In a wireless network there's a relationship between the strength/cleanliness of the signal and the amount of data you can get through it. Think of two people shouting at each other over a distance. The further away they are, the quieter the sound and the harder it is to make out what the other person's saying. You have to keep repeating things and so the speed at which you can actually communicate useful information drops.
Now to playback audio we need a completely constant stream of data at a given rate (which depends on the format used - as discussed FLAC requires a much higher rate than MP3). Because little breaks and errors are present in ALL network types (including wired and wireless) the SB contains a buffer. When you start playing it first fills the buffer, and then plays from that - so any little glitches are ironed out. If you need an analogy for a buffer, think of a store checkout clerk. They handle customers at a fixed rate regardless of how busy the store is. A buffer is like the queue in a busy store. Even if new customers join the queue at uneven intervals (say 5 join at once, then a few minutes later another couple join) the clerk will still serve people at the same constant rate as long as people are waiting - the queue irons out the inconsistency in supply. In this analogy the slimserver is providing the customers (data packets) into the queue (the buffer) for processing by the clerks (player). This explains how the buffer works to cope with short, unexpected drops in the rate of arrival of data. But your case is different. In your case the _average_ rate of arrival in the buffer is less than the rate at which data is being taken out. So the store is quiet and very few customers are joining the queue. In this case there will be times when the queue is empty and the clerk has no-one left to serve - and that's when you hear a dropout. Hope that made some sense :) To summarise - your data rate is constant but lower than the data rate of the file, and so the buffer frequently drains causing the dropouts. -- radish ------------------------------------------------------------------------ radish's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=77 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28201 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
