The original is bug 259 (not as specified in the description).

Thank you for your reply.

Both the good and bad news is that there are no obvious issues with your system.

The logfile would be very useful. I do not expect you to interpret it yourself. Please can you attach a copy to this bug, preferably compressed with Zip or similar but just as it comes if you don't know how to do that (see Attachments above the Additional Comments in this bug form). The filename of the logfile is shown at the top of the Settings / Advanced / Logging page.

The Rebuffering point is a good clue.

Do you happen to know if your wireless access point is actually operating in b or g mode? Do you know if you have any b-only devices on your network?

Alan.

*** Bug 10173 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 4505 [details]
Report as described in my post of 12/23/08

I'm not sure if the comments to this situation are going to get posted twice.  I took the time to write two paragraphs detailing the report that I sent.  When I then attached the report it didn't look like the paragraphs went through gr......
 This description pertains to the 7.80 kb report that I sent.  
So I cued up a playlist of three cd's for a playlist.  About the third song it would not move onto the next song.  I wasn't in the room with the computer so I hit play on the remote to get the song to play.  On the 9th and last song of the first cd the same thing happened so I went to the computer and sure enough the first few seconds of the next song was playing in a constant  loop with no sound coming out of any room.  The three cd's are actually all the same artist filed next to each other in the same place(The complete Blue Note Thad Jones Mosaic Records box set).  I then went to settings to generate the reports that you specified earlier.  I again had to hit play to get the song to play but I let those first few seconds repeat for a while so they would get on the report.  Is it ok to leave these report settings on all the time?  I changed the settings back to normal but if I could leave them on all the time we would definitely end up getting a report of the rebuffering.....waiting to syc problem that I mentioned.  I'm also working up the guts to try my controller again.  I had all sorts of problems with this last time I used it.

As far as the wireless b/g I just checked my Airport utility.  It shows four clients, being my Slim boxes.  I do have an older powerbook that I never use.  I have no idea if the network running in b or g.  I just checked Airport Utility and I just see exactly what I remember from setting it up.  There is a tab for radio mode and it says in the box next to it 802.11 b/g compatable.  I was having all kinds of problems when I first set it up and Slim customer service had me change it to this setting.

(In reply to comment #4)
> Created an attachment (id=4505) [details]
> Report as described in my post of 12/23/08
> 

Thanks. I'm afraid that there is not much of use in that. You really need to leave the logging settings enabled so taht the information leading up to an 'event' is logged. To repeat, teh settings I would like are player.source='info' and 'network.protocol.slimproto'='info', and for good measure lets also have 'player.sync'='info'.

The logfiles will get reasonably large but they do rotate - meaning they are automatically renamed and reset to zero when they get too big. It should be fine to leave them on until you can capture a problem event.

It would also be very useful if you could make a note of the time when you notice the problem, as accurately as possible.

And yes, you need to add the attachment as a separate step to adding comments to a bug report.

Created attachment 4509 [details]
It happenned 1:03 EST-between playing tracks11&12.  

It was a short stop in the music once the song tried to start.  It did the buferring....waiting to sync quickly and then properly played the track.

Created attachment 4510 [details]
12/24/08- 5:13PM EST- Playlist stopped again and also stop/rebuff/sync & then play

12/24/08- 5:13PM EST- Playlist stopped after track 8.  I had to go into playlist and press play for track-9 to play.
-12/24/08-5:23EST-After track #1 it stopped rebuffering..waiting to sync.....and then it played the next song

Created attachment 4511 [details]
12/25/08-11:22-23- long stop..rebuff..waiting to sync. should be at end of report

12/25/08-11:22-23- long stop..rebuff..waiting to sync. should be at end of report.  It happened at the start of playing the song labamba.  I printed the report right after it happened so it should be at the end.

I'm sorry but you are really not uploading enough of the logfile. I really need the whole file, not just the last couple of seconds.

