Daryle A. Tilroe wrote:
Since I am just now trying the latest nightly of 6.0b1 - r2461 (XPproSP1 running as a service) I can corroborate much of what Richard wrote:
1) FLAC. I have been running 5.4 since it was releases with never a skip
> on FLAC files. Every FLAC file I play on 6.0 B1-1 results in playback
> skips. Any suggestions for improving throughput? I am using a wired
Same here. I had the odd (once a day/week) dropout before but it is unusable now. It happens several times per song and when watching the buffer it is obvious the server is having an incredible problem keeping it full. And yes the server is all quiescent with rescanning done.
Got good news on this although not from the latest nightly. This is a bit of a story but here goes:
Many months ago I upgraded my trusty BEFSR41v2 router to the newer eight port version; BEFSR81v3. Now in order to save a few cents Linksys stopped putting speed and duplex leds on their v3 routers when they updated the rest of the hardware. The reason this becomes pertinent is that in all my IT career I have never trusted auto duplex negotiation since there is no standard. I always fix it on both ends with the settings.
Now some of you may know that duplex mismatch problems can be very odd, intermittent, and difficult to diagnose. With the old 41v2 I fixed my PC to 100full and made certain the lights matched and all was good.
Fast forward to the 81v3 upgrade. I upgraded the router at about the same time I upgraded to the latest slimserver and SB1G. At this point I noticed some FLAC dropouts. Being no fool, I suspected duplex since with the new router I could not confirm what mode the switch was in (the idiots didn't even put speed/duplex status on their web interface status page). However since the dropouts were so rare I could never definitively say what the problem was: new slimserver or router. Anyhow, I actually ended up leaving the PC on the 'bad' setting of 100/full fixed rather than auto. I say 'bad' but with 5.4 it was still good enough that most sessions had no dropouts and it could be weeks in-between.
Fast forward again to 6.0b and the dropouts appear with a vengeance. Since the *possible* duplex problem had an almost insignificant effect before I did not immediately suspect it yesterday; particularly since others had noted severe dropouts. However tonight after downloading the latest nightly which was supposed to have pertinent improvements I was still plagued by dropouts. I then realized that there may have been some change that made 6.0b much more susceptible to duplex issues. Sure enough I go back to Auto and the dropouts basically disappear.
Morals to the story:
-Newer Linksys hardware/firmware is not good at duplex sensing, or more accurately it assumes auto and gives you no indication what it is actually set to if you fix the other end.
-Slimserver 6.0b is much more sensitive to duplex issues and likely packet loss; not sure if this is a good or bad thing.
So I hope this is solved for me. I'll do some more listening and watch for dropouts.
-- Daryle A. Tilroe _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
