Re: [slim] What steps does community need to take to ensure continued function of SB players
Redistribution of the firmware is not permitted. That is clear. Redistribution of the LMS packages from Logitech is restricted because they contain the firmware for the ip3k-based players (SB1, SB2/3, Boom, Receiver, Transporter). Distribution of an LMS-like package, without the firmware should not be a problem. The main proprietary code in the Radio and Touch firmware are CODECs: WMA family, AAC family. For Radio there is also the firmware for the microcontroller (knobs, power management, battery management). Also there are WiFi drivers that are a bit better than one open-source ones. awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96208 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Let's make the Squeezebox to the ultimate music discovery device!
So some questions to guide the discussion: 1. HOW DO YOU FIND MUSIC IN YOUR OWN LIBRARY ? I choose albums and tracks explicitly. Mostly I browse by Artist. I hardly every use static or dynamic playlists. Our music collection has expanded considerably recently with stuff added by the children. Mostly this is stuff that neither I nor my wife would ever want to listen to, and it makes the browsing experience much harder because of all the clutter. I mean, these kids don't even rip or download whole albums - just the tracks they like - where does that come from? :-) Anyway, some means of partitioning this stuff off most of the time - not all of it all the time as they do also like good stuff - would be useful. Mostly I use the Controller as the UI, but sometimes a laptop (I work in IT so I tend to avoid computers at other times) and sometimes ipeng. 2. HOW DO YOU USUALLY FIND NEW MUSIC YOU LIKE TO GET BUT CURRENTLY DON'T HAVE IN YOUR LIBRARY ? 1. Listening to the radio. Radio Paradise and BBC Radio 2. RP is an especially good source. 2. By using the Related Artists feature on Rhapsody or Michael's Biography plugin 3. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE ABLE TO FIND MUSIC IN YOUR OWN LIBRARY IN THE FUTURE ? - WHAT KIND OF FUNCTIONALITY IS MISSING TODAY RELATED TO BROWSING ? - WHAT KIND OF FUNCTIONALITY IS MISSING TODAY RELATED TO SEARCHING ? Some way of splitting the library into multiple, possibly overlapping collections, so that I can start by restricting the universe in which I am browsing. I don't search much but mostly I find it works fine. 4. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND NEW MUSIC YOU LIKE TO BUY/GET IN THE FUTURE ? - WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO THROUGH THE SQUEEZEBOX/SBS OR ONE OF IT'S REMOTES ? - WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO ON SOME OTHER HARDWARE ? This is mostly the same as Q2. If I could do it though an SB remote/ipeng and get new stuff downloaded to the library then that would be ideal. I don't do this because most of the stuff that might be available that way, as far as I can tell, is not encoded at high enough quality 5.WHAT KIND OF TAGGING/MANAGEMENT DO YOU DO ON NEW MUSIC YOU ADD TO YOUR LIBRARY TO MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND STUFF LATER ON ? I find tag management very tedious. I just do a bit of cleaning up from time-to-time and add gain tags. 6. DO YOU SYNCHRONIZE THE DATA IN SBS WITH SOME OTHER APPLICATION TO MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND INTERESTING MUSIC ? No -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=80910 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Does SBS still stream in pause?
Yes, exactly. It will stream until the buffer is filled, which is typically 2-3 minutes, then it will stop streaming. If it is a Radio station it will really stop. If it is a remote service, like Rhapsody, it will actually (logically) stay paused and attempt to restart when the user unpauses. You can always command a stop by press-and-hold of Pause. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=80601 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Forward/Rewind buttons not working
No, the feature is specific the the transcoder (faad). -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=50308 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Woeful sync SB3 Boom - just me?
It is not the wrong time of day that is the issue, but the rate of change of that time of day. The synchronization process works by calculating, every second, the -apparent- start time of the track for each player, based on the report from each player of amount of the track that has been played (in milliseconds) and the timestamp of that report. That timestamp is converted to clock time by using the -time epoch- of the player, which is tracked separately. When two players in a sync-group have different apparent start times (by more than 10ms), the server tells one of them to make an adjustment (usually by skipping a very small interval). The algorithms use various smoothing and hysteresis functions to avoid false adjustments. A system (server) clock that runs at a sufficiently different speed to the clocks of the players will mess up this process. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76378 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Woeful sync SB3 Boom - just me?
I don't really know how this stuff works under Windows. The main issue seems to be that your server clock does not seem to run at the correct rate. Under Linux, there is a mechanism whereby an NTP daemon can detect this and use a kernel mechanism to adjust for it. This is separate to the use of NTP to correct the clock time using an external clock source in the first place, or periodically. I have no idea if something similar is available for Windows, nor why your clock would run at the wrong speed in the first place. Perhaps someone else here knows better. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76378 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Woeful sync SB3 Boom - just me?
moley6knipe;527867 Wrote: On the attached, I've replaced the MAC addresses for my Boom and SB3 with the words --SB3 and -BOOM. It looks like your server cannot keep time. This is a requirement for successful sync. The clue is the following: Code: [10-03-24 19:52:18.0127] Slim::Player::Player::trackJiffiesEpoch (951) -BOOM adjust jiffies epoch +0.005s [10-03-24 19:52:18.2352] Slim::Player::Player::trackJiffiesEpoch (951) --SB3 adjust jiffies epoch +0.005s occurring every few seconds. You need your server clock to run at proper clock time +/- 2ms/minute. I'm not sure how best to achieve that with Windows XP. You probably need some sort of NTP service running. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76378 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Is synchronising more difficult than hit the jack pot in Vegas ?
Almost right. It is (surprisingly) not about latency but about when the stream starts. Services like Pandora, Rhapsody, Napster, etc. all send individual streams for each track. When you start playing it starts exactly at the start of a track. This is the same whether or not you get one stream from the source and proxy it via a local Squeezebox Server, or whether each player gets its own stream directly from the source as is the case when using mysqueezebox.com. With a radio station however, each stream obtained from the remote source -starts- when the individual player connects. This will inevitably be different for each player. Once connected and playing, the server, whether a local Squeezebox Server or mysqueezebox.com, will keep each player in sync relative to the -start- of the stream. For a radio station where each player has its own connection (mysqueezebox.com), the reference point will be different for each player and so they will be kept out-of-sync exactly by the amount of the difference between the reference points. A hack that sometimes works with mysqueezebox.com is to keep restarting playback (using the REW button) until it starts up acceptable in sync. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76491 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Is this really too complicated a set up?!
I just fixed bug 14893 which stopped Squeezeplay on Windows and OSX from playing synced. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76338 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB3 error: Can't open file for?
You have probably being running into 'bug 15821' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15821) which has recently been fixed in the 7.5 source code. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76328 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronized playback on PC - will it ever happen?
'Bug 14893' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14893) was fixed earlier today. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76450 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronized playback on PC - will it ever happen?
