Thoughts on Smart Downloads (probably some bugs to look at) [Ticket In]

Early Access
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Hi Roon… nice to see you again. I’ve not read other threads so I’ll number these and we can cross them off if I’m repeating others.

Last Roon Meet* I did a live demo of Smart Downloads. I’d not been in Arc for a while and so a few things were new to me including this feature. This was all done local. I observed a few things I want to bring to your attention.

  1. I had not changed the download format so the first couple albums downloaded in low quality. There is an option to “re-download” in higher quality but bug time. When it re-downloaded the album at higher quality it removed the album from “smart”. So, these albums are now a permanent part of my download collection. This was unexpected. I expected it to just replace the files, leave it smart, and swap it as space was needed.

  2. The downloads made sense until 3, yes 3, Adele albums were downloaded. I don’t listen to Adele. There are a few other very questionable selections of stuff I never listen to as well. I’m going to assume this is caused by the cross-pollution of profiles thing (see: Taylor Swift has broken Daily Mix)

  3. It “smart” downloaded one playlist. About 70% of this playlist is Qobuz linked tracks. When I went offline 70% of the playlist was correctly marked as “unavailable”. But, possible bug time, I’m not sure I’d consider the selection of this playlist “smart”. Maybe we need a “smart downloaded playlist generator” so it can generate playlists against just you’re downloaded tracks?

Things that worked well:

  • Most of the content was a nice mix of stuff I’d recently listened to and had not in a while. This would be a great road trip shuffle for sure.
  • It downloaded relatively quickly with no complaints from me.
  • It did eat some battery but I had my screen on the whole time and that doesn’t help with battery conservation. May I suggest a push notification system so it can both wake-up the app and notify me when the downloads are done?
  • I did not notice the phone getting any warmer than downloading any other set of files from any other app I use.

Excellent work. I think I’ll give Arc another go.

oh, and info on the Meet if others are interested is here…

1 Like
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Hey @ipeverywhere thank you for testing and glad to see you’re back in ARC land :slight_smile:

To your feedback:

  1. Definite bug. Good find. SDL shouldn’t get magically promoted after conversion. Ticket in.
  2. This is most likely profile pollution. Are there other profiles who do listen to Adele on your account? For now, you can “remove from smart downloads” and that should tank their ranking so they don’t keep coming back. They were 3 different albums right?
  3. This is an interesting idea. Have been thinking about things in this vein as well.

Thanks again and happy holidays to you and yours. :christmas_tree:

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2a. One album has 2 plays from another profile with last play in April. Other albums have maybe 1 or 2 tracks played in 2022 with those albums showing play counts of 0 on the other tracks.

Now, oddly, my profile does show about 4 tracks across all albums as played this year. I think this occurred as the tracks arrived in a Daily Mix and I didn’t skip them.

2b. 3 different albums yes but that’s the entirety of local Adele content. I fear it would have downloaded more if it could :stuck_out_tongue:

Nothing against Adele of course.

happy holidays to you and yours as well