Roon 2 / Roon Arc Is Out
 

Looks like a nice feature to use your Roon server as your personal streaming Service when your away from home. I have not tried it yet as I have to update the OS on my server first. Let us know how its working for you and how you like it !

With 800 kbps upload speed here this is a non-starter for me.

It's been an unmitigated disaster for me. Roon requires you to go into your router/gateway and configure UPnP to be able to use Roon ARC. Well, guess what? You can't do that on an AT&T Wireless Pace router. No way. Also, the Roon 2.0 Core couldn't see either my content on an external HD on my Mac Mini nor my SOtM SMS-200 UltraNeo endpoint.

IMHO, it's a total clusterf*ck. :icon_thumbsdown:

Shouldn't have to be a LAN Engineer to get this to work. Not impressed.

Hmm, was pretty straightforward for me. I updated my Roon core last night and downloaded the app on my phone today at work. I was listening to my library in minutes. Other than the interface being a bit sluggish, I'm happy so far. It's nice to have my library with me on the go.

I think the problem may be that Roon 2.0 is not compatible with my 2012 Late Mac Mini, even though it's running Mac OS 10.15 Catalina. But, I can't find out. Also, I don't understand Roon's install protocols. Apparently, I need to install Roon 2.0 on my iPhone BEFORE installing the Roon 2.0 Core on my Mac Mini Why? When....I never use the iOS Roon app on my iPhone? I access Roon from a "client", my MacBook Pro.

Why is this required? No f**kin' idea. The problem is Roon gives a brief set of steps of WHAT you need to do, but not WHY. How does that provide...CONTEXT as a basis of UNDERSTANDING? Answer: It doesn't.

None of the required protocols are clear, at least IMHO.

:icon_thumbsdown:

So Stephen, reading between the lines and inferring a bit, you don't much like the Roon 2.0 update? :)

Haven't tried it yet, but now hesitating.
But I also firewall my server - no external access.

Uh,...no. :no:

IMHO, if you don't need "external" access...don't bother. And, if you're server is firewalled, Roon ARC won't work, anyway.

Not sure what problem 2.0 solves if you don't require remote access. "If it isn't broke...."

Not impressed. :grumpy:

No issues for me with my Antipodes K50 and all iOS remote devices. 5 minute changeover.

Haven’t used ARC outside of my home to really test it.

My 2018 Mac Mini acts as my Roon core and installed 2.0 with no problem. For some reason Roon on my 2021 Mac Book Pro wouldn't install after a couple tries, so I deleted it, downloaded 2.0 again and all is running fine. My Mac Book pro's OS hadn't been updated to the latest version, FWIW. Haven't tried ARC, and may hold off for a while since music apps on my iPhone are adequate, i.e., I don't use the phone itself a lot for music and if I'm away for any extended period I shut down my Mac Mini. That said, I can see the power of what Roon's doing here and assuming any bugs get worked out and/or needed improvements, it becomes very powerful when combined with Qobuz.

I did the update today. I had been waiting for this for a long time. I wanted to have my
database available anywhere. Consider my a happy camper.

I’m using a nucleus and the update worked great for me.

Well, this ARC feature is a 'category mistake'. I made good living designing networking equipments (wifi, switches, routers). I think i understand what they do.

Unfortunately, the solution as designed requires interactions with the home routers and setup correctly one of two protocols. There are several serious problems with that:
- will not work on most routers provided by the fiber or cable company.
- All routers are different - this is a support nightmare.
- Many standalone routers will not support those features. I just moved from US to Canada to a new house, ditched my fancy enterprise gear and bought latest and greatest expensive Netgear Orbi 11ax router and mesh satellites (RBK852), a 1k+ USD affair. it does not support either UPnP or NAT-PMP. I have zero way to make this work with this gear.

There is only one way to make stuff like this work seamlessly. You need to make the roon core initiate a connection to the cloud, preferably with WebSocket or HTTP2, and make ARC app connect to the cloud. This business of exposing the Roon Core 'securely' from home networks is, well a category mistake. NAS companies like Synology have known that for a long time, quickconnect works like that, ie the NAS box connects to a server on the internet.

I love Roon, it's how i consume all my music, but man oh man do that have blind spots. They can't figure out the most basic fuzzy search technology. Search for 'the dooes', an easy typo, will still not find 'the doors'. come' on, it takes 5 minutes to make this work properly on any Lucene based text serch engine (like ElasticSearch, Solr, etc). This Roon ARC thing tops off all bad decisions, is a predictable nightmare, this feature will go down in flames, cant be saved.

Thanks CheezWhiz - I am not a networking specialist, but tried to understand what Roon did from the announcement pages.

I agree. My AT&T Pace Router does not provide UPnP or NAT-PMP support.

IMHO, Roon 2.0 is a frickin' disaster. :icon_thumbsdown:

Worked for me.

Roon 2.0 will not run without persistent internet access. This is a major problem for users like me that have poor or intermittent internet access. Looks like I will stay on 1.8. Sure glad I didn’t opt for a lifetime license.

Then CW notes:
Indeed, there will be a Roon ARC exploit coming to a NUC near you. Then a transverse attack on your network.

JRiver to the rescue!
 

We lost internet - cable down due to downed tree. No problem I thought, I have curated a nice library of music and the main power is still on.

Wrong. I let Roon update to version 2.0 (but I did not load the remote access functionality).

As Tom mentioned, w/o internet Roon 2.0 is DOA. So is Sonos. What did work? JRiver Music Center. Zero issues.

So, stay with Roon 1.8 and pay a yearly license? Unlikely. Lets see how this evolves.

Yep, this has been the subject of much discussion at Darko Audio on YT. And....this is the case even for music files resident on an "internal" hard drive in your home that is connected to your internal network.

Bottom-line: No internet? No functionallity. Zip. Nada. Niente.

IMHO, I don't think they could have screwed this up any more if they tried.

I’ve “upgraded” to 2.0. No issues with the upgrade at either home. But what’s interesting is that I can’t get Roon ARC to work in either of our homes. Not sure I’m going to bother troubleshooting to figure it out (most likely a double NAT issue) since it’s a solution looking for a problem. I stream from Qobuz and Amazon when I’m not at home. The only thing I won’t have access to on the road is my digitized LP’s.

Sounds like a Cluster Chuff to me.

Bingo...