Yes, it is already out. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=76450 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Squeezebox out of sync
Peoke;504475 Wrote: I have 4 Squeezeboxes, but one of them doesn't sync with the others. It's always a little bit behind, which is very annoying listening to. The other 3, always sync perfectly! Any chance you are using the digital output on the one that is out of sync? Or is there anything else different or unusual about the audio path between that squeezebox and the speakers? If there is some such -something- then you may be able to adjust the delay using the *Settings / Player / player / Synchronize / Player Audio Delay* setting. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=73751 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Sync SB1+SB3+Radio
Yes, but this scenario should still work. If you collect a log at levels player.source=info, player.sync=debug and open a bug with this specific title, assign it to ayoung 'at' slimdevices.com, and attach the logfile, I'll take a look at it. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=73399 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] I'm surprised! But I'm happy!!
didjean;464377 Wrote: Yesterday, I've tried to play a song via my controller as a player and sync it with my receiver. It didn't really work (were many hic-ups). I will do another test later today. Syncing the controller is -never- going to work. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=68722 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] how to synchronize on/off?
nausser;465139 Wrote: It may be that my players are not compatible with this sync feature, however, when I select synchronize, my players(chumbys) show up but are greyed out. Could this be an issue with the installation of the server? Anyone else run into this. I realize this is slightly off topic as you were talking of syncing power control. Thought it may be a good place to start. Thanks for any help anyone can provide. I don't know what a chumby is but if it connects using stream.mp3 then it will not be possible to sync. Sync only really works for Logitech/Slimdevices hardware players, and maybe some software (desktop) players that speak SlimProto. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=68129 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Rebuffering is ruining the Squeezebox experience
mprocte1;454024 Wrote: Seems that I have a wireless bandwidth issue for sure, which I'm hoping the new router will resolve ... hopefully arriving today/tomorrow. Have you tried using different wireless channels? You could also use a tool like netstumbler to see what other networks you have in your area and what channels they are using. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65719 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Rebuffering is ruining the Squeezebox experience
Pascal Hibon;454012 Wrote: I would like to invite everyone who experiences rebuffering to visit the threads on the bug report found here: https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=13092 We are in need of logs to determine the root cause of the issue. The more input we get, the faster we will see a resolution. That's ok, but please do not just dump anything to do with rebuffering into that bug. Specifically, if you have or suspect a wireless connectivity issue then do not use that bug. That bug is for investigating why streaming seems to have problems under some circumstance in 7.3 that were not present in 7.2. And remember that 7.2 was not -capable- of getting into a rebuffering state with FLAC or anything transcoded to FLAC. In that case you just got gappy output. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65719 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Rebuffering is ruining the Squeezebox experience
Here is a copy of a comment I posted in bug 13092: Bug 9517 meant that, prior to 7.3 (SB fw 117, TR fw 67, SBR fw 52, SBB fw 37), FLAC playback was almost incapable of generating the necessary underrun events to provoke rebuffering. There may have been gappy playback but no rebuffering would have occurred. It is possible that there is some other f/w bug that means that underrun events are now being generated unnecessarily, in turn provoking rebuffering when it is not needed. I was responsible for the new-streaming work in SC 7.3. Although a lot of code changed, I cannot think of anything that would impede the streaming of local FLAC tracks. I have been over the code several times. It is clear that some people are seeing issues that were not there before. Despite significant investigations, we are no closer to understanding why. If you are in a position to provide useful diagnostic information (for local FLAC tracks only) then please do so in https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=13092 -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65719 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Sync a split second off between SB2 and Boom
DrewSB, You do not say what version of SC you are running or what hardware and OS. Does you server running SC go to sleep when not being used? If so http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10634, fixed in 7.3.2 may be your problem. Otherwise, gathering a logfile (go to Settings / Advances / Logging) at level server.sync=debug would help to diagnose your problem. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=63048 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Problem with low sample rate MP3s
SC will only downsample, not upsample. Also, 22.05k sample rate should be fine - I used 22k as my target rate all the time when testing the downsampling mechanism. I suggest that you open a bug and attach one of the failing files. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=63108 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Software Player Synchronisation Rallying call!
Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Thiose parameters can only help in a minority of problem cases. The main issue is that the way that SqueezeCenter maintains sync between two different players replies on reports from the players. Every second, each player reports how many milliseconds of the track (or stream) have been played and the precise time (to the millisecond) at which this report is valid. Software players get this information by asking the operating-system sound driver. Some combinations of operating-system/sound-subsystem/driver/sound-card give an accurate result and all is well. For those that give an inaccurate result, there are three classes: - The report is wrong by a constant amount. This can be compensated for using the tuning variables. In practice, it is not that common. - The accuracy of sequential reports varies in a range of up to 20ms and for these cases the averaging algorithm in SC is usually sufficient. - The accuracy of sequential reports varies by more than a range of 30ms - I have seen plenty of logs illustrating ranges up to 200ms - and in this case it is not possible (at least, I have not been able) to produce a workable average that leads to usable synchroniztion. Note: the associated issue of the accuracy of the player/PC clock is a solved issue (for the vast majority of cases). -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=60075 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
What version of SC are you running? Does you server running SC go to sleep and do these sync problems occur after it has woken up? In which case you are probably suffering from 'bug 10634' (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10634), which should have been fixed in SC 7.3.2. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
Hmm, the log show that SC's idea of the players' time epoch is way out compared with that of the server (probably about 23s at the time you took the log snapshot). Every few seconds SC adjust its idea of the players' epochs by 5ms, so it is going to take around 6 hours to get back in sync. Given that you server does not sleep, is there anything else which could cause its time to jump, and possibly jump back again? -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
strmtrupr2;415372 Wrote: Any quick way to shock it into action? Not short of restarting SC or each of the players. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
Your best bet is probably to wind Synchronization Start Delay up as far as you can bear: maybe 1-2 seconds. As I said, syncing is always a little hit and miss with SB1s because of the older protocol limitations. Trackstat may have been it, although I thought that Erland had updated his plugins not to do stuff at track start. I don't know when Find Cover Art comes into play, and I have no idea what Spicefly SugarCube does. Good luck. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
What is the list of third-party plugins you are running? Please try disabling them all and, if that fixes thing, enabling them one by one. There are/have been a number of third-party plugins that listen for track-start events and then do -clever- stuff. If this takes more than about 50ms then it risks interfering with the synchronized start logic. This will especially hit SB1s (and SliMP3s) - see my previous explanation. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
