I've been home a lot recently (kidney stones are so much fun!) and had an opportunity to spend a lot of time listening to my squeezeboxes.
I have an SBR in my kitchen and in my living room (which shares a wall with the kitchen). This is what I've been using mostly all week to stream my FLAC library. Here are some things I've noticed: 1) The microwave oven greatly affects my SBR in the living room. I was using Moose when my wife turned the nuke on and I noted that the signal level went from ~60% to ~20%. Needless to say there was constant rebuffering. 2) The kitchen SBR is known to be affected the nuke. We got into the habit of pausing it when using nuking food. Regardless, sometimes afterwards the SBR would continue to rebuffer randomly for up to an hour afterwards. 3) Today it got rediculous with rebuffering in my kitchen. Out of desperation, I rebooted my wireless router - problem solved! Interesting point though is that none of my SB3s or Booms were affected at this time - they continued to stream OK. ??? 4) When using my SBR in the living room, Moose will randomly show the signal drop down to 25% for up to 30 seconds. Most of the time, there is no rebuffering! Sometimes there is though, preceded by the front light showing "dim white" even though music is playing. Perhaps there is something outside of the house causing interference? 5) My kids use their Booms EVERY night going to sleep. Occasionally I'll use the microwave when while they are falling asleep. NEVER have the Booms rebuffered or stopped streaming. One of them even has a marginal signal of 40-45%, but never has a hiccup. Their bedrooms are upstairs, the kitchen on the floor below under their rooms, and the WAP is in the basement. Basically, the nuke is smack in the middle of the router and the upstairs Booms! Yet they are unaffected. 6) I use my SB3 EVERY night to go to sleep and it NEVER rebuffers. Conclusions 1) It is certainly not 100% conclusive, but I have a strong sense that the SBRs are more susceptible to WiFi interference than the Boom or SB3. If I have an opportunity to do a lot of listening again, I may swap out my SBR in my living room with an SB3 and see how it behaves. 2) Resetting the router is sometimes necessary, even if other SBs are not affected. *** This may help others that are having problems that seem endless. 3) There may be a difference in the streaming in 7.3.3 from 7.2.1, but the environment definitely is a factor. I had problems with 7.2.1, but they seem to be more prevelant with 7.3.3. With 7.2.1, the stream would just stop, or the track would restart from the beginning. Now it will rebuffer and pick up from where it left off. Different behavior...yes...but this is actually more robust behavor! My plan of action: 1) I ordered a pair of homeplugs for the kitchen SBR - CAT-5 to the kitchen just isn't an option. I'm tired of having to screw around with the SBR when it gets scrambed by running the microwave. I can understand it rebuffering, but often it gets into a state where, even after the oven has been turned off, it randomly stops streaming. Usually this is preceded by the light on the front going to "dim white" even though it is still playing. Resetting the router occasionally helps, but when this happens, where aren't the other SBs affected? 2) I will run cat-5 to my SBR in the living room. It is relatively easy for me to do and I want to run a wire there for another reason anyway. It's just as easy to run 2 runs as 1. I will report back once I have these changes in place if I notice a difference in behavior. I certainly expect that I will. As an aside, I finally talked my brother into getting a squeezebox. He was seduced by the SBC and went with a Duet. I hope I'm not going to regret it and find myself on the defensive and trying to get him to spend more money running CAT-5 or purchasing (expensive!) homeplugs. -- maggior Rich --------- Setup: 2 SB3s, 3 Booms, 1 duet, 1 receiver. SuSE 11.0 Server running SqueezeCenter 7.3.3, MusicIP, and SqueezeSlave. Current library stats: 27,698 songs, 2,304 albums, 439 artists. http://www.last.fm/user/maggior ------------------------------------------------------------------------ maggior's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=9080 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=64706 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
