Hello, I'm giving some serious thought about how to improve the multi-player synchronization problem. In particular, the issue that players can get out of synchronization with each other.
To make sure that I am starting in the right place, let me briefly assert my understanding of how the current synchronization mechanism works. Players are synchronized at the start of a track by filling each player's buffer above a low-water mark while in 'buffering' mode (not playing), and then putting all synchronized players into play mode as near simultaneously as possible. Synchronization only occurs at the start of a track, including when the track is a remote stream such as an Internet radio station. So the first question is why do players get out of sync? Some possibilities: 1. They start out of sync because the command to start playing is not received sufficiently simultaneously by all players. 2. The decoder clock rates may be different and so will drift slowly relative to one-another. 3. Individual players can suffer buffer under-run because the server fails to keep them filled with sufficient data. This could be because a source data stream suffers under-run and differences between player buffer sizes and/or the differing levels of buffer fullness in effect prior to this source under-run results in different effects for different players. 4. Software-only players, such as SoftSqueeze, may suffer CPU-starvation. Whatever the reason, one player can get behind. *What sort of delay will be perceptible to the human ear?* Is anyone able to quantify the boundaries between imperceptible / perceptible / irritating / untenable? This is probably the crucial question as to whether my ideas may be practical. A quick answer to this would help me decide where to go from here. Alan. -- awy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34133 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