strmtrupr2;413370 Wrote: Hi, Sounds great, I'll leave it running. Here is a sample: Code: [09-04-06 15:04:21.0041] Slim::Player::Player::trackJiffiesEpoch (927) 00:04:20:07:f1:7d adjust jiffies epoch -0.001s [09-04-06 15:06:51.0177] Slim::Player::Player::trackJiffiesEpoch (927) ... Are you sure that your have two players synced and playing. That log does not indicate that. You do have player.sync=debug, don't you? -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
sander;413392 Wrote: In this section, right after I unpause and skip the next song my receiver (00:04:20:16:70:70) starts playing and the Squeezebox1 (00:04:20:05:81:a2) lags and catches up about 4 seconds into the song. I'm pretty sure I captured it, but I can send more examples in email as its fairly easy to reproduce if I keep skipping to the next song. With newer players (SB2 and up), SC can send the start request to the player ahead of time. That is, it tells the player to start at X, where X is some time in the future (default 100ms). For an SB1 it does not have this option, and SC sets a high-priority timer to send the start command at the relevant time, allowing for normal network latency. This mechanism is inevitably a bit hit-and-miss because SC is single-threaded and other activities can delay the firing of a timer. From the log, I see two things: - The start command (strm-u) to the SBR only gets acknowledged after 448ms. - The start command to the SB1 gets sent after the SB2 has already started. Please check that you have undone all the changes on the Settings / Player / player / Synchronization page for each player. It could also be that SC is just busy at the start of a track. Do you have any plugins installed? Were you using random-play? I guess that this could be a problem with network saturation at the beginning of tracks. You could try increasing the 'Synchronization Start Delay' parameter (not sure of the exact name) under Settings / Network (or is that Settings / Advanced / Network?). -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
strmtrupr2;413473 Wrote: I was a little worried you may get confused by the other posting in between mine. Thanks for staying on top of it. Well, a separate thread would have made things easier ... I promise to post a snippet once the players get out of sync again; it may be a couple days before that happens. Scott Ok. The current trace looks fine. Post a longer snippet when you do. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
No obvious, specific advice. Does restarting the station (press ) not fix the problem? A log of player.sync=debug, when the problem occurs, could be helpful. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
sander;412946 Wrote: As the proud new owner of an original Squeezebox, I'm having a problem when it syncs with the newer units in my house. Specifically new songs pause twice at consistent intervals when they start on all units and it takes a couple of seconds until the SB1 syncs up correctly. With just a single SB1 in the mix, sync should work fine (with 7.3.2). Can you capture a log at level player.source=info, player.sync=debug, and networking.protocol.slimproto=info? Upload it here, along with a description of what happened and at what time. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
It does not look like you set the log level I requested. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
Use the Web interface (localhost:9000) and open the Settings page. Go to Advanced / Logging and select the level from the appropriate drop-down menu -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SB1 syncing tips?
If you have enough disk space then just leave the log running. It will compress well (with ZIP or whatever) when you are ready to upload it. Or, for this case, you could turn it off now and turn it back on when it happens. That may mean that we don't see the trigger to the problem. In any case, a snippet of the current log would be good to see now. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=62152 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Native AAC Support
ianr;410151 Wrote: Now that AACPlus is the defacto for iTunes purchases, has there been any thought given to implementing either native support or at the very least FF/RW functionality for these files? SC 7.3.3 will come with AAC/AAC+ support out of the box, using server-side transcoding using faad2. There will not be native codec support in the players: there is no more space in the firmware. Unfortunately, there will not be FF/RW support in this release. Note that this issue is independent of native codec support as FF/RW functionality is always implemented in SC, not the player. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=19155 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Forward/Rewind buttons not working
Yes, no space in the firmware is the reason for no native codec. But that has nothing to do with FF/RW as this is always done on the server. Also, it is not correct to say that transcoded formats cannot support FF/RW (although that used to be the case before SC 7.3). But to support FF/RW, either SC's file-format handler for the specific format in use, or the transcoder program being used, needs to understand how to do seeking in the format. That is not currently the case for AAC/AAC+. Patches welcome (to faad2). To the OP: there should at least be a better error message (any error message) on the controller in these circumstances. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=50308 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Software Player Synchronisation Rallying call!
andyg;401665 Wrote: What may be useful is for someone to create a wiki page listing known-good OS/soundcard combinations that are able to sync, and to post your sync preference values. See http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SqueezePlay#Synchronization_With_Hardware_Players -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=60075 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronisation problems squeezebox and squeezebox2
Marth;392331 Wrote: I get the same behavior, except I don't run squeezecenter from VM-ware but on a regular Windows XP PC with enough performance (3.7.2). I get exactly the same sync problems as described in this thread, but also spontanious song changes while only using one of the clients (got Squeezebox 3, reciever and controller). If I remove power from one of them everything is ok, but as soon as I connect a second one, none of them works properly despite I only try to control one. Any Ideas? I attached the log. Your log shows repeated reconnects from both players. Do you have some sort of problem with your network? To track down the sync problem you also need to enable player.sync=debug and network.protocol.slimproto=info in the logging. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58797 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronisation problems squeezebox and squeezebox2
Unlikely. The clocks in the S2s are generally very stable. More likely that the server clock is drifting; perhaps there is a problem with it running in a VM. The adjustment mechanism, by which SC tracks relative drift between the SC server clock and the player clock, is deliberately slow, so as to avoid big jumps due to short-term network congestion and similar effects. Actually it is slow only in one direction: the biggest positive adjustment you will see is +5ms, while it will jump as much as necessary in the other direction, on the basis that network latency cannot be negative :-). So, if you reset the SC server clock, it is probably necessary to force the player to reconnect, either by rebooting it, going through the network connection dialogue again, or disconnecting the network link long enough for the connection to fail. Once you got it in sync, did it stay in sync for an extended period -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58797 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronisation problems squeezebox and squeezebox2
Yes, logs please. player.source=info, player.sync=debug, network.protocol.slimproto=debug. I'm afraid that lot will be rather verbose. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58797 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronisation problems squeezebox and squeezebox2
They don't really get time from anywhere. They have a free running 1kHZ clock (jiffies) that starts at 0 on boot. SC tracks the jiffies epoch relative it its time. It assumes that the SC host (server) time is stable. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58797 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronization for dummies
