Bugzilla – Bug 4233
Stream "breaking" between songs, causing player disconnect
Last modified: 2011-11-06 23:24:26 UTC
As of 6.5.0, I'm having problems with playing http://{server}/stream.mp3, both on the server machine itself as well as remotely - at the end of every song, something happens that causes the player (foobar2k and windows media player tested so far) to lose connection (and therefore stop playing). At first, it appeared that I was losing several seconds of audio, but that was because the player was set to repeat the playlist - so when the stream broke, the (one item) playlist started again, re-connecting to the stream, having lost several seconds of buffered audio. That made it sound like the beginning of every track was being cut off. I've tried playing with buffer settings to no avail - I definitely wasn't having this issue with 6.3.x I found bug 250, which is a couple of years old, but appears to be the same issue.
Could this be caused by the bitrate changing mid-stream when playing mp3 files with different bitrates? Some players probably handle this better than others. Try it with a set of mp3's that are all the same bitrate, or all non-mp3 files (which will all be played as 320k mp3, or your player's bitrate setting).
what software are you using to connect to stream.mp3 ?
Sorry for the delay in my responses! I generally use foobar2000 0.9.3.1 (on windows XP), both on my slimserver computer and remote streaming from work. Per Andy's question, I think you may be completely right - the problem does appear like it might be related to streaming different bitrate mp3's, and that *may* explain why I haven't noticed it before 6.5. 95% of my non-Squeezebox listening happens from work, and I usually cap the stream at 192, sometimes even 160. Almost all of my collection is VBR mp3 with average rates at 200 and above, meaning that I'm usually streaming transcoded and therefore at a pretty consistent rate. I started noticing this behavior when using foobar2000 locally (hitting localhost:9000/stream.mp3), with the bitrate limit at 320. I also used Winamp (5?) and Windows Media Player, and found the same behavior. I've switched to using Softsqueeze at home, and that seems to do better, but I do still get occasional stuttering at the beginning of new tracks. Is Softsqueeze actually modeling the Squeezebox's multiple buffers, and thereby dealing with the bitrate changes better than the other clients? So, assuming Andy's identified the issue (which may not be new behavior at all, and really doesn't sound like a bug), would it be a reasonable enhancement request (entered separately of course, if it's not already in) to look for an option to *lock* the bitrate using LAME, rather than just cap it? That way, at home I could lock it at 320, and have little to no quality loss, but also not get the buffer loss issue while using players other than Softsqueeze, and at work/elsewhere I'd know that I had a solid rate to avoid similar issues. Thanks for your thoughts, guys!
Rest assured, 'future' does not mean never. It just means 'sometime after 6.5.1 which we have not yet decided upon'
Unassigned bugs cannot have a priority.