Roon ARC Reviews

Come on Roon! You’ve been purchased and have $ now, how about investing in RoonARC? TWO FULL YEARS in and you still can’t select an SD card or other storage location for downloads? My 3 year old niece can write an app in a week that lets you choose a storage location for downloads.

I invested in the Roon Ecosysten and subscription to be able to take my library with me. You’re “supposed” to be the leading high end system for that. Yet your mobile “listen anywhere” app can’t use an SD card to store its downloads? This makes RoonARC virtually useless.

It’s not made for most music enthusiasts. Be prepared to spend hours working with your carrier and diggin through useless threads on Reddit to find out how to configure it. I gave up after 2 hours. My setup is going to be common. It’s an AT&T Arris gateway which doesn’t support port forwarding. Attached to it is an Apple time capsule. I’ve tried enabling NAT with no success. It just keeps saying their is some conflict and gives the explanation in the most technical way that only a person with Cisco certifications would understand.

After installing the application and go through the set up, which is by the way is not complicated as other people have said, my immediate impression was: Is that it?! The application is very basic in the presenting of the music. Every other streaming app is far better in showing all kind of metadata, and I’m not crazy about their recommendation either

I’ve never once been able to get Room Arc to work. My regular Roon works fine all the time and streams throughout the house. No matter where I am with my phone, I’ve never received anything other than a “Poor Connection —Try Again” error. I’ve updated RoonARC to no effect, I’ve tried it with wifi and cellular. Simply won’t work.

I downloaded RoonARC and got it running but I can’t play music through my stereo any longer. My Roon core on my Mac locked me out and I lost everything! Be careful using it. Now I can only listen on my phone. I just got a lifetime subscription to just stream on my phone! Are you kidding me? I don’t know what went wrong.

So far ARC is proving to be useless for many of us. It will connect with my Nucleus, then give a “There was a problem syncing” error message. Many people are reporting this but unfortunately Roon support is being oddly silent about the issue. I know that new software can have unforeseen issues, but complete failure between an iPhone and a Nucleus doesn’t seem like it should be one of them. Very disapppinting.

Downloading tracks is a nightmare. If my screen goes to sleep while an album is downloading, downloading completely stops, and I have to force quit RoonARC and re-open it to get downloads to resume. Why can’t downloads continue while the screen is off. And why won’t downloads resume after the screen is reawakened?

Every other update breaks functionality on RoonARC. My ROCK is connected to gigabit internet port on a WiFi 6e router that gets an average of 1400mbs wireless and well over that wired. Yes whenever i step outside of my house on a 5Guw Verizon network all i get is poor connection, meanwhile every other app on my phone works. Now if you want to download all the music to your phone it’ll work just fine, however if that’s the case i could just buy a flash drive for $25 load it up with music & plug into the usb c port in my car. Don’t waste your your time or money.

The only thing the developer changed in this latest release was to make RoonARC crash faster than before. Last version could sometimes play for 2-3 minutes before it would crash. Now it consistently crashes in 30 seconds. This is for offline downloaded content as well as streaming. RoonARC hasn’t worked for months. What a piece of garbage.

I have music I own that I’d like to take with me on my phone occasionally. Theoretically, ARC should do that, but it’s too flaky to be useable. Whenever I go to use it, usually it’s not ready to go. I have to spend 10-15 minutes getting it in working order. Usually, it gets stuck and the only recourse is to reinstall, which means I have to spend the next several days downloading because it cannot download things in large batches without getting stuck, which sometimes also requires re-installing. At least, that’s what happened last time I had to re-install. I’ve queued up my library for download, maybe it’ll work this time.

I can’t believe I pay for this. Playlists missing, playlist changes not syncing. I can search for the playlist by its name and find it, but when I tap on it, I get a grey screen. No “sorry this action failed,” it just hangs.

If I could rate RoonARC a zero, I would.

After a recent update, all my downloads are missing. I discovered the problem while beginning a long plane flight. I spent many hours downloading this music.
Downloading is very painful and clumsy with RoonARC. Rather than risking a repeat of this problem, I am going back to Apple Music, which is reliable and I can download music from my library with a cable connection.

It seems I spend more time troubleshooting ARC instead of just listening. I have major problems over WiFi, and strangely things seem more reliable over mobile networks. I’m also unable to get it to connect on my home network even though Roon Remote works just fine.

The software is buggy and unstable; connection to the Roon core is often an adventure; and even when it’s working RoonARC is sluggish and the feature set is extremely limited. Plus there’s no native iPad app.

This should have been released as a beta with the understanding that it needs far more work and polish.

Roon is great when it works. That’s equally true for Roon Arc. There’s no good reason why it can’t work behind CGNAT. At the *very* least it should work when the devices have Tailscale or another method of NAT traversal, but really it should handle NAT traversal itself. But even without CGNAT the connection is awfully unreliable.

Once those issues are addressed, please consider adding an Apple Watch app. I’d love to give up my Apple Music subscription and switch to Roon for all my music listening, but that isn’t happening without a Watch app.