Probably the best way to think about thisat the moment (don't flame me about how it should work - I'm just trying to explain a way of thinking about how it does work) is as follows. - There exist sync-groups. - A playlist belongs to a sync-group. - Every player belongs to exactly one sync-group. - Sync-groups are not named and can be manipulated only via (the UI of) a player which is a member of the group. - A player can join or leave a sync-group. If it joins, and was previously the only player in its old sync-group then that old sync-group ceases to exist. If it leaves, then it forms a new sync-group containing only itself; it normally takes a copy of the playlist with it. - Thus, one must manipulate (control) the player that is not currently in a particular sync-group in order to get it to join (or leave) that sync-group. On cannot use a UI that is controlling a sync-group (via one of its existing member players), to -grab- another player and add it to the current sync-group. - Players in a sync group which are *off* are still part of the sync-group. When turned *on* they will pick up playing whatever the other players in the sync group were playing (if anything), joining in the middle of the current track if possible. This is not exactly how this all actually work but I hope it provides a useful mental model. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=59032 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronisation problems squeezebox and squeezebox2
Neil, what version of SC were you running before 7.2? Thanks for the log. It is interesting. I appears to show a discrepancy between you server's clock and SC's idea of the player's clock. The series of adjust jiffies epoch messages shows an unusual pattern. There is not a long enough period covered in the log to be sure, but is appears to show that your server's clock is drifting at quite a rate, occasionally being reset. What operating system and hardware are you using? If you could get another log, also with network.protocol.slimproto=debug added to the mix, that might help to narrow it down a bit. Also, if you could stand leaving it to play a bit longer out of sync, perhaps across a couple of track changes, without manually changing things then that would enable me to see some more context. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58797 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synchronisation problems squeezebox and squeezebox2
Please check the settings using the WebUI under Settings / Player / player / Synchronization for each player. Please capture a log (Sessings / Advance / Logging), with player.source=info and player.sync=debug. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58797 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Can't disable Sync from SB3 remote
Hmm, I cannot reproduce this. What exactly do you mean by unable to unsync the SB3 using the IR remote? I know, that sounds like a stupid question. I can, using the IR remote, go to Setting / Synchronize. The two lines on the display say: Code: Sync with: PlayerX where -PlayerX- is a player not currently synced. then I scroll down to the next entry and I get: Code: Unync with: PlayerY where -PlayerY- is a a player that is currently synced with this player. If I go right at this point then the player is unsynced and the display changes to -Sync with: ...- -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58918 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Can't disable Sync from SB3 remote
Not in my previous test (it was a Boom and another player) on 7.4 beta. I just repeated the test with an SB3 and and SBR on 7.3.2, and it worked fine for me. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58918 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] FFW in Squeezebox - Version: 7.3.2 - 24695
Where did you see that this was supposed to be supported in SC 7.3? Seeking is not supported for WMA files. See bug 9713 (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=9713). -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=58733 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
-Slim::Player::TranscodingHelper::checkBin (260) couldn't find binary for: lame- is only a problem if you actually need lame for something. I cannot see why you would need it in your setup, as I understand it, so this message is really just a warning that there are transcoding options configured for which the binary is not available. -Slim::Player::Protocols::File::sysread (214) Trying to read past the end of file- should happen once at the end of each track. You should already have been getting this before you installed lame. But it looks like you are getting several in quick succession. Perhaps several tracks are failing one after another. This can sometimes cause random play to stop because all the not-yet-played tracks in the playlist get used up before the random-play plugin adds some more. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] M4A Files on ReadyNAS Problems
It is possible that you are hitting bug 10681. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47847 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
Bug 10692 is part of this problem -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
First point: there is at least one bug here. I have identified one bug and this will, as best as I can tell, only be triggered when some error in the file being played caused the player to quit playing that track prematurely and in a way that confuses SqueezeCentre. I have not been able to work out how this bug might get triggered when there is no error in the track, therefore there is probably a second bug for which we have not yet uncovered the cause. Second point: it is possible for FLAC decoders to just keep going when they come across a bad frame. They drop the bad frame and then look for the start of the next frame (which it is possible to identify with a high degree of certainty). I'm pretty sure that this is what the decoder in SqueezePlay does, but not the one hardware players (Squeezebox, Boom, Transporter). Third point: (the bug mentioned above) is a consequence of the fact that the player firmware FLAC decoder uses the wrong protocol mechanism to inform SC of the error, and there are good reasons why this is difficult to fix. So, we are still hunting for the cause of the second bug. The log that Jackswan provided only gave us evidence of the first. Additional logs could be helpful. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
I think that this may be bug 7916 (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7916). Would you be prepared to attach that AC/DC track to the bug? I'm beginning to wonder if indeed there is a problem with the FLAC decoder in the player; a sample problematic track would help. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
I think that should be ok. I just found another bug with a 50MB attachment. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
This is helpful, thanks. We see that SC did not think that it had finished streaming the track when the player reported that it was ready to stream the next one. This is odd. The track that was playing was ///D:/shares/Music/Oasis-(What%27s%20the%20Story)%20Morning%20Glory%BF/4042%20[Untitled%20Track].flac Did this track play to the end successfully (did you notice)? Are you able to play this track successfully by hand (as a single track)? How long is this track? You can use More Info from the player Now Playing screen or click on the track name in the WebUI to see this information. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
I need some earlier data from the log, showing the start of the song. What kind of tracks are you streaming? Is transcoding being used? -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Weird pauses at end of track in random
Jackswan;380790 Wrote: I've reinstalled Windows Home Server again added an extra 512mb to it and still having problems. This is Squeezecenter version 7.2.1 and using Squeezeplay to see if that replicated the same fault as the Squeezebox, it did. The random song mix stopped at track 8 I'm sorry, but it really is too late to investigate this issue for SC 7.2.1. Whilst I cannot sate categorically that it is not the same issue with SC 7.3, it is highly unlikely as SC7.3 has had a complete rewrite of the streaming control sub-system. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57456 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Fast Forward or Rewind in ALAC files?
It is not a bug, it is an enhancement request. No work is currently scheduled for this enhancement request. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57076 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] What is the best codec for FFWD/RWD?
Both FLAC and MP3 work well. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57459 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Syncing problems with 7.3
I'm not sure why Softsqueeze syncing would have changed significantly from 7.2 to 7.3 but I guess the lack of inter-track resync could be relevant. If SS is a constant interval off (out of sync) you could try adjusting it with the setting under Settings / Player / player /Synchronize. The changes should take effect pretty-much immediately. But if you enable player.sync==debug logging and constantly see a message such as 'bailing bacause no play-point' or similar then the setting above will not help. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=56942 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Sync problem Squeezebox classic SliMP3
See bug 10400 (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=10400) -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=56991 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] artwork in ogg-vorbis file breaks fast forward (ffw) and reverse (rev)?
I think it is this bug: http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7857 -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=54902 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] 7.2.1 Player Synchronization...