Alan,
I'm kind of gritting my teeth not sure what to say here.  As I said, I'm no techie so I guess I shouldn't have even waded my way into this whole tech world of bugs, reports, files and attachments.  I don't type or do a lot of work on my computer because of health problems, so just what I've tried to do so far is really more than I can handle.  Music is about the only thing that gets me through the day so I'm really not happy when my music is now another source of aggravation.  The first bug that I started to post on this problem (259) had 34 people signed up so I can't be the only one having problems.  There are obviously problems that have to be ironed out with sync'ing multiple players and the new gapless playback.  I play my sueezebox2 through all of this in the bedroom for hours every night and haven't had a single problem.  This is the player that is the oldest by far, it's furthest away from my router and has the worst signal strength.  Yet playing by itself it has never had a single problem.
 I've read on your forums of many switching back to earlier versions etc.  If I had the energy I could create five more bugs easily.  Now my playlist is skipping songs.  It is also suddenly repeating songs in the playlist.  I don't even dare turn my new controller on etc.  I've been using Slim stuff since my Sueezebox2 and I've had minor problems with an upgrade here or there.  Until now it has all been things that I've ben able to straighten out over the phone with Slim's usually excellent phone support.
  I don't know maybe I'll try upgrading to the new 7.3.1, has anything been done to address these types of problems?
  As far as the attachments that I sent on Christmas & Christmas eve this is how I sent them.  In Squeezecenter at the top of the logging screen I clicked on the Squeezecenter report.  It was too big and wouldn't cut & paste.  With the report open in a separate window I saved the report to my harddrive.  I then hit the button on your page for finding the attachment.  This opened up a finder window where I found the file, clicked on it and sent it to you.  How this only sends a couple of seconds I do not know.

 I upgraded to 7.3.1  today.  So far the rebuffering.....waiting to sync.......issues have happened but nowhere near as bad as they were.  Everything is still incredibly buggy.  Just so far today I've had:
  -All four of my players stop playing and go black. I go into Squeezecenter and they immediately come back and play. This has happened twice.
-A room will just stop playing. Playing the next song seems to get it playing again.
-My playlist will stop playing at the end of a song. I have to manually play the next song to get it going.
-When I first installed it was playing songs two and three times over until I manually played the next song. This hasn't happened in the last couple of hours anyway.

I'm still at wits end and have no idea what to do next other than hope it all just starts working properly.  I still haven't turned my controller on to try to avoid any more buggy behavior.

(In reply to comment #12)
> Alan,
> I'm kind of gritting my teeth not sure what to say here.  As I said, I'm no
> techie so I guess 
...
>   As far as the attachments that I sent on Christmas & Christmas eve this is
> how I sent them.  In Squeezecenter at the top of the logging screen I clicked
> on the Squeezecenter report.  It was too big and wouldn't cut & paste.  With
> the report open in a separate window I saved the report to my harddrive.  I
> then hit the button on your page for finding the attachment.  This opened up a
> finder window where I found the file, clicked on it and sent it to you.  How
> this only sends a couple of seconds I do not know.

I understand what you have been doing. When you go to Logging screen what you need to do, instead of clicking on the link that takes you to the squeezecenter report, is to note the filename (pathname) that is described there (in my case it is /home/awy/Local/slimserver/log.txt but yours will be different). Then come back to this bug report and add an attachment - browse to the filename you noted above. Just clicking on the link only gives the last 50 lines - the logging page also has links for the last 100, 500 or 1000 lines) and if you have trouble browsing to the logfile itself to attach, then use the 1000-lines link and add that data.

Many thanks, Alan.

Alan,
  I just spent a half an hour trying to send you a log file and description.  I followed your directions and both times after five minutes of waiting my Safari screen said that it didn't connect.  Should I have checked off the big file option?  The server log was 88mb.  The Scanner log was 70.6mb.  There was also a performance log listed but it was zero kb. 
  I know that some people have all kinds of fun in figuring these things out.  I am not one of those people.  I just want to listen to my music properly and not get aggravated.  I never venture into the tech world of logs etc.  I have done so here out of sheer desperation to get my music fixed and it hasn't gone well at all.  Any tips as to why the logs will not go through?  Would you want the server log and scanner log if I can somehow get them to you?  
  Nothing has changed since my last post, all of the same problems.  What I was trying to send happens frequently, this was my description:

Alan,
  I just tried to send you a report using your directions but it didn't seem to go through.  1/8/09- 2:48pm- Track 3 ended and it didn't move on to play track 4.  I went to my computer and Squeezecenter was looping the first five seconds of track 4 but no sound from any room.  At 2:59pm  I manually hit play in Squeezecenter to play the track.  This happens numerous times every day.