RoonARC worked for about an hour. As soon as I left my home network, RoonARC stopped connecting to my core and won’t reconnect. I’m not interested in wasting time troubleshooting routers and networks when my streaming services provide my music when I’m on the go. This should be plug and play! Overall, very disappointing.

So I’m a big fan of Roon but like another reviewer said theirs a fine print. If you are using a MBP as you core ARC will not work because your computer must be awake and running on the internet nonstop just to be able to use ARC. If your screensaver or lock screen kicks in you won’t be able to find your core using ARC.

I have been using this on my 14 day trial and my phone is running REALLY hot. I got a warning about it and just turned it off. Using and iPhone 12 Pro Max and this app on Mobile data low bandwidth mode.

Another ‘phone’ experience which is disappointing.

Application working fine within its limits, however IPad version is required, please

App UI needs work for sure.

I like Room and think this new version has potential however the favorite/add to library system currently available needs a ton of work. Sometimes it doesn’t work when you favorite something, sometimes you can only add to library and not favorite a track. Often the track isn’t added to the library when favoriting and at random times it is. Please fix this clunky system so I can use the new app.

Tried out of home connection once with the first software release, and was unable to connect, despite my having a UPnP router and it showing that it was reachable. Haven’t tried it with the second release, will do so and report back.

There is no dedicated iPad app, so you’re stuck with the low-res limited window view using the iPhone application on your tablet. Perhaps another iPadOS version will be forthcoming but for now this is really an iPhone based app.

I wouldn’t bother with this unless you use Qobuz, because Roon didn’t pursue the MQA first unfold for Tidal and you’ll be stuck with 48khz rendering maximum, even if you use an external DAC attached to your phone (there’s no MQA passthrough). 😡

So, I adore Roon. I can’t say enough good things about them.

Roon ARC is certainly a much needed addition to Roon’s functionality, but there is one big “fine print” factor that they are leaving out from its marketing: Your core needs to remain on and connected, always. And if you, like me, can’t shell out the $$$ for a Nucleus or other external core, this means that your core is, by default, your personal computer. So at best, your computer needs to remain awake and connected, with the Roon app open while you are about doing your business—and at worst, this means that using Roon ARC while driving to work, traveling, etc., is a near impossibility, because your core may be tucked away in a computer bag. So, if you take your computer with you while you travel, and can’t afford a pricey core, RoonARC cannot function nearly as advertised.

The limitation makes sense, and it’s all logical, but it falls short of the “Listen to your entire library anywhere, without compromise” claim that Roon is making with this rollout, *especially* when—as I suspect—the majority of users simply use their personal computer as a core. Yes, you can download individual albums, but this is nothing new for smartphone users.

The fanfare around this rollout and convenient omission/burying of this key limitation leads me to suspect that, in part, Roon is banking on this to be a boon to their Nucleus sales. Loyal users like me, and potential customers who think they just need to purchase a subscription to access these features, get excited for something that they won’t actually be able to enjoy as advertised without spending $1,459 on a Nucleus, or doing something DIY.

It’s not what I expect from Roon. The software works well, and it provides much needed features, but I can’t help but feel a little swindled. Consumers are tired of being promised features that lead to just more hidden fees and expenses, and with this rollout, Roon is flirting with that tactic. They should be wise to be wary of the impression that creates on both loyal and potential customers.

What the NAT Sangyeig is CNAT-ing on about?! :)

Great app, but needs an iPad version. I would also love to see an update that includes a bit rate playback in the player.

How come we still don’t have an iPad version. I use it every night when I go to bed and that small screen is annoying.

I previously tried roon over a year ago and loved it except I could only listen at home and I go out often which was a problem. When I heard about roon arc I immediately reactivated a 15 day trial and it was good enough for me to finally convert. It still isn’t perfect, I occasionally get poor connection warnings when my connection is fine, multiple times a week RoonARC has auto signed out of my account although it doesn’t always happen. And on top of that the downloads sometimes show a download symbol wheel when nothing is downloading. I also think the interface needs a bit of work but is simple and easy to use as is. Most of the time I’ve managed to get it to work just fine for my daily commute and has been a suitable replacement for plexamp with much better stability. I hope development continues and bugs are fixed over time because I will continue to use RoonARC daily.

This is what was missing from Roon and now I’m a dedicated user. I use a M1 Mac Mini as my core and I have had zero issues.

Finally I can use Roon anywhere, and it works!

This was the only thing roon was missing and remote app to listen to your library outside your network and is finally here, this is amazing!.

Works brilliantly and no set up required for me. All automatic. I do, for full disclosure, run Nucleus. Love the ARC. Well done and this is a wonderful game changer for me given the nature of my library

The Roon team continues to make improvements. It’s still not perfect but I commend the team for continuing to push out improvements. Great job!

ARC has worked quite reliably for me away from home. My carrier is Verizon and I’ve had zero issues. If you are worried about bandwidth, you can download ahead of time.

Roon is not that difficult to setup, but yes it is a server/web app and you need to consider it through that lens. It is not like installing a program on your Windows PC. But this is not a Room review.

What an amazing app - allows me to use Roon away from my home. RoonARC has truly changed the way I listen to music.