The paradigm from the player-UI (remote) is that a player joins a sync-group, not that another player is joined to -this- sync-group. This is the opposite to the SBC; sort of the difference between push vs. pull. To add a player to an existing sync-group, use the remote on the player that is not yet in the sync-group and instruct it to join. Currently the SBC, player-UI and Web-UI interfaces are inconsistent. In SC 7.3 they will all adopt the player-UI-style interface. Although there are some circumstances in which this is less powerful than the current SBC interface, it seems to be what users are most comfortable with. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=54576 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Squeezebox 1 incorrect Now Playing display
webdeck;336431 Wrote: In looking at the bug, I wonder if it got worse because of TCP buffer config changes. I know I optimized TCP buffer settings at one point - the larger buffers on my server probably allowed it to stream the entire song quickly. That is almost certainly it. With the old code the track change happens as soon as SC has finished writing the stream to the kernel network interface. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51167 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] 7.2 Restarting Mp3s
Getting a log might be useful: Settings / Advanced / Logging / player.source=info woudl be the right level to start with. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51914 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Squeezebox 1 incorrect Now Playing display
This is bug 3751 (http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3751) I've looked at the code and I can see why it does this. In the case of an SB1 (and only an SB1), and when not synced, SC will stream one track after another to the player without closing the streaming connection. At the time it starts streaming the next track, it looses track of what the previous track was (again, only for SB1s), although it knows that the next track has not yet started and hence does not start advancing the time-played counter. I have checked the code back to Slimserver 6.3.1 and it is the same so, although I have not tried running a pre SC 7 release to check, I cannot see how this would have worked before 6.5, as was claimed. I do not know why the code works the way it does in this regard. I do know that all this area of code has been rewritten for SC 7.3 and that this problem does not occur with the new code. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51167 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] SqueezeCenter gapless syncing seems much worse than SlimServer
I have no idea where a 5s gap could come from, unless some preferences have been explicitly set to achieve that. In terms of what you can fiddle with in 7.2, the two most likely candidates are the syncBufferThreshold (per player) and syncStartDelay (server wide, under Networking in the WebUI, default 100ms). This latter is new and, in the case that perfect synchronized track start is not required, could be reduced to 1 (not 0, as 0 = default = 100ms). This would add to the chance of resync jump just after track start in which case, if you were happy with the old behaviour where sync can drift during a track, you could turn off maintainSync (per player). There is no UI to change syncBufferThreshold, but the default is only 4kB and it has not changed since SC6. If you want to change it, then you need to use the CLI. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46722 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Squeezebox 1 incorrect Now Playing display
webdeck;330222 Wrote: I just finished trying that experiment. I created a folder with 3 128 kbps CBR MP3s in it, turned off iTunes support, and pointed SC at the directory. Same result - I tried playing the folder, and about 30 seconds into the first song, the display changed to the second song. -Mike Hmm, my guess is that the display info is changing when it finishes streaming the first song and starts streaming the next. But after 30 seconds seems too soon as the SB1 only has about 14s of buffer at 128kbps, although maybe one needs to add the SC host OS network buffers and network TCP window to that. I must say that I have not seen this myself when testing with an SB1 and it seems strange that others cannot reproduce it. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=51167 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Replay Gain = SB3 SB1 in sync
It is a bit hit-and-miss at the moment. The replay-gain policy applied to all capable players in a sync-group is that from the sync-group's master player. It depends upon which player joins another player's sync-group as to which is the master. Using the player-UI (the user interface on SB1/2/3, Transporter or SliMP3 players), the joining player will always be a slave, and the original player is the master, so if you build your sync-group in the necessary order (making the SB1 sync with the SB3) they you should get the desired effect. This will be fixed in SqueezeCentre 7.2 -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=49550 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Should crossfading work with synchronised players?
I admit that I have not tested it, but I expect that crossfade will come for free with the gapless-sync that is slated for 7.2. The gapless sync is working well by the way. [And we do look at votes - it is one of the top criteria used when considering bugs for resolution in upcoming releases. But, of course, other things get considered too.] -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=20369 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] How do things go out of sync?
As Sean says, assuming units remain within specified tolerances, maximum theoretical drift between a pair of SB3s is 300ms/hr == 6 ms/min. For two sets of speakers in different rooms, 50ms may be a good estimate of the maximum acceptable error. Our common listening case is somewhere approximately half way between two sets of speakers, in which case I think that 30ms tends to be about the maximum acceptable error, which could occur within 5 minutes and will very likely occur within half an hour, listening to internet radio or the like. But 6ms/min is for SB3s. SC will also sync with SB1s (not so well) and SliMP3s, and also with software players such as SoftSqueeze and Squeezeslave. I suspect (but don't actually know) that the older hardware may not have such well-specified crystals. And, in any case, software players are generally dependent on the crystal of the computer's sound card: I have observed drift rates of worse than 1ms/s (== 60ms/min) with such cards. Finally, as you noted in you original post, SC attempts to get all players to start at the same time. Sometimes, problems with network latency (more likely with wireless networks) or within the computer running SC, may mean that they do not all get the start command in time, in which case post-start adjustment is necessary (there are other techniques which can be used here and there are good reasons why the current technique is used). I hope this helps. Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=47344 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Accelerated audio increment/decrement rate functionality
A poll associated with this post was created, to vote and see the results, please visit http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46653 Question: What should the -opposite- button do in fast-forward etc.? - REW when in 8x-forward jumps to 2x-rewind (current behaviour) - REW when in 8x-forward jumps to 4x-forward The current fast-forward/fast-rewind functionality and the new scanner functionality planned for SqueezeCenter 7.1 switch from forward to rewind when the corresponding key is pressed. Whilst in the SC 7.1 scanner, a single press of FWD/REW will trigger accelerated playback with audio feedback (at normal pitch). The first press of FWD will enter 2x mode, repeated presses will double the rate up to 128x. Pressing REW will immediately switch to 2x backwards. Further presses will increase rewind speed as per fast-forward. There have been some calls to change this so that pressing REW while in fast-forward should decrement the current fast-forward rate, rather than jumping immediately to 2x rewind. For example, the proposal is that, when playing at 8x fast-forward, a press of REW should change to 4x fast-forward. Similarly for FWD while in fast-rewind mode. Here is a poll to gather opinion on this: -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46653 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Accelerated audio increment/decrement rate functionality
A poll associated with this post was created, to vote and see the results, please visit http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46653 Question: What should the -opposite- button do in fast-forward etc.? - REW when in 8x-forward jumps to 2x-rewind (current behaviour) - REW when in 8x-forward jumps to 4x-forward No. Some things should not be configurable. It just gets out of hand. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46653 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Accelerated audio increment/decrement rate functionality
A poll associated with this post was created, to vote and see the results, please visit http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46653 Question: What should the -opposite- button do in fast-forward etc.? - REW when in 8x-forward jumps to 2x-rewind (current behaviour) - REW when in 8x-forward jumps to 4x-forward consciouspnm;294325 Wrote: This is the way to do it, the buttons are more 'Speed Up' and 'Slow Down' in a particular direction than FF/REW. But it's not actually a poll option. It is, the second option. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=46653 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Fast-forward/rewind redesign
Here is a revised proposal based upon some of the feedback received and the experience of playing around with the implementation. PROPOSAL: - Press-and-hold (FWD) or (REW) to enter Scanner. The scanner is a modified version of kdf's Song Scanner plugin. It displays an input bar (as used for volume, etc.) on line 2 of the display and counters indicating current position and length of the current track. Once in scanner: - The track position counter and input bar track the current position in the track, so long as the UP or DOWN keys have not been used. The track continues to play. - Press UP/DOWN to go forward and back in the track position. The track position counter and input bar track the selected position. The unit of increment is a minimum of 1s, maximum of 5s. Tracks with 100s = length = 500s are divided into 100 steps. Progressive acceleration of the scrolling, when the UP or DOWN key is held, makes it practical to seek to a position in tracks of varying lengths, including (at least) up to an hour. - After using UP/DOWN, no further change for between 1-2s will automatically jump to the selected position and remain in the scanner. - Press FWD to enter 2X fast-forward mode. Repeated presses will successively double the scanning speed. Similarly with REW for rewind modes. The fast-forward/rewind mode and rate is indicated next to the position counters. UP/DOWN scrolling can still be used. - Press PLAY to resume normal PLAY and exit the scanner. Any fast-forward/rewind mode is stopped and play continues from the current position. Any pending position change from use of the UP/DOWN keys is invoked. - Press LEFT to exit scanner without applying any pending change. Any fast-forward/rewind mode remains operational. - The scanner will exit when the screen-saver kicks in or any other display mode is invoked. Currently fast-forward/rewind modes continue across track boundaries in the current playlist. Is this really useful? It seems to me that it would be better if play would stop when either end of the track is reached. This revised proposal keeps the audio feedback. There has been some support for this although I remain to be convinced that it is really useful. I will look for feedback once the new scanner version (described above) is available. I would be pleased to get feedback on these revised proposals and additional or alternative suggestions. Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41235 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Duet - Possible to sync with computers running softsqueeze??
