Forget about SPOTIFY HI-FI: build YOUR OWN streaming service with ROON ARC

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What you need is a streamer that can read from files already online without having a hardware. Streaming on the cloud. So pay for upload a dsd and play on the web in a hifi way. No pc with software at home. Does such think exists?

I don’t understand. Imagine you go out on vacation with you phone and favorite dongle and iem. At home I have hard disks with my music but I want to power off my electricity so no nucleus turned on. Can I use Roon in that case?

I tried using it to get my entire library to my iPhone for offline use, it’s the worst app experience I’ve ever had.

Roon arc refused to download in the background, got my phone incredibly hot that it crashed the app several times, and drained my 14 pro max battery in under 4 hours.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND!!!

But when you say Roon costs as much as Spotify, that’s kind of irrelevant because paying for Roon is 14.99/month plus you would need to pay for a streaming service anyway like Qoboz or Tidal, which would set you back another 10-15/month.

Roon ARC is the Plex server you needed from Roon.

Tried it Plexamp is way ahead especially with the DJ algorithm, it is far beyond ahead of Roon. Also Roon misses tons of stuff when indexing, on Plexamp I just make sure my albums are processed through Picard first and then upload, Roon still misses these How? In addition with the discount we get with Tidal there is no beating my 192K experience at home and anywhere I go.

O2 has unlimited bandwith with 10mbit/s for 39,99€ a month. I use this subscription plan to stream lossless when im outside.

Roon is worth the price for me as well as everything covered here with Roon I can play hi-res files my Sonos cannot play natively as it converts the file down to a sample rate Sonos can read. so now don’t need to replace my kitchen speaker and buy one that can play 24 bit 96kHz, yes that would sound better but this is for my kitchen.

Hi John. Just wanted to drop a quick comment on the latest beta feature for Roon Arc that now includes a custom USB driver for bit perfect playback on android and IOS. Apologies if you've already covered elsewhere.

Well, and how much would cost to buy all that Hifi music files ?

This might be a stupid question, but why don't you just store your songs on your phone's SD card?

Makes no sense for me , you can put all your favourite music on a SD card and play it with extremely high quality everywhere, anywhere even if you are on north pole , just save your money and buy a nice MP3 player

If you take the free trial up you won't be able to use tidal because tidal won't allow it for some reason, I think it's the same with qobuz. That's not so much of an issue if you have a hard drive full of music, provided you can get Arc to work in the first place. I'm still working on it

Hi , ARC looks promising but: I’m the only one that think downloads sorting is a mess? Why not use artist, album& playlist alphabetically ordered? I’ll mostly use arc for offline playing so the lack of a proper sort method is a little annoying

Despite audio quality, (which if I may note, has taken substantial leaps), Apple Music works similarly. I drag my local library files into my Apple Music library and they exist forever, in the original file format synced via cloud across all my Apple devices. That's the only caveat really – you have to primarily exist within the Apple ecosystem to take advantage. 

As someone that has been making music as well, I have all my demos and references just airdropped and dragged into my Apple library within seconds and it appears via the Apple Music App on my iPhone, on my Apple TV, etc. I have 50+ tracks from other artists that have never been released or rips that exist like any other searchable song via my Apple Music library.

Biggest downsides is – again, you need to exist in the Apple system and they don't have discoverability from your uploaded files so no continuous radio based on those offline uploaded files.

I haven't seen anyone speak about this ability with Apple Music, so I wanted to put my information somewhere before I make a video revealing the straightforward process at some point.

How do you actually build it?

I always love the way put things in common terms. I do have almost 2 TB of heavy metal and power metal mostly in flac format. I keep updating my phone and use a blutooth DAC Astell Kern XB10 to listen to them. Since I am from India, Roon is expensive at present unless they come out with special prices made for our region. Is there any other way to stream the music using my backup ? Data rates are cheap in India, so it is economical to listen to high bit rate songs online.

Now make it work on Apple Carplay ;)

This sounds like a great route back owning our own music collections, which was always part of the pleasure of purchasing music back in the day 👍🏻

Roon has revolutionized how I listen to music. For some reason I have never really enjoyed using native Apple Music, Spotify, or Tidal. My wife never used any of those. With Roon I've started to listen to music again and explore new music actually for the first time. My wife probably now listens to music more than me. But from the beginning I couldn't use Roon away from home. So I don't listen to music in the car the way I would like to. Until now. Hang the expense. Thank you Roon.

