & Tailscale, as a solution, was just a different type of unreliable.

Qobuz & Spotify offer uninterrupted service…TF.

[safesurfer (Michael K.)]

That’s exactly how I see it. For me ARC works without any flaws together with my Fritz.Box cable router. What I sometimes use is a WireGuard VPN connection to my router when I want to use the Roon app when I’m not at home.

[Ljad (LD)]

I’m in the same situation, and satisfied.

[John_Carl]

I use Tailscale. It works great.

[MusicD]

With a good mobile signal both work fine

No preference over one or the other

[AndyR (Andy)]

@Matthew_Bowden1

do most people see a much better experience using tailscale?

I suspect if both work, they will both work equally well - or at least I can’t see why one connection type should give a better experience that the other. But that might just be me not understanding the possible failure modes…

(ARC works fine for me without tailscale despite running through two routers, but that’s not what you’re asking)

[Matthew_Bowden1 (Matthew Bowden)]

My question comes from the fact that Arc has become very unstable for me over the past month. I’ve been told to open a ticket, and I will — I’m just heading out on vacation, so I’ll submit it when I’m back.

Over the last couple of months, I imported a huge amount of my own music into Roon. My library jumped from about 70k tracks to just under 200k. I don’t stream at all. Arc used to run almost flawlessly, but now it crashes every few days. About 20–30 seconds after opening Arc — whether I’m playing anything or not — it freezes and then crashes. This has happened three times in the past month.

The only way to fix it is to delete and reinstall the app, and then it works reasonably well for anywhere from three to seven days. I’m assuming the instability is related to the size of my library, which is frustrating. I had thought Arc was more stable than this.

I was considering using Tailscale to make things more reliable, but based on what I’m hearing, it doesn’t sound like it will help.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

@Matthew_Bowden1

Arc has become very unstable for me over the past month

@Matthew_Bowden1

My library jumped from about 70k tracks to just under 200k. I don’t stream at all

This is a known behavior, 200k or so are the apparently official limit where it works really reliably. Depending on phone model. Though they are working on it and it’s already gotten better.

Tailscale probably won’t help you with that, it has to do with the inherent limits of a phone, where the OS heavily limits what apps can do, and there are hard limits on data transfer and other resources.

Several posts about it, e.g.

Roon ARC App Freezing and Crashing Within 30 Seconds (ref#XPKYDA)

Hi @ajl, Thank you for your post, and we’re sorry to hear you’ve been experiencing performance issues with the app. Diagnostics indicate that ARC is being throttled by the phone operating system due to memory and resource constraints. This is almost certainly related to the size of your library—about 250,000 tracks. ARC maintains a local “copy” of your Roon database on the phone to ensure changes sync properly when you’re back online. This acts as a metadata cache, helping maintain database pa…

Roon ARC stuck in synchronizing state for weeks despite connection reported as okay (ref#UJGMB9)

Hi @Uli_Lennartz, Thank you for your patience. Reviewing this case, your Roon database is almost certainly too large to sync reliably with ARC. Diagnostics show your library contains roughly 700,000 tracks. ARC isn’t built for full-scale library management like RoonServer, but it still needs to maintain the object graph for the entire database to track changes while offline. Syncing a library of this size would require transferring metadata, artwork, and track information for hundreds of thou…

ARC Home section not updating properly with large library (ref#4VY7L4)

Hi @guimx, Unfortunately, what you’re encountering is a symptom of the database itself not syncing properly due to resource and data transfer constraints. This is a symptom of the database being too large for the ARC and the phone to handle. To use ARC effectively, Roon needs to synchronize information about your music library to your mobile device. While the synchronized data is far smaller than what’s stored on the Roon Core, a library of this size—700+ tracks—can still be too large for a mo…

[Matthew_Bowden1 (Matthew Bowden)]

Thanks! That sucks…

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

I do think that people have 250 or 300k made work, with the fastest phone models and most RAM I suppose. So if you already have a top-line phone maybe it’s still worth opening a support case to see if they if just under 200k should work better than what you experience.

[Matthew_Bowden1 (Matthew Bowden)]

its an older iPhone 13. It’s almost time to upgrade so maybe I will do that sooner.

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

Just a month to iPhone 18 Pro Max

iPhone 18 Pro release date: Here’s when Apple’s new model is coming - 9to5Mac

[Sean_Elms]

I use it with Rock and works great .. if you don’t have static ip I would recommend.

[Jeffrey_Miller]

I spent a long time (days) trying to get ARC to work. When we lived in a house, it worked, but rarely. I gave up. We moved to apartment about a year ago and I decided to give it another shot. Monkeyed around with port-forwarding. Nothing worked. Finally reached IT and they said I can’t use port-forwarding due to their wirewalls. I finally got ARC set up with Tailscale. Works fine so far.

[Vittorio (Vittorio Ripa di Meana)]

ARC definitely suces when you have a large library.

I discussed lengthy with Roon support and they explained than when you 1st connect ARC to a server it creates a local shadow copy of the database in a format that is then useful to the App. ARC does not rely on the huge and complex library data constructed by Roon on the server.

With large libraries (mine is over 600k FLAC files) the 1st connection takes ages. You should not touch your phone or interact with the App in any way or your connection will fail, getting the App stuck or the local copy of the dB will be flawed.

It will look like working fir a few minutes, hours or days, but ut eventually crash the App at startup.

Even if everything goes well at 1st connection, with a large library the local copy of the library will get corrupted after a while.

I suggested to Roon to definitely change their architecture for ARC. What’s this strange idea of having a different local copy of the dB when Roon server already spent days building its complex version?

Also, most people are only interested in streaming content from their library to the car audio system and are nit at all interested in all other Roon functionalities.

So why not having a streamlined, small client, different from ARC, based on a sound architecture that doesn’t replicate anything locally and just streams music without any unnecessary overhead?

The support really liked this idea and pushed it forward to the development team.

I have no idea how to create a voting post on RoonLabs Community site for people to vote for such a streamlined client. but it would certainly help.

Cheers from the Dolomites

[Suedkiez (Just a fellow user like you)]

What does this have to do with Tailscale vs. port forwarding?