Bugzilla – Bug 11112
Playback stops and playlist is wiped when syncing players
Last modified: 2009-02-22 00:50:02 UTC
When I attempt to sync two players (usually a Transporter and a Boom) while one is playing, either from the web ui or the remote interface, the playlist is wiped clean and playback immediately stops. Experimenting a little, the following scenario seems to produce this behavior every time: 1. Begin playing a playlist on the Player 1. 2. In the web ui, from Player 1, attempt to sync it to Player 2. 3. Playback stops and the playlist is wiped out (the wiped playlist isn't always immediately reflected in the web ui - sometimes you have to change players and come back to see it). Syncing in the other direction works as expected. 1. Begin playing a playlist on the Player 1. 2. In the web ui, from Player 2, attempt to sync it to Player 1. 3. Ok.
Alan: is this the expected behavior? QA has seen this same behavior.
AFAIK, sync is (and must be) asymmetric. The from player forgets what it's doing and starts doing what the to player is doing. If you think about it for a second, one of the players must forget what it's doing to sync. There is a plugin called syncoptions which will remember what the from player was doing so you can restore it when you unsync. I've never tried that function, so I can't vouch for it. From the web, the easy "fix" is to select the player you want to have join the party and then sync it. From the controller, you can do the same of course. From the SB3, there is no UI right now. It could be added, but there would be a confusion factor. The synchronize menu could have a from to list in which all the pairs appeared in both orders. IMHO, the current default is correct. I wander into another room and want to turn on my SB3 and join what's already playing.
IMO, the concepts of "from" and "to" or "push" and "pull" is inherently flawed and the biggest reason that Squeezebox syncing is often such an indecipherable mess. If Player 1 is playing, and Player 2 is idle, why shouldn't you be able to form a sync group between the two from _either_ player's interface without disrupting the playback stream? Moreover, if Player 1 is playing, and there's an existing sync group consisting of Player 2 and Player 3 (and etc), and that sync group is idle, why should you not be able to have Player 1 join that group without disrupting playback? Doesn't it seem that the intention of the user would be fairly obvious in these instances? That the players should be synced together and that an existing music stream be taken up by idle players being joined to an active one. It's doubly confusing in the web interface, where you're not "at" one player or the other, yet the playlist just goes -poof- if you attempt to sync two players together with the wrong player showing in Now Playing. If indeed the current behavior is intended, then please change this to an enhancement request.
The current behaviour is as intended. It is understood that a richer UI would be desirable, possibly with some clever assumptions about what the user really wants. This is covered in bug 6806. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 6806 ***