  Someone on the Squeezecenter forum posted having one of the problems that I have mentioned.  I posted a detailed response and listed all of the various problems that I've been having.  If you didn't see that it's at the end of this thread:  http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57425  

  Someone else posted that they were having the exact problem that I tried to send you the log for today: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57379

What timezone are you in? Would it be convenient for one of our Support people to call you to assist with getting the logfile from your system? As you note, it seems that others are having similar problems, but we have been unable to recreate it ourselves, as yet. A log would be extremely helpful.

I just found and fixed bug 10615. This may be related to your problems.

Originally you said that you were having problems with gapless play not actually being gapless. Is that specifically still a problem, or is you remaining problem that players stop playing altogether?

Alan,
  Yes I am having problems with gapless play.  That is one of about four different problems that have been happening consistently since I first wrote to and contacted Slim.  This is a full description of the problems that I've been having that I posted on the forums:

Hi David,
Sorry to hear about your problems I can definitely identify with them. I too play all Apple Lossless on an IMAC w/External drive. I have had and continue to have the exact same problem along with many others. I detailed my problems first in Bug #259 and then in Bug #10436. Maybe if others could detail their experiences in bug #10436 we could get this fixed? I seemed to run into a wall when trying to send them reports, which apparently didn't get to them properly (I'm no techie unfortunately).
I'm at wits end and thinking about maybe opening up several more bugs that separately detail all of the issues that I've been having? Since upgrading to 7.1 and then 7.3 and then 7.3.1 I haven't had too many pleasurable listening experiences. One of the following happen all the time to interrupt my listening:

1) I get something like what you describe but it happens at the end/start of a new song. First the music stops, then my display says rebuffering..... then it says waiting to sync..... Then the music might start playing (this can take one to several seconds) or I have to manually go into the playlist and play the next song. Sometimes the only thing that gets it to play is if I play the next song in Squeezecenter.

2) Songs will repeat two or three times before moving on to the next song.

3) The playlist will freeze up and Squeezecenter will show the first several seconds going in a constant loop with no sound. Manually pressing play for the next song usually gets it to play. This is also described in another thread by someone else.

4) Suddenly at the start of a song one room will not be playing (all four of my players in sync at the time). If I manually press play the song will restart and the room will then play the song.

5) The first problem naturally affects gapless playback which is a feature that I've been dying for since I bought my first Squeezebox 2. Sometimes the gapless will work but often I'll get one of the problems described above.

-Please note that all of these things happen only when I sync my four players. They are always in sync except every night I shut three of them off. I then listen to at least three hours of music and I have never had a single blip or problem of any kind that is mentioned above. It's also interesting that the one player that I listen to every night is my oldest, the Squeezebox2. It is also farthest away from my router and has the worst signal strength of the three that I use wireless. I'm no genius but it seems that everything points to a problem with sync of multiple players. I had the same exact setup with absolutely no problem until 7.1-3 hit me. I can say that the problems seem to appear somewhat less frequently using 7.3.1 than 7.1 or 7.3. 

It's still incredibly aggravating. I'm about the biggest music lover you can find. It's at the point where if I'm playing music my wife goes into the other room to get away from the aggravation. She's pleading with me to throw the stuff out. I haven't even turned on my nice new controller in weeks because that seemed to make things even buggier. Any help from Slim (should I open more bugs??) (do they acknowledge the problem and are working on it??) or anybody else would be greatly appreciated. 

