I realise that the USB driver for Arc on Android is still labelled as beta but I wondered how close we are to it being a full release…
I have a Questyle M15i dongle DAC connecting via USB-C to my Android 15 phone and if I enable the USB driver in Arc, I get choppy audio. A fraction of a second of playback, then it drops out for a fraction of a second, then another fraction of a second of audio and so on. I’ve tried re-plugging the DAC, restarting ARC, rebooting the phone but it’s always the same. If I disable the USB driver, everything plays fine but then everything is re-sampled by Android to 48KHz and sounds somewhat fuzzy. If I connect the DAC to an iPhone and run Arc on that, it works perfectly but I guess there is no need for a native USB driver…
It would be great to get an update on this or at least a list of known compatible and incompatible DACs. I’m currently in the market for a new dongle and it’s tricky to know which will and won’t work with ARC and why. I know the community were putting together a list at some point but I can’t find the thread.
The author of USB Audio Player PRO has figured this out. No doubt it was not easy. I wonder if he would be willing to collaborate, perhaps in a co-branded way, with Roon Labs and Harman International. Why duplicate effort?
Is anyone from Roon willing to comment on this?
I updated to the latest Roon Arc for Android today hoping for some improvement but nothing has changed. Sometimes when I plug in my Questyle dongle, Arc recognises all of its format and sample rate capabilities with the beta USB driver enabled but once I start playing music, it is choppy and unlistenable. Other times when I plug the Dac in, the only capability shown is 48KHz, as if the beta USB driver had been disabled…I then get listenable music playback, but sound quality is not great.
I’ve also noticed that the Android version isn’t as good as the iPhone version when it comes to streaming quality. Connected to the same hotel WiFi, the iPhone will happily keep streaming at CD quality from my home network but on the Android phone I have to take the setting down to balanced as CD quality will drop out and start buffering within seconds.
Can you give some indication of whether you’re looking into the issues with Arc on Android and is there a list of dongles you know to work well?
Can’t speak on the streaming issues but I’ve found that in order for the USB driver to operate correctly and bit perfect I must first close the app (every time) then plug in my dongle dac which will pop up an android prompt to allow Roon to control the usb device, this then opens Arc. Works well for me from then on on my Pixel 8 Pro however if I then want to use audio from another app I have to re-plug in my headphones. Very frustrating!
very erratic behavior for me too with iFi Go Link Max on Samsung Galaxy S23. have to replug the dongle sometimes to have it properly recognized. and for sure the phone has to be unlocked and the app closed. other times no sound will come out, have to skip a song or hit the play again to get sound.