Hmm, Softsqueeze should show up. How well it will sync depends upon your operating system, sound card and drivers in a rather unpredictable way - varying from perfect to unusable. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45288 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Duet - Stuttering/Static in Sync mode
If you could run with logging for player.sync set to Info and file a bug with problem and the captured logfile then that would be useful. If you can manage to notice *exactly* when you hear the problem and include that in the bug report it would help too. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45279 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Wrong identification of SqueezeBox in SC7?
If you are referring to the name that the player gets, then the default name is simply Squeezebox with the next free number tacked on. So, if you have two SB3s and have given neither of them a name yourself, then they will be called Squeezebox and Squeezebox 2. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45205 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Fast-forward/rewind redesign
max.spicer;283375 Wrote: It sounds to me as if you are needlessly mixing the scanner mode and accelerated playback modes. I think it would be much better if they were entirely separate. Thanks Max. The original proposal was simply to get rid of the accelerated playback modes. There has been quit a lot of support for that and some dissent. The revised proposal keeps the accelerated playback. Yes, this does mix the two modes but I suggest that this is not needless. On the contrary both the scanner and accelerated playback modes are tools to solve the same problem - get from -here- to -there- within a playing track. This new design puts them both in the same UI and makes it easy to use either or both. During playback, single presses of ffwd/rwd should trigger accelerated playback. Holding ffwd/rew when there is a current track (but not necessarily playing) should enter the scanner mode. There is no FFWD button, only a FWD button. During playback, this has the function to skip to the next track. I do not propose to change this. Press FWD to enter 2X fast-forward mode. Repeated presses will successively double the scanning speed. Similarly with REW for rewind modes. The fast-forward/rewind mode and rate is indicated next to the position counters. UP/DOWN scrolling can still be used. I don't think this makes sense when in scanner mode, but fully agree for playback mode. What happens when you reach maximum speed? Does it cycle back to slow speed? Does the cycle first go to 1x? What does the pause button do? Entering scanner mode starts at 1X (that is, normal play). At maximum rate (256X/-256X) further presses have no effect. This is the same as the current accelerated playback functionality. I'm not sure what the PAUSE button does. I think that it should do Pause/Unpause, with Unpause always being at normal speed. I agree about the UP/DOWN vs. LEFT/RIGHT thing. It would probably be possible to change but I don't think that it is a sufficiently big deal. Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41235 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Duet - Stuttering/Static in Sync mode
Settings / Advanced / Logging in the Web UI -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=45279 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Gapless When Synced ?
radish;277473 Wrote: The technical issue used to be that the track breaks were used to resync players which had drifted during playback, hence they all had to stop and resync. However the new model resyncs during playback, so I'm not sure why the gap is still there to be honest. The problem is that the assumption of track breaks when synced is embedded in a 100 different places (I exaggerate only a little) throughout the code. I hope to add gapless sync as part of a rearchitecture of the complete play-control part of the server but this is a major piece of work and some way off. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44472 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Synching problems
The logs both seem to show almost perfect performance with regard to sync maintenance. In what way do you find the performance poor? I do notice that the epoch adjustments for 00:04:20:05:a3:8a seem to be more-regular/larger than I would expect for a wired SB2/3, suggesting that the packet latency is somewhat irregular whcih it should not be for the setup you describe. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=44727 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Fast-forward/rewind redesign
dickmc;278956 Wrote: 1. Display the elapsed time of a song (minutes:seconds) on the player window in Slimserver. (I've always missed this.) It does (in SC 7). 2. When the or is clicked display the resulting speed and direction such as: 2X 8X and show the resulting elapsed time as the scan progresses. 3. When not scanning blank out the 2x type indicator. Do you mean on the WebUI or the player display? On the player display that it pretty much what you get already. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41235 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Fast-forward/rewind redesign
No, no decisions yet. I am thinking hard about the practicality or retaining the audio feedback, where possible. The current mechanism really is horrible but I can see that it has some use and there is clearly some support for it. The 'press centre button to enter scan/select mode' sound interesting. Any further comments on this? Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41235 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Fast-forward/rewind redesign
(This is a repost of a message from the Developer forum as this topic probably deserves a wider audience.) I am looking at changing, I hope improving, the design and implementation of the fast-forward (FFW) and rewind (REW) functionality in SqueezeCentre. There is considerable dissatisfaction with the current implementation, although I suspect that it probably meets the needs of some people just fine. Let me start by recapping on the current functionality, as I understand it: - FFW mode can be entered by press-and-hold of the button on the remote. It will remain in FFW mode once the button is released. SC will start playing at 2X normal speed, where it will play 1s of audio, skip 1s, play 1s, A further press-and-hold of the button will increase this to 4X speed where only 1s out of every 4s is played. One can repeat this to 8X, 16X, ..., although at some point the server will probably run out of power to supply data at this rate. - REW mode can be entered by press-and-hold of the button on the remote and is otherwise the same as FFW mode. - If the now-playing screen was not displaying then it is bought up, switching to progress-bar mode if necessary. - The FFW/REW mode is exited by pressing the Pause or Play buttons. - If FFW/REW runs past the end or beginning of the track, then it continues with the next/previous track in the playlist. This interface is much like that of VCR/DVD players and less like that of CD and portable-music players. Some find this unintuitive and have remapped the buttons so that FFW/REW is exited immediately upon releasing the relevant button, presumably only ever getting to 2X speed. There is considerable doubt about whether being able to hear the 1s chunks of audio in these modes is actually of any use. The implementation only works for sources through which one can seek. In practice, this is limited to local files which are not transcoded and which are in WAV, MP3 or FLAC format. The implementation (called trick-mode internally) is pretty inefficient and somewhat hit-and-miss. Recent improvements have made it somewhat more reliable and so that it mostly works with synchronized players but did not address the core problems with the design. The implementation also has the problem that it affects many different parts of the SC software. It would be great to get rid of it. PROPOSAL: - Change the user-interface. - Remove the audio feedback. -User interface- - Press-and-hold to enter FFW and release it to resume play. Similarly for REW. - Change the display to something like the input bar (currently used for volume and tone control) and advance a cursor along the bar proportional to the position in the track. On the right-hand end of the bar should be the total-length of the track and at the left-hand end should be the time of the current cursor position. - I anticipate some sort of acceleration if the button is held down. Perhaps start at about 3X and jump to 10X after 5s. - Resume playing from the position indicated by the cursor when the button is released. - Stop at either end of the track, and start playing at normal speed either from the beginning of the next track (FFW) or the current track (REW) when the button is released. Much of this is based upon a plugin by -kdf- of these forums. I would be pleased to get feedback on these proposals and additional or alternative suggestions. Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41235 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Problems syncing squeezeslave
