First let me thank all of you (@matka, @bpa, @mnyb) for helping me try
and track this problem down. I had secretly hoped that @matka's
suggestion of buffering would solve all my problems but last night
proved that this problem still exists (at least with buffer set to the
default of 3 seconds). The one thing last night's buffering problem did
do (it was quite bad last night) was let me test local streaming of
MP3's. Streaming 320kbs MP3's; worked without issue. Based on what's
been said about AAC/WMA versus MP3 though I guess this test isn't
perfect as my MP3's were streamed directly to the Duet as it can handle
it natively versus being transcoded to FLAC and streamed. @bpa, I still
don't have a perfect answer for you on the streaming format of BBC. I
actually have experimented with multiple BBC connections (and I think
they all have the buffering issue). The one I use the most is the BBC
London stream; information is as follows: 

> URL:
> http://opml.radiotime.com/Tune.ashx?id=s25419&formats=aac,ogg,mp3,wma,wmvoice&partnerId=16&serial=3c662caea11537999841dcee91a7799d.
> It reports to be "56kbps CBR Internet Radio." You can see an image
> snapshot of what's in my control panel
> http://www.screencast.com/t/QgYP0uWXM
> 
> To me the most interesting part is the URL which specifies a number of
> possible formats. I wonder if I could switch this to only have mp3?

I also used to use this feed which I know experienced the same problem.
It clearly is WMA format (and higher bandwidth). I switched to the first
option because it sends over a picture of the radio show now playing
rather than being blank. A nice feature but I'd love to have a wider
128kbs stream and a picture (anyway, I digress):

> URL: http://bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r4.asx.
> It reports to be "128kbps CBR, WMA Internet Radio." So in this case it
> is being explicit about the format.

Finally I use the BBC iPlayer too (although I haven't used it enough to
know if the problem exists there too). For live streaming of Radio 4 it
apparently uses 128kbps AAC. 

Anyway, here's what I think we can eliminate from the troubleshooting
(and why); I'd be interested if anyone disagrees:

> It's not the *Wireless signal*. I say that because the signal strength
> is always much higher (~ 80%) for the Duet than for the Boom and yet its
> only the Duet that has this problem
> It's not the *local network* between the LMS and the squeezebox devices
> as local content (aka, MP3's) stream without issue

It MIGHT be:

> A problem with *transcoding to Flac* for radio steams that are in WMA or
> AAC formats. I can test this by switching to my MP3 feed of Last.fm the
> next time I'm running into this problem.This seems unlikely as this
> should have had impact on the Boom as much as the Duet but maybe there's
> a way it would only effect one and not the other.
> A *bandwidth/latency* issue of carrying FLAC audio to the squeezebox
> devices. This seems unlikely for the same reason as above ... why does
> it break on the Duet and not the Boom particularly when the Duet has a
> better network connection (albeit they're both only 802.11b/g not n).
> Additionally, why would this happen only periodically? The times it is
> happening are definitely NOT high network usage times. I should be able
> to test this to some degree by ripping a few FLAC files on my computer
> and trying to stream them over network. 
> Is it possible that the Duet has a more limited *local cache* than the
> Boom? I'm just guessing that maybe some local caching is taking place
> with the Boom which makes it a better netizen.

Finally, I think I may experiment with mangling the URL for the
radiotime URL's ... they have a comma-delimited list formats ... I may
just force it to only have MP3. Not sure it it'll work but all i can do
is try. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email protected]'s Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=37195
View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97350

_______________________________________________
discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss

Reply via email to