 Rune's mobile music player, called ARC, has been in its infancy for over a year. I therefore couldn't force myself to use it, let alone review it. That has now changed. People that follow my channel know that I heavily depend on Rune for playing music. Its unrivaled metadata support and its hyperlinking between artists, composers, band members and albums is such a pleasure for those interested in music. Another nice feature, a classical work that has several parts is listed as that work, while the parts mentioned as part of that work. Rune also works with an extremely wide range of hardware. Not only the ever-growing brands and models of Rune certified players, but also the equipment supporting Airplay, Chromecast, HQ Player, Squeezebox and Lin subnet streaming equipment. Especially when reviewing equipment I might use other player software when the device under test requires it. In my car, until recently, I didn't use the mobile version of Rune, called ARC, simply because it didn't perform reliably enough. And if there's one thing you don't want in a car, is being distracted by the infotainment system. But recently there have been improvements to both Rune's server and the ARC app. So I tried ARC again. I did a road trip from Utrecht, halfway the Netherlands, to the upslide dyke that connects West Friesia to Friesia, then south to Zwolle and further down to Apeldoorn and from there back to Utrecht. A trip of almost 400 kilometers, 250 miles, that took 5 hours. During this trip there was not a single hiccup while playing my pop and rock playlist. Admittedly the Netherlands is densely populated and so is the GSM network. That doesn't mean there is a perfect reception everywhere. Also important to mention is that I used an iPhone 11, connected over a 4G network. So no 5G. And I didn't use downloaded music. All music was received from my Rune Rock server over the GSM network. In my car I use Apple CarPlay and that worked fine too. First you have to install the ARC app on your smartphone. There are versions for Android and iOS. To use the app on the road there need to be access to the Rune server at home. Rune can set this automatically when you have a modem slash router that supports UPnP or NATPnP. Go to the settings and then to Rune ARC. If your modem slash router can't be set automatically, Rune will report this and send you to a support page. This is how ARC makes a safe connection to your Rune server at home. When you open ARC you have to enter your username and password. ARC then contacts the Rune mothership in the cloud that subsequently will return the IP address and port of your Rune server at home. When then ARC connects to your Rune server, this is then reported back to the Rune mothership which makes a circle round and ARC working. It might be clear that opening your internet connection to an external device requires serious security. If ARC doesn't automatically set your modem slash router to the appropriate settings and you are not sure about the instructions given to do it by hand, don't. Using the current prices of modem slash routers, buying a new one might be safer and easier. But contact your service provider first, for some might not allow this. Also be extremely careful running Rune server on an old operating system and keep your operating system always fully updated. And of course use a unique password, not the one that you used elsewhere. When you use a password fold, Apple has keychain built into Apple OS and for other OSes there are several password folds available. And they are all cheaper than paying a ransom when hackers have logged your computer. When logged in, you see what you have played earlier with below it new releases that might be relevant to you. Tap added and you see the most recent added music. In this case two albums are already owned but are now available in MQA on title. And for instance the 2021 mix of let it be by the Beatles in 96kHz. Scroll down and you see the personalized mixes. If you open my library, you can search or browse. I have searched for Berlio so I see the album containing this work. Let's make a query for Jennifer Warnes and after typing only Jenny it had found her. A simple tab brings me to her Jennifer Warnes album. And like in Rune we see other albums by her lower down. There is a bio with shortcuts to people she worked with. You can even see alternate versions of the album, just as in Rune. And since we are here, let me tell you that the original famous blue raincoat, the upper one here, sounds clearly better than the 2007 remaster with the blue cover art below it. Also unique in Rune is the way composers are handled. Where all my system artists are indexed on first name, the composers are indexed on family name. You can change that if you like but Bob Dylan will be searched by Bob Dylan while Johann Sebastian Bach will normally be searched by Bach, after which you select the Bach you want. And of course you can play your playlist just as easy. Press the waves in the bottom right corner and you access the DSP section of ARC. The parametric equalizer lets you set gain and Q-factor for as many frequencies you like and your smartphone can handle processor wise. If you have found the best setting for in the car, simply store it as a preset. You can do the same for headphones listening and again another setting for in-ears. Since Rune has analyzed music when added, it knows its loudness profile and thus can compensate for the differences. With the exception of tracks you play from Tidal on Coboose. In that case you can set a standard level adjustment, set here at minus 4 dB. That works fine since both streaming surfaces have leveled the music themselves already. Sample rate conversion can be set too. If you want to use that, always use max PCM rate power of 2 or for compatibility only. And there are even more settings, but I leave it at this. ARC also supports user profiles as can be seen here and there is an offline mode for when you have sufficient storage on your phone and have limited data budget. Here also are settings for sorting and editorial sources. The letter lets you set the sources and thus the language for the bios and album reviews. And even language preferences for names so you don't have to know Greek, Cyrillic, Japanese or Chinese language to know who is playing. You can have ARC pick the best quality version of an album based on the sampling rate of course. Have explicit content filtered out and let Rune Radio only pick from your own library. Downloading can be restricted to Wi-Fi only and there is smart downloading, which is a feature that automatically downloads your favorite music to your phone so it's ready on your device for offline listening wherever you want to. Smart downloads takes into account your listening habits, history, favorites and recent activity to determine the music you like the most. The more you listen, add and favorite, the better your smart downloads will be. And of course you can set the language for the user interface from this list. It's up to the user to choose the quality of the downstream. Original will give you the full quality, CD quality will give you up to 16 bit 48 kHz, source files with higher sampling rate and bit depth will be down sampled, balancer will give you opus encoded, lossy 256 kbps and bandwidth optimized will do 96 kbps opus encoded. The opus codec is considered to be slightly better in preserving audio quality than AAC and thus is significantly better when compared to phobies and mp3. mp3 at 128 kbps will sound less than opus at 96 kbps. But that's the quality of the digital format. How good the sound quality is when converted to analog obviously depends entirely on how good the digital to analog conversion on your smartphone is, and the equipment that follows. In ears or headphones directly connected to your phone or over an external DAC like the AudioQuest Dragonfly series or over Bluetooth. My iPhone 11 doesn't have a headphone output so I connected the Dragonfly cobalt and compared that with Bluetooth on the same Dali I06 headphones that accept analog over 3.5mm jacks, signal over USB-C and APTX, APTX HD and Apple AAC over Bluetooth radios. Unfortunately the USB-C input draws too much current. But comparing the sound quality, the Dragonfly cobalt was a lot more pleasant than the Bluetooth connection. Less distortion, more detail, cleaner. But as I have said more often, I'm not a headphones listener. I use ARC only in the car over Apple CarPlay. Android users can use Android Auto. Today everyone has a smartphone and if you are a Roon user, you get the most advanced portable music player on your phone for free. That way you can play your music from your Roon server at the office using wifi or in the car over 4G or better. Unlimited data bundles are rather affordable today. Files and campings nowadays all offer wifi and for those occasions your 4G data is limited, for instance overseas, you can play downloaded music that you can change wherever you have access to wifi. You do need to be a Roon user of course, which costs you $12.49 per month or $829.99 for a lifetime subscription. I have seen audio files by accessories for a lot more. And on that bombshell we come to the end of this video. As usual there will be a new video next Friday at 5 p.m. Central European time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to my channel or follow me on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or link to this video on the social media, it is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support the channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you next week. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.