Alan,
  I spoke with Alan and then Julius at Customer Support.  Apparently the file is too big to be sent through the bug attachment.  They had me use yousendit.com.  I'm not too confident that this is going to work.  I have been staring at my screen for a half hour while it says uploading server log......  Could someone please contact me if the log doesn't go through.  I've spent another a couple of hours on this.  Actually I just checked the log file and when I was on the phone it was 88mb.  Now it is 138mb.  The yousendit maxes out at 100 mb.  I even shut my music off while it was sending so I have no idea how it increased in size like that.  Why is nothing going right????????  I can burn to a cd and mail it??  Any other ideas??
  If it does happen to work and get to you I took notes this morning while listening to two cd's.  The times that I have listed are EASTERN STANDARD TIME:

....................LISTENING NOTES 1/9/09.........................
-8:38am-Neil Young- Live at Sugar Mountain Canterbury House 1968-The track 9 (The Loner) didn't play in two rooms (the kitchen & Transporter room).  Then the living room and bedroom that was playing the track skipped track 10 and started playing track 11 (Birds).   At the same time the Kitchen & transporter room started playing track 9 (the Loner).  I then hit play in Squeezecenter for track 11 (Birds) and it played fine in all four rooms, as did the rest of the cd.

-9:57am- Grateful Dead- Nightfall of Diamonds- disc 2-After playing track 2-3 Uncle john's Band the music stopped and didn't move onto track 2-4 Jam.  I went to the computer and looked at squeezecenter and the first five seconds of track 2-4 Jam was constantly looping with no sound coming from any room.  I manually hit play for track 2-4 in Squeezecenter and it played in all four rooms

-10:15am-Grateful Dead- Nightfall Of Diamonds- Disc 2- Not a seemless gap between Track 2-5 Drums and Track 2-6 Space.  It wasn't one of the real long pauses that often happen.  A second or three interruption in which it quickly said rebuffering...waiting to sync.... then played.  This happens often and can be much longer.  Sometimes it won't get back on track and I have to manually play the next track in Squeezecenter.

-10:22am-Grateful Dead- Nightfall Of Diamonds- Disc 2- The playlist stopped playing after track 2-6 (Space) and didn't move on to play track 7 (I Will Take You Home).  The first five seconds of track 7 were constantly looping in Squeezecenter with no sound anywhere.  I manually hit play in Squeezecenter after a few minutes.

Created attachment 4637 [details]
Two instances of playlist stopping and tracks looping

Alan,
  There are two instances in which the playlist stops in this log.  As I've said before there are several  other problems happening, I will try to capture logs and send them also.  Here are the notes I took to find the problem spots:

..................................LISTENIING NOTES 1/13/08......
1:05pm-EST- Howlin' Wolf- The Chess Box- Track 2 - Smokestack Lightnin' played entire track just prior to 1:05pm.  Instead of moving on to track 3 - You Can't be Beat the music completely stopped.  I checked Squeezecenter and Track 2- Smokestack Lightnin' was back at the beginning and was constantly looping the first five seconds of the song with no sound coming out.  After a minute or two I manually pressed play for the next song Track 3- You Can't Be Beat.

6:15 pm-EST- Elvis Presley- 50 Greatest Love Songs Disc 1- track 10- 'It's Impossible'- The track played and then the music stopped completely.  Squeezecenter shows track 10 'It's Impossible looping the first five seconds over and over with no sound.  I had to manually press play for track 11- 'Until It's Time For You To Go' to play.  It took several seconds for the track sound to start on track 11.

-There was also a very brief instance of the rebuffering....waiting to sync...problem at around 6:02pm EST.  Playing Elvis Presley 50 Greratest Love Songs Disc 1 after Track 5 ' Are You Lonesome Tonight'.  It's very brief, it usually hangs up for much longer.  Im sure I'll be able to catch a more dramatic instance of it in future logs where the rebuffering and waiting to sync take up several seconds or more.

Thank you for your efforts in getting this logfile. It is very helpful. I think that I have identified three separate bugs and one other problem.

Let me start with a question. You have four players synced together: a Transporter, 2 SB3s and an SB2 if I read the log correctly. During the specific case that you mentioned - 

"6:15 pm-EST- Elvis Presley- 50 Greatest Love Songs Disc 1- track 10- 'It's Impossible'- The track played and then the music stopped completely."

- the log shows that two of the players failed to start playing but that two did indeed start (the Transporter and the SB2). Were you actually listening to all four players or is it possible that these two were actually playing but you would not have heard them?

