I was travelling overseas for 7 weeks during August and September and, like every other time I’ve been away from home for more than a week or so, I was unable to use Roon Arc for about half the trip – I couldn’t access the downloaded music on my phone as I was told to reconnect to my Roon Server, which I couldn’t do until I returned home. Also, in the process of reconnecting to my Roon Server, the music I had downloaded to my phone got deleted and I had to go through the time-consuming process of downloading the music again. A couple of weeks ago, I was again traveling overseas albeit only for a week. The same thing happened again and once more the downloaded music on my phone was deleted. This is incredibly frustrating. On one of my overseas trips, I purchased a Sony Walkman that I understand is Roon Ready. Even if this issue of Roon Arc becoming unusable (even with downloads) while traveling were to be resolved, I understand that I would still be unable, at present, to have downloads to the SD card of my device. FYI, I have been unable to access my Roon Server from outside home on Roon Arc. I assume this is something to do with our internet set-up, but I have no idea how to rectify this.
Describe your network setup
Our home network is hard for me to describe. It was in the house when we bought it 4 years ago. I have a Nucleus+ as my Roon Server.
Thanks for taking the time to write in and share your report! It’s good to see you on the community again, although I’m sorry its an issue that prompted your post.
Based on your description above, it sounds like your local network may be the cause of your issue. Are you able to provide a bit more detail around how things are setup?
Is your Nucleus hardwired via ethernet directly to your primary router? If not, this would be a great first step.
Have you explored any firmware updates to your router, considering it’s been with you over the last 4 years?
At this stage, I’m reluctant to move my Nucleus as everything is working fine at home. The home network is part of an entertainment system through the house, which is driven by a HEOS device and our home security system is connected through it as well. I am going to have to get the person who originally installed it to come in. However, what does this have to do with my downloaded music disappearing the Roon ARC app on my phone, which was the main point of the post. Many thanks
Hi @Garry_Hawker,
Was the music that disappeared from a streaming service or your local library? When you open ARC do you see anything messages about not being able to connect to your server?
The music was from my local library. I am not entirely sure, but with the most recent instance of the music disappearing, I don’t recall seeing any messages about not being able to connect. In previous instances, where I was away for a lot longer, I do recall seeing that message even though I was using it offline.
Thanks for all the additional information! Based on your report, we believe, unfortunately, that this may be expected behavior.
This is largely due to the fact that ARC still currently needs to sync with the library after about two-three weeks of not seeing RoonServer because the tokens expire. As it stands now, it’s not really something we can change.
That being said, we should be able to help you with port forwarding, which would allow you to sync remotely, extending your ability to play music away from home. We cant guarantee that Arc will stay consistent over 7 weeks under the conditions as your Nucleus will update in the background during that time, which means Arc will also be updated. Note that our team is actively working on improving such situations so we appreciate your patience in the meantime!
Could you head into Roon Settings>Roon Arc and share the detailed error report you see under advanced settings?
From there, we can better understand next troubleshooting steps. Thank you!
ARC’s framework inherently limits the duration of time the app can remain in Offline Mode. There’s not a hard-limit, since authorization, intermittent availability of cellular service, and phone OS all play a factor.
These limitations are partially for anti-piracy considerations, but there are also mechanical and curatorial considerations for database curation. Offline Mode allows for certain processes within ARC’s copy of the Roon database to continue to function autonomously, but it’s not equipped to maintain your database indefinitely. Accumulated changes between an Offline ARC instance and a RoonServer machine that remains online - and updating - can pose a corruption risk.
We’ve escalated internally to see if we can provide a clearer answer or a workaround for this particular use case. Please allow our Product team a chance to review the case and respond and we will follow up as soon as possible.
The diagnostic snippet you’ve shared concerns port forwarding and describes why RoonServer can’t reach ARC via the expectation autoconfiguration using the router’s built-in UPnP service.
It means you will need to check the vulnerabilities listed in the guide here to identify and bypass a redundant layer of Network Address Translation (NAT) somewhere in your network connection between RoonServer and the internet. If you have two routers, the blockage is likely due to the second router. If you have just one router, then the blockage is possible at the level of your internet service provider (ISP) and will require communication directly with them. Please see here:
We can assist in setting up port forwarding if you’re able to provide a thorough description of your home network. We really only need to know the make/model of main router and any second routers that are active.
Moving to the concern of your original post - ARC losing authentication while on vacation.
We’ve escalated this ongoing concern to the product team. ARC needs to reach the cloud at least every fourteen days to authenticate sessions. If authentication refresh hasn’t succeeded for fourteen days, ARC can’t be fully accessed. After this time, ARC will need to have a connection to the cloud to reauthorize, and it may require a connection to RoonServer via port forwarding if RoonServer has been updated or turned off in the background.
It is not expected to lose downloads or need to fully log back in and resync when your account loses authentication.
The team is aware of the vulnerabilities behind what you experienced and will be shipping improvements incrementally.
Please update to the latest version of Roon ARC and report if this issue occurs again in a new topic thread.