My experience is that sound card clocks can easily drift by as much as 1ms/s. This means you will hear the offset in less than 30s, especially if the two clocks are drifting in opposite directions or have worse drift. The sync-maintenance code coming in SlimServer 7 should help you out here, but you will also have to wait for me to make the protocol changes to squeezeslave for it to work well. I would probably want to use hand-picked crystals if I was intending to use softsqueeze regularly for synced listening as I expect that 10ms adjustments every 10s could get pretty annoying - I do not notice the occasional adjustment but I suspect regular ones at that sort of rate would be noticeable. Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=38325 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] synchronized SB3s and gaps
zoomin;219962 Wrote: One change in our networking is that I am now using the Network Bridge option. Could that be the cause? Quite possibly, or other WLAN-related issues. Each player has a 3MB buffer which it tries to fill as fast as it can. But (by default) with only 128 bytes in the buffer the server will think that it is ready to start playing. When all players are at the 128-byte stage then they get sent the 'start' command, as close together as possible. The trouble is that WLAN technology prioritizes throughput over short-term latency (simplifying somewhat), so that one or more of the players may have only a few milliseconds of data in their buffers when they start playing and they almost immediatley underrun as the network contention prevents them all filling their buffers in time. result - stutter and loss of synchronization. There is a player preference that controls the pre-start buffer size, but the only UI I know of to set it is the command-line interface. So if you are happy poking around with that (sorry, I'm not in a position to give you a tutorial) then the preference you want to set, for each player, or at-least the more-difficult WLAN-connected ones, is 'syncBufferThreshold'. You want to set this to about half a second's worth of data (in bytes), which will depend upon what type of stream you generally use. You will get a slightly bigger gap at the start of the track (while it fills the buffer) but things should start up better in sync. SlimServer 7 will include significant enhancements to the synchronization mechanism but the above issue will still be a concern. Alan -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=37480 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Handling of tracks with no album tag
How does SlimServer handle tracks which have no album? I have tried messing around with various settings but I still get silly displays when such tracks are involved. What I would expect, when doing browse-by-artist in the web interface (for example), is that under artist Some Artist I would see a list of (a) albums by that artist (if I have any) and (b) individual tracks that have no album tag. Instead I see the individual tracks either under No Album or under some-apparently random album title (which has nothing to do with the current artist). Is there any sensible way of dealing with tracks that do not have an album tag? -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=37816 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Real-time streaming?
Can't you get the stations you want with Internet radio? -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=36553 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Gapless synchronized play: impossible?
I'm doing some work on sync (see elsewhere in these forums). My current focus is on keeping players in sync, and -adjusting- them when they get out of sync with each other. This should of course, also address the issue of players starting up out of sync, by resyncing them after a short, but also very annoying interval. Actually, my conclusion so far is that the start-out-of-sync phenomenon is mostly related to the very small pre-start synchronization buffer that is defined: just 128 bytes. This is probably fine on a fast, uncongested and wired network with a sufficiently powerful server, but in many cases it is just not enough. I have not found a way (not that I have looked too hard) of setting the *syncBufferThreshold* preference for players from the web interface - I have simply patched the default in the source code (to 4000). Now I hardly ever get out-of-sync startups. wr420;200383 Wrote: I would like to be able to sync players and turn them on and off at will without restarting songs or otherwise disrupting the current music listening experience. I have some ideas for dynamically adding players to a sync group without forcing track restart but it will come later. I would like to play 70 minute files without them drifting off sync after 15 minutes. The resync work should handle that. I notice that live internet streams behave better than pre recorded streams or files. Could slimserver be tricked into treating all music like live streams? Perhaps this is just a bitrate issue, in that the lower bitrate of most internet streams does not result in occasional buffer starvation for some devices? Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35097 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Looking at improving multi-player synchronization
My work on improving the synchronization system is progressing. I'd like some feedback from people who use synchronization regularly as to what actual problems they have. Also, people who have tried to use it and found it inadequate for their purposes your feedback would be good too. I'd like to break this down a bit. It would be really helpful if you could include as much detail as possible from the issues below: - Multiple players not starting up a track in sync. - Players drifting out of sync during play. - Playing tracks from local server - Playing remote streams (Internet radio, AlienBBC, etc.) - Mix of player types: SliMP3/SB/SB2/SB3/Transporter/SoftSqueeze 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Multi-Zone Whole-House Audio System
How about an update on the progress of your project? It looks like about a year since your original post, so maybe my comments are too late, I thought that your original plans did not look so bad. My experience is that SoftSqueeze is pretty CPU hungry so I would probably look for multi-core CPUs, or several really cheap PCs if you reall need so many instances. You do not need 11 sound cards as multi-channel cards are pretty common and cheap. My Creative Audigy SE 7.1 has 4 (5?) analogue outputs that can be addressed independently and it is a reasonable quality card. With the setup you describe the real trick would be, instead of using multiple instances of SoftSqueeze to drive each sound-card (or channel), to (dynamically) manipulate the Linux sound-system drivers to mix a single SoftSqueeze onto as many channels as you want synchronized. Of course, this would need some significant software development to manage it properly. My understanding of the various bits of the Linux sound system (ALSA, JACK, ...) is not sufficient to work out just how to do this (yet) but I'm quite sure that it is possible. Did you consider using powered speakers - like PC speakers. There is a huge range on the market and I'm sure that you could find something appropriate for your needs for little money. I realise that they need power but that should not be so much of an issue give the rest of the project. Running line-level signals from the sound cards to the speakers would require choice of good screened cable and, even so, it is essential to find a cable route that keeps them away from sources of interference (mainly mains cables) - I have had remarkably good results with foil-screened Cat5e! I started out with just SoftSqueeze and now have bought a pair of SliMP3s; one in the lounge connected to the main amp/speakers, the other in the (adjacent) kitchen. The one in the lounge was because, good though it is and just fine for background music or internet radio (the main use), the remote PC/sound-card/CAT5e/main-amp solution was not quite good enough for serious music listening. Since having the SliMP3 in place, we have come to appreciate the use of the remote, even though a laptop from which the web interface can be used (or, more often, SlimRemote), is usually to hand. The kitchen SliMP3 has been built into the boarding above the cupboards and looks great, with a pair of really cheap PC speakers behind the ventialation grill elsewhere in the boarding, and with a wireless ethernet bridge (all parts from eBay or the office for-sale board). In this case the motivation was the impracticality of getting any wiring to the kitchen. But again, we find the availability of the display and the remote are really nice. Now the real problem is keeping synchronization with the lounge - I am working on this (see posts elsewhere in this forum) - but the multiple-channels-from-a-single-SoftSqueeze approach that I outlined above would eliminate this problem (except that I have the wiring problem). I intend to keep the faith with SoftSqueeze elsewhere: basement TV/play room, laundry room and probably the cellar/workshop; all from the same single sound card and using various qualities of PC/powered speakers. But for the bedroom I definitely want a wireless SB so that it can be controlled with the remote. Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=22860 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
