Bugzilla – Bug 1434
SB2 missing end of FLAC files
Last modified: 2009-09-08 09:27:38 UTC
When playing FLAC albums on SB2 with no transcoding active, the last 0.5 seconds (approx) of each track is skipped on the track boundry, leading to very audible "skips" on what should be seamless transitions from one track to the next. This doesn't seem to occur with vorbis encoded files, and doesn't occur with my SB1 (transcoding flac to pcm). The files themselves play fine on other players (Foobar2000, Winamp, J River). If there's anything I can do to help debug, please let me know. This affects almost all of my use of the device, as most of the music I listen to is mixed. I can supply affected flac files, or samples of the audible output from the SB2. I'm running 1xSB2 and 1xSB1 (both wireless), with server 6.0.2 (4-25 nightly) on XP. (I'm assuming a decoder issue, but if not please refile accordingly)
Can you confirm that the problem you are seeing still occurs with the fix for bug 1289?
It did with your original patch, but I haven't tried the final patch. I'll do so tomorrow and report back.
I've confirmed that this bug still exists with the latest version of 6.0.3. The simplest work around is to disable the flac/flac file type, forcing flac to be transcoded to pcm. What's really strange (to me) is that this only occurs when the original file is flac - transcoding vorbis to flac works fine. So I guess it's not the decoder, must be something in the streaming or file reading code.
Radish: can you attach a sample FLAC file for us to reproduce?
After some more investigation, it seems not to affect every track, I have yet to figure out a pattern. Anyhow, this is one which does exhibit the problem. Playing it in Winamp or foobar results in a smooth transition to the next track, playing on the SB2 (with flac/flac native enabled) results in a glitch. As stated before, disabling flac/flac and transcoding to pcm seems to fix it. I tried attaching the track but it's too big (bugzilla says max 10mb), so I uploaded it and the one after it to my webserver: http://www.adamreeve.com/files/slim/ If you play those one after the other they should flow without a noticable break.
I'm also suffering from this now. I'm currently using 6.1 nightly from 2005-06-11 on XP SP2. I've got quite a few albums with no gaps between the tracks in my collection and I've just checked a few and they're all doing it. I'm pretty positive that they have worked OK (not sure on what version though, might have been pre 6) in the past. Like radish, these tracks play fine in foobar/winamp. I even decoded a couple of tracks and rejoined them in Sound Forge, there's no audible or visible discontinuity in the wave files. Let me know if there's any more information you need. Richard
My problem appears to be associated with having two SB2s synchronised. I've had the upstairs SB2 playing in sync with one downstairs for a while now and almost forgotten they were synced. Anyway, if I turn off syncing then the flacs all play perfectly with no gaps, as soon as I turn it on again I get the very short drop-outs at the end of the tracks on both players. It's not like they're out of sync and one catches up at the end of the track as the sound and the 'gaps' all seem perfectly in sync. Hope this helps. Richard
radish, do you also only see this when synchronizing two players?
No, I see it all the time, I rarely use sync as doing so introduces small gaps between tracks.
Correct, it's not possible to do gapless playback while synchronizing today...I suspect that was the issue that Richie was seeing. I'm not able to recreate the problem on a SB2 with the tracks that you provided, radish - I'm able to transition gaplessly between the two tracks. How is your SB2 connected to the SlimServer machine - wireless or wired? If it's wireless, would it be possible for you to test with a wired connection, to rule out the possibility that this is a bandwidth issue?
Doesn't look like we'll get this for 6.1, but I'm fairly certain this is not a firmware FLAC decoder issue and could be handled on the server.
It's wireless - I'll try it wired tonight and let you know. Just to reclarify (so we're all on the same page) the issue here is not gaps being introduced (to quote Vidur : "I'm able to transition gaplessly between the two tracks") but a small section of one of the tracks being skipped. There's no gap, pop or anything else, but the music sounds like it's skipping a beat. I'll record what it sounds like, compared to what it should sound like, and post that. Thanks for the help so far!
Created attachment 655 [details] The two test files played with flac-flac enabled
Created attachment 656 [details] The two test files played with flac-flac disabled (transcoding to pcm)
I've attached samples of the transition between the two test files I supplied - hopefully this should make it clear what the problem is! These were recorded from the analogue outs of the SB2, playing via a wired connection from SlimServer Version: 6.0.3 - 2895. The only thing I did between the two takes was unchecking the flac/flac (built-in) checkbox, saving prefs and restarting the server. If there's anything you'd like me to try please let me know.
Bugzilla doesn't seem to get along well with OGG files - if you have trouble downloading them they're also on my webserver: http://www.adamreeve.com/files/slim/
I'm also seeing something similar to this in about 30% of track transitions. A small - but definitely audible - click is heard. Foobar2000 reveals no such issues with the tracks. SlimServer 6.1.1, plenty of processing & bandwidth grunt on the server side. Just one SB2 on the network.