By way of explanation, let me describe what is happening. Each time a new track starts, a so-called pipeline of programs starts to transcode the music from ALAC (M4A) to FLAC format. This pipeline consists of two programs which happen to be called 'alac' and 'flac'. Looking at the log, we can see that normally this pipeline starts up 10s before the end of the previous track, and starts filling the player buffers almost immediately, usually having them completely full within 6 seconds. Sometimes one can see that the buffers do not get filled quite so quickly but in general this is not a problem as the 10s gives a sufficient window for things to catch up.

On a few occasions, it looks like the pipeline is slow to start, and the player runs out of music to play before the new stream starts getting delivered to it. When this happens, the player is supposed to tell SC that it is out of data (an output-buffer underrun), at which point SC tells all the players to pause and rebuffer. Once the buffers have refilled sufficiently - which would normally take much less than a second - it will resume playback.

First bug 10680: the output-buffer underrun notification is not being sent from the player to SC when it should.

Second bug 10681: SC is not dealing correctly with a particular ordering of output-buffer underrun and new-track-started events.

Third bug 10682: a player may resume playback after rebuffering and immediately underrun again because a required threshold is not being considered.

These three bugs conspire together, along with the occasional slow startup of your transcoder processes, to produce the effects you are seeing.

A fix to bug 10681 would mean that playback should not freeze any more. This should be straightforward and I hope to have this done this week.

A fix to bug 10680 would mean that, in the event of a slow transcoder, the buffer underrun would occur at the track boundary and, other than when listening to what should be gapless track transitions, this rebuffering would probably be unnoticeable.

A fix to bug 10682 would ensure that one does not get a stuttering restart after a an underrun.

The finally question is why are your transcoding programs sometimes very slow, when they are normally pretty fast? This transcoding process is rather CPU-intensive and I suppose it is possible that sometimes other activity on your Mac could be taking resources at the critical time. This seems to be the most likely explanation as the logfile you supplied does not appear to indicate that there was any network congestion around the critical times.

Alan,
 Thanks for studying the logs and getting back to me.  You read the log correctly in that I have two SB-3's, one SB2 and a Transporter.  I was listening in the room with the Transporter when the Elvis playlist stopped so it was definitely not playing.  I have mentioned in previous posts that what you mention definitely happens but not as often as the other problems.  Rooms will stop playing while others are playing.  If I manually hit play in Squeezcenter (seems to work better than the remote option) or in the playlist on the remote it usually gets all of the rooms back in play.

 I'd like to mention that the log file that I sent shows two instances of the same problem happening.  It doesn't have the waiting to sync.... rebuffering and other problems that I've mentioned.  I can try to get them on another log when I can take some notes.  I have no idea if the three bugs you mention will fix all of the problems?  I also notice that one bug could be fixed this week.  Any idea on the other two?

  I'm not sure what the answer is with the transcoding programs sometimes being slow.  I don't understand why other activity on the mac is the most likely reason when you then say that the logfile shows no congestion?  I've been serving my music constantly since I bought my first Squeezebox 2 with no problems.  My first computer was a 17" Powerbook and I never had a problem.  For the past couple of years I've been using my Imac.  I've used every version of 6.5 with the exact same set up using all four boxes with no problems at all until 7.1 hit. 

 The Imac is a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo/2 GB Memory/667 MHZ DDR2 SDRAM.  The main thing that I do with the computer is my music.  I do surf the internet using Safari for a little while every day.  I don't mess around with photos, movies or try any new software because I don't want to mess up my music.  I am not at all a heavy computer user.  

 This may be of interest.  I just checked system monitor and the CPU seems to vary between 75-93% idle.  I watched this through a few song transitions and it dropped to 35% idle for a second on one of the transitions.  It stayed at 75-93% through the others.  What may be interesting is I then checked on memory and I was showing a steady 500mb free.  When I then went through the list I noticed that Safari was using 1gb of memory?  Is this anywhere near normal?  I quit Safari and restarted and a half hour later it's using 76mb.  I always have my Squeezecenter window open 24/7 but I do refresh it every so often.  I'm not sure when last refreshed so maybe that is why it was using 1gb memory?