Can you also do a review about Kef mu 7? Thanks!

Spotify hifi still waiting

This channel has made me rediscover my love of music. Thank you.

Start uploading your rare albums to somewhere online...! ✊


...please 😘😘👍

This is very intriguing to me

I use Roon but I cannot use ARC unfortunately.

Our internet is provided by Starlink (we live in a very rural location where there is no fibre or copper internet) and Starlink uses CGNAT which prevents any port forwarding etc so you simply cannot access anything on your home network from outside it.

So...no ARC unless you actually download the tracks to the phone before leaving home.

Talking of Masters, I'm sure there was an early video of yours where you refer to a site that discusses the quality of a recording. Part of the conversation was the fact that many newer remasters were just shoddily done to up the volume somewhat, perhaps to enhance poorer listening habits like cheap IEMs and low quality streaming.
Which video was this on? Am I correct in my recollection? Cheers

Hi John great as usual, I use a synology nas disk station to store my ripped cd's, I also have loads of 7.5" reel to reel tapes that I have converted to flac files, you can access them on most devices via dsaudio app and also via streammagic app for my streamer!

So if i were to integrate say a Bluesound Vault would i be able to roughly duplicate what you have done here...Excellent videos by the way..super informative....FYI I am also an audiophile what likes electronica music

I use roon and I didnt realize ARC was a thing until I watched this today. Thank you very much, this is absolutely amazing and my Roon software already has it setup which is great.

Amazing new update and free new app feature. Awesome....

Wish I wasn't trapped behind double NAT problems :( This would change my life.

Spotify Platinum is coming in 30 days with Hifi Lossless and other features

I was thinking of doing a video called Audirvana vs. Roon but honestly the video would just be "Never mind Audirvana, just get Roon"... I started out as an Audirvana user a few years ago and as soon as I tested Roon I switched. I then got Audirvana a few weeks ago just to compare the two and it's not even a contest.

Be careful with Roon ARC. Check if your ISP grant a public IP to your router otherwise it won't work out of the box. It's becoming less and less common that ISPs give dedicated public IPs to private costumers. They tend to use CGNAT to minimize the amount of IPs they have to manage.

But. Apple have this with your library. It was called iTunes Match and now is embedded inside Apple Music. I also have my personal cloud streaming service

Lowest possible Quality setting is 256 kb/s and i have 11 GB Bandwidth which is enough for 95h private Streaming Service. With Spotify i never ran out of Bandwith.

Have you ever tried VOX Music ? A good way to have access to your entire library anywhere

This looks good but my phone has 512GB storage. I could just put the rips of albums that aren't available on streaming sites on the phone storage. Available even when there's no phone service?

tidal, quobuz, hd - as I don't use any of these to play music, roon has no use

No lifetime package listed

Will look at running Roon on a virtual machine. I’m in the Sonos at home eco system along with Kef LSX.
Apple airplay though?

I'm so glad I opted for a Roon lifetime subscription before they raised the price on in.

So Roon is just a remake of Squeezebox Server?

Where are we with portable digital audio players nowadays? I like to dump whole bunch of music onto an SD card to take it with me, and my smartphone is showing its age. New ones don't seem to bother with SD cards, so I'm wondering if you have any recent experiences with PDPs or whatever they're called now.

I should have done this sooner. This review triggered me to ditch Spotify and sign up to trial subscriptions of Qobuz & Roon. I cleaned up my old 2013 Mac (which holds over 2000 of my old albums) and installed Roon Core. Also installing Roon on my iPad Pro and Roon Arc on my Samsung S21 Ultra, after 20mins core had pulled in all my albums and linked my Qobuz account without any issues - so easy. This is where the magic started. The Roon interface just needs to be experienced, introducing me to loads of features and new album recommendations that i just don’t get from spotify. Consumed In Key by Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales & Days Gone By, Bob Moses to name just a couple which is currently streaming in HiRes on my Bluesound Powernode. I took Roon Arc for a spin this morning using Ibasso in ear headphones and Ibasso DC04 DAC and again the interface has got me hooked. Thanks Darko I’m a Roon convert.

I joined an online library under their lifetime plan and the library closed after a few years! How do you know that will not happen with Roon?

What video did you do to build your own Roon core in an intel Nuc? Link please. I couldn’t find it.