Vidur, if you have time, this would be a good one to look at.
radish: can you make a pair of flac files available that can trigger the problem?
They're still there from comment #5 (http://www.adamreeve.com/files/slim/). Transitioning between track 3 and 4 shows the problem, no gap but a glitch. The file http://www.adamreeve.com/files/slim/native_flac.ogg is a recording of what it sounds like on my SB2, http://www.adamreeve.com/files/slim/transcode_to_pcm.ogg is what it should sound like. I'm running 6.1.1 - 3774 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252
Is this still an issue in 6.2?
Yep, still an issue in 6.2 for me. FWIW, all my FLACs are encoded at level 8 (--best).
I'm really sorry, but this isn't going to make it into 6.2.1...
I just ran into a case in which this happens. For a particular song, the last 1/2 second or so is cut off, and then the next song plays. One things that is perhaps different about this song is that the sound stops fairly abruptly just before the end. I've looked at the waveform of the wav file to verify this. I am not syncing players, so this is not a factor. If the FLAC file would help, I'd be glad to submit it.
Forgot to mention, I'm running: SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 5376 - Linux - EN - utf8
I noticed this too on SlimServer Version: 6.5b1 - 5645 - Linux - EN - iso-8859-1
(In reply to comment #23) > I'm really sorry, but this isn't going to make it into 6.2.1... > And I'm guessing (seeing as I haven't heard anything) that it won't make 6.2.2 either. How likely is 6.5? This has been open for 10 months now and we have 21 votes for this bug which as far as I can see makes it the 4th most "popular" listing.
Subject: Re: SB2 missing end of FLAC files Sorry about the delay on this. It is a high priority bug, but the wireless connectivity issues we're trying to resolve are higher right now. Thanks for your patience.
I'm also seeing this behaviour with WAV files transcoded to FLAC. It doesn't seem to happen under SoftSqueeze for either FLAC or WAV -> FLAC.
I cannot hear it anymore with the latest nightly 2006_04_23.
Please ignore my last comment. I was a little optimistic. Problem still exists.
Just for the record, there has been some suggestion recently on the forum that this may actually be missing the start of the new track rather than the end of the old one. It's pretty hard for me to tell which it is in my scenario, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Sometimes the firmware is not correctly decoding the last frame of the flac file. This has been fixed in firmware 52, and I would be interested in your feedback. Firmware 52 is now in test and will be released to the nightlies in a few days.
Damnit, we need a means of upgrading firmware independent of SlimServer. I'm running 6.5 but the latest nightlies of the trunk are completely unusable on Windows. At the rate the errors are being fixed it will be at least several weeks before there's a chance of upgrading and testing any newly released firmware.
Subject: Re: SB2 missing end of FLAC files 52 will also appear in the 6.3 nightlies.
Hi, So, is this bug fixed yet or not? I am looking to buy a Squeezebox 3 but I want to be certain first that it will decode [in firmware!] a FLAC stream of audio without any gaps [i.e. must be perfectly gapless] and must NOT produce any clicks or pops when changing from track N to track N+1 for a given album of music. Can anyone tell me the latest news? And what version of slimserver I should use? I am running Ubuntu Breezy (5.10) Linux and all my CDs were ripped and encoded using FLAC on this machine. Thanks in advance. :)
Subject: Re: SB2 missing end of FLAC files Will: we believe that the bug is fixed in a firmware version that's still undergoing internal testing. We expect to release it in the next few days.
(In reply to comment #37) > Subject: Re: SB2 missing end of FLAC files > > Will: we believe that the bug is fixed in a firmware version that's > still undergoing internal testing. We expect to release it in the > next few days. > That's excellent news, I can't wait to order my Squeezebox. One thing though, for us Ubuntu users, will this newly fixed version be available only as a beta release debian file? What I mean is that to install slimserver all I did was add the following to the file /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://debian.slimdevices.com stable main and then I simply did: apt-get install slimserver i.e. I don't get choice of 6.2 or 6.5b or whatever and so I am wondering if the default version that Ubuntu finds at deb http://debian.slimdevices.com stable main will be suitable or not. e.g. Will it not be 6.3 say? I guess not. I guess I _have_ to have v6.5.x if I want easy installation of a deb package on Ubuntu. Is this correct? Thanks in advance. (Sorry if this strayed off the bug-report track a bit.)
(In reply to comment #37) > Subject: Re: SB2 missing end of FLAC files > Will: we believe that the bug is fixed in a firmware version that's > still undergoing internal testing. We expect to release it in the > next few days. It is fixed indeed.Thanks.
This bug fix is now part of a released version, and so has been marked closed. If you are still experiencing this problem, please reopen the bug.
Confirmed fixed in 6.3 with my original test files & setup. Thanks guys!