iPeng support thread

[garym]

Hi everyone. Just started using ipeng and very pleased with it. However i cant find spotify on my itouch even though spotify is working well on the Squeezebox.
Can anyone tell me what i might be doing wrong?

can't recall, but maybe look under the "radio" icon on the ipeng menu

[pippin]

Hi everyone. Just started using ipeng and very pleased with it. However i cant find spotify on my itouch even though spotify is working well on the Squeezebox.
Can anyone tell me what i might be doing wrong?

It should be in the same place as on your Squeezebox, so usually under "My Apps".

If it's not there and if you use Logitech Media Server, please try to restart the server. Recent versions have an issue with losing contact to MySqueezebox.com on some systems. Although: if that's the case it should also not work directly on the Squeezebox.

[x5nder]

I tried browsing through these 400-some pages to find an answer, but I can't find it, so please do forgive me if I'm asking for something that has already been answered, but...

Does iPeng currently do any form of buffering on the stream? I assume not, because iPeng is pretty much unusable over 3G. In my city the 3G-coverage is spotty at best, so driving around in my car, listing to streaming music is a no-go. It seems to me that buffering/caching seems a vital part of iPeng? Competitor Subsonic (iSub) solves this problem by buffering both the current and the next song (in the album/playlist) at all times. Could this be implemented for iPeng as well?

[garym]

I tried browsing through these 400-some pages to find an answer, but I can't find it, so please do forgive me if I'm asking for something that has already been answered, but...

Does iPeng currently do any form of buffering on the stream? I assume not, because iPeng is pretty much unusable over 3G. In my city the 3G-coverage is spotty at best, so driving around in my car, listing to streaming music is a no-go. It seems to me that buffering/caching seems a vital part of iPeng? Competitor Subsonic (iSub) solves this problem by buffering both the current and the next song (in the album/playlist) at all times. Could this be implemented for iPeng as well?

3g is not the greatest means of streaming music. But in any case, I can't speak for Pippin, but I wouldn't say that buffering/caching is a vital part of ipeng. The primary purpose of ipeng is to control one's SB Players. And this is typically done in one's fixed location connected to Wifi. iPeng being a player itself is more of a small "extra" (only recently available). But I'm sure if improvements in this area can be made that Pippin will do his best to make iPeng even better.

[pippin]

I tried browsing through these 400-some pages to find an answer, but I can't find it, so please do forgive me if I'm asking for something that has already been answered, but...

Does iPeng currently do any form of buffering on the stream? I assume not, because iPeng is pretty much unusable over 3G. In my city the 3G-coverage is spotty at best, so driving around in my car, listing to streaming music is a no-go. It seems to me that buffering/caching seems a vital part of iPeng? Competitor Subsonic (iSub) solves this problem by buffering both the current and the next song (in the album/playlist) at all times. Could this be implemented for iPeng as well?

Buffering whole songs is not an option with the solution as it is because that's not how the Squeezebox' streaming protocol works, that would be an entirely different functionality and would probably have to play independent if the server. Offline playback has been a long-standing desire of mine but I don't know when it will come mainly because there's so much UI and control stuff involved.

Buffering is around the corner, though. Currently iPeng almost doesn't buffer at all. There is, however, a completely rewritten playback feature currently in the late beta phase and I hope to have it in the store within the next two weeks.
It uses a decent buffer that should get you at least over short outages or reduced bandwidth, it has around a minute of buffering capacity for mp3.
Other features include (finally!) full support for gapless playback and synchronization.

BTW: 3G is completely fine for streaming, even with the current solution. The problem is the coverage and especially the iPhone's bad reception and re-acquisition and that especially when you keep it in a pocket. I easily get 5 min data outages when driving or walkin through the city and it's hard to get you over that even with buffering. Subsonic really is a solution that is completely written for this purpose, including the back end, which Squeezebox is not. Would make for an interesting enhancement to the streaming protocol.

[gharris999]

Removing servers from iPeng's list of available servers:

Just restart the App.
Under iOS4 it's not enough to send it to the background using the "home" button, you need to really restart it by quitting it from the task bar (double-click the home button to get to the task bar, hold the app icon until it wobbles and then press the red "-").

If you have been using WOL you also have to disable that, servers using WOL are always being remembered because they need to show up even when they are not active.

Thanks for that bit of information. I had been scratching my head over how to cull servers from iPeng's list. It should have been obvious, now that I think about it.

[x5nder]

Buffering whole songs is not an option with the solution as it is because that's not how the Squeezebox' streaming protocol works, that would be an entirely different functionality and would probably have to play independent if the server. Offline playback has been a long-standing desire of mine but I don't know when it will come mainly because there's so much UI and control stuff involved.

Buffering is around the corner, though. Currently iPeng almost doesn't buffer at all. There is, however, a completely rewritten playback feature currently in the late beta phase and I hope to have it in the store within the next two weeks.
It uses a decent buffer that should get you at least over short outages or reduced bandwidth, it has around a minute of buffering capacity for mp3.
Other features include (finally!) full support for gapless playback and synchronization.

BTW: 3G is completely fine for streaming, even with the current solution. The problem is the coverage and especially the iPhone's bad reception and re-acquisition and that especially when you keep it in a pocket. I easily get 5 min data outages when driving or walkin through the city and it's hard to get you over that even with buffering. Subsonic really is a solution that is completely written for this purpose, including the back end, which Squeezebox is not. Would make for an interesting enhancement to the streaming protocol.

Thanks for the heads-up! I will keep my eyes peeled for the buffering update. A minute _should_ be sufficient for short outages; I mainly use iPeng/Subsonic in my car, in a cradle, which means reception is decent enough in areas that have 3G. And thanks for explaining how iPeng is mainly a controller, not a player, that does clarify the situation a bit.

I am a huge fan of Subsonic, but until they implement a Genre/Artist/Album-based structure, I would prefer the Squeeze-solution. There's drawbacks to having a huge music library :-P

[pippin]

Well, the main issue really is that the Squeezebox protocol isn't made for that kind of buffering and that the Squeezeboxes don't have such a alrge buffer. Using grossly different buffer sizes causes issues.

And what I meant when saying iPeng is mainly a remote control for the SBs is that I primarily want to stay compatible to that ecosystem, it doesn't make sense, IMHO, to make iPeng into a better remote streaming App that doesn't play nicely as a Squeezebox player anymore.

The big buffer - even as it is now - can cause issues. This is not only about local files but there are also Internet Radios and services like Pandora, Spotify,... And then there are files that need transcoding on the server side. All of this is supported by the Squeezebox protocol so if you want to keep it, you have to use it and not just download files.

Some issues I am seeing with larger buffers are with services not being able to handle the read in advance (Pandora was an example), some Internet Radios also don't provide a lot of data in advance s you'd have to introduce a delay to buffer which is something the server doesn't do.
I also got issue with synchronization for transcoded files, probably due to my weak server but since that one is still more powerful than most NASs I'd expect to see issues there as well.

"Issues" in this case is everything from stuttering, out-of-sync-playing to complete breakdown of the playback.

What