Thanks,
Ron

Just some quick notes;

I cannot say when the other two bugs might be fixed. I hope quickly but I really cannot say,

I fixed 10681 yesterday but it will probably be a few days before a 7.3.3 build is available with it in.

I guess that the 1GB Safari process could be relevant but on a 2GB systems this does not seem so likely. Nonetheless it is worth keeping an eye on. 

 I've been using 7.3.2 for the last few days and things have been a whole lot better!  Music has been enjoyable again.  I don't have to restart my playlist after almost every song etc.  I've yet to have the rash of problems that I have mentioned throughout this thread.  Gapless play is still hit and miss and I haven't tried my controller yet.  Many thanks to Alan or whoever got things back on track.  So far so good.

Unfortunately I spoke to soon.  Without knowing it my wife had my living room Squeezebox 3 off for most of the last three days.  I turned it on today and I'm back to having consistent, annoying problems.  It's not that I have to manually play things in the playlist to get things back on track like before.  It is however starting a second of the song and then going off for several seconds and then rebuffering and then playing the song properly.  It has dropped rooms for a song here and there.  

Pretty much the same stuff that was happening before except that I don't have to manually straighten it out.  I just have to endure the constant rebuffering and out of syncing and annoyances instead of enjoying listening to music.

In reply to your comments against bug 10682 (https://bugs-archive.lyrion.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10682#c1).

SC 7.3.2 has a couple of fixes that may be relevant to your problem set but I do not expect that it will really resolve the problems that you describe here. Bug 10615 is almost certainly a help under some circumstances, and maybe bug 10415 is also relevant. It is possible that bug 10407 is relevant but I doubt it.

It is not quite right to say that this bug has been 'split' into three others. Rather, the problems described in this report have been identified as being caused or exacerbated, at least some of the time, by the other three bugs. Your problems will not be truly and completely resolved until at least these other three have been fixed.

That said, the fix to 10681 will help considerably. I'm afraid that this did not make the cut for 7.3.2 because it is dependent upon some other changes that were too dodgy to include so late in the testing cycle. It is however, available in the latest SC 7.3 nightly build (http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/).

Bug 10680 (the more important) and bug 10682 are both targeted for SC 7.3.3 but I cannot really say if they will be fixed by then.

The underlying mystery remains as to why your decoder pipeline usually starts up almost immediately but sometimes takes more than 10s. The fix for bug 10451 may have helped with this a little.

You mentioned that your web browser had become very large after being open with just the SC Web interface for some time. Do you recall how long it had been open for? My own experience is that leaving it open for much more than a day is a bad plan.

How large are the playlists that you work with?

Alan,
Thanks for your reply, to answer your questions:
-My playlists are usually small, say two or three cd's.  Five to Ten is tops. I never say, hit an entire genre and hit play.

-My browser is open all the time. It has been on every Apple computer that I've ever used over the past several years.  It was never any kind of an issue until 7.1-7.3.2.  Since the problems hit I refresh Sueezecenter every day just in the hopes it may help.  Should I also empty the cache every day now also?

-I always avoided trying the nightlies.  I see that beta warning and that it's unsupported and I just stop.  I don't have the knowledge to debug my system.  That is what I depend on the product for.

The fact that it's not just that bug#10436 was split into 3 bugs but a fix is also dependent on several other bug fixes.  These fixes may or may not be done by the next software release, whenever that may be.

This is a hard pill to swallow. I look at all of the wonderful new features that have been added in the versions since 7.1 and all of the problems that have been fixed since then.  In my eyes I am only trying to do one of the most basic functions but I am not and will not be able to do it.  Playing four players together in this day and age is not the cutting edge of technology.  Actually your company figured out how to do it years ago (now every one else has caught up).  It reminds me of the Beatles, 'Get Back To Where You Once Belonged'  

I have no idea where to go from here.  This has me exhausted and has wrecked years of Slim goodwill that I've had.  I just see the company going backwards instead of forwards.  To me you get all of the basic functions absolutely bug free and then you move onto working on all of the added features that I see popping up daily (which I never use).  Apparently 7.1 was a major redesign.  7.1 was a long time ago and the basic functions are still not working properly.  I'm the only one complaining so I guess it must be me.