Re: [slim] Looking at improving multi-player synchronization
So which of the above tends to be the real cause of the problem? I guess that (3) could be tackled by forcing a re-sync whenever an under-run is detected. Does (2) happen? If so, what are the clock tolerances on the different devices? -- 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
Re: [slim] Looking at improving multi-player synchronization
Hmm, 10-20ms, perhaps it is doable. I realise that both getting the initial sync precise and then maintaining it would best be done with firmware support. I suspect that firmware change may be needed in the end but here is an outline of how it could possibly be done without it. On my LAN at home I typically get 2ms round trip time (RTT) for wired connections and 4ms for wireless. There are a couple of switches (100baseT) between the server and the wired SlimP3, plus a WLAN .11g base-station and ethernet-bridge on the path to the wirelessly-connected one. I have measured this with both UDP echo and (by modifying the server software) using normal stream data packets. There is a quite a large variation, with many packets above the median, but at the median (or perhaps a lower percentile) the figures are pretty stable. I realise that there are several reasons for the variation in RTT (and I understand at-least some of them). Nonetheless, it is probably possible to get a good measure of the -true- RTT by taking the median value from the last 20-or-so packets. Given the (lack of) accuracy of these measurements, it is also reasonable to assume that the one-way delay is half the RTT. As each ACK packet is received on the server, we know the following: - the time ACK was received by the server and, so long as the RTT is considered valid ( median), we can deduce the time-stamp (T) of the following data; - the number of bytes in the player's buffer (F); - we can get the number of bytes into the song stream (Sb = $client-streamBytes()); - from which we can deduce the play point at T; Pb = Sb F; We can collect this data for each player. The next problem is how to compare the (T, Pb) tuples for multiple players. If the stream rate is known and constant then this is relatively straightforward. If it is not known or is variable then one could either measure it over time (using either rate-of-consumption data from the player or by inspecting the stream using knowledge of the stream protocol) and assume that the average rate (perhaps the -recent- average rate) is a sufficiently-accurate measure for our purposes, or we could keep a copy of all the data in the player's buffer and calculate the run-time of the current buffer (again, by knowledge of the stream protocol). There are probably a variety of tricks that could be employed to improve the efficiency of these measures and associated calculations. *Question:* is the average bit-rate of variable-bit-rate streams likely to be good enough in practice? With the data above we can calculate the relative play-point delay for each player, at least to the point where it is handed off to the decoder. The next problem is how to get the players which are behind to -catch up-. I work on the assumption that it is better to do this than to cause players which are ahead to pause. I do not know much about the construction of the stream formats (MP3, FLAC, etc.) but I presume that one cannot simply steal a few bytes out of the stream and have it still work. I guess that there must be some kind of framing. Is it possible to detect the frame boundaries just by looking at the byte stream starting at an arbitrary point (I would have expected the protocols to have been defined this way to enable a receiver to resynchronize)? Having found the frame boundaries, can one simple cut out a frame and the stream will still play? What time period do frames represent (typical, range)? Assuming that there are good answers to all the above, then one could steal one or more frames from the next packet(s) sent to the player, so that the relative delay is removed. One problem is that this takes buffer-size-play-time seconds to take effect. So perhaps the pause idea has some merit. By sending a pause command followed by a resume (play) command at a known interval, one could probably make adjustments to around the 1ms level. It has the advantage of being effective more quickly, before running through the data in the player's buffer. The trouble would be if the resume command happened to get caught in a network packet delay then all the other players would have to be paused by the same period to get things back in sync. This could quickly get quite silly. In the case of network streams, such as Internet radio, one might find oneself either exceeding the buffering/delay that can be tolerated by the stream, causing a stream reset, or just get more and more behind real time. Any comments on the above or other suggestions would be appreciated. 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
Re: [slim] Looking at improving multi-player synchronization
A couple of simple firmware enhancements could possibly be helpful. - Have each ACK include the player's 1kHz clock tick value - Have a -start-playing (unpause) at clock-tick value- command - Have a -pause for N clock-ticks- command Using the mechanism described in the previous message to determine the typical round-trip-time, this would probably be sufficiently accurate to get good synchronized player starts and could also compensate for known differences in decoder delays. The third option would allow for accurate implementation of the pause method for resynchronization described above. -- 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
Re: [slim] Looking at improving multi-player synchronization
I guess that I have been concentrating on the SliMP3 protocol (as I only have SliMP3s, no SBs). Reading Slim::Networking::Slimproto I see that the stat response seems to include loads of good stuff. How accurate is the 'elapsed_seconds' measure (presumably only integral seconds) and is the 'bytes_received' 64-bit counter since the start of this stream or some other epoc? -- 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
[slim] Looking at improving multi-player synchronization
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
[slim] SliMP3 firmware 2.2-2.3; synchronization
Is it possible to get a list of the changes in the SliMP3 firmware between versions 2.2 2.3? In particular, I was wondering whether there might be any improvement that would affect synchronization. I have two SliMP3s in adjacent rooms, one wired and one wirelessly connected. I find that they lose synchronization pretty quickly. If a firmware upgrade is likely to help then I'll get on with it but, as I have built one of the units into the kitchen furniture (with a new facia), I do not want to do this unnecessarily. Otherwise, any other tips on maintaining synchronization would be appreciated. Alan. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=33631 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: Wierd: mixed up bits of streams
Still doing it? Not sure, certainly not in quite the same way. Last night I think I got one such incident. As yet, I have not restarted anything. Even if I did, I'm not sure how I'd isolate the cause as it is not consistent or repeatable on demand. I'll keep an eye on things and try and build up a journal of incidents in an attempt to narrow the field. -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28735 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
[slim] Re: Performance server requirements
Yes, I think that web-page access seems to be the biggest issue, although there are other occasions where it seems to be chewing the CPU without an obvious good reason. What about the threads question? Actually, is there a good architecture overview of SlimServer? If I could get a handle on how it all works then I may be in a position to contribute (my field is performance engineering). -- awy awy's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7480 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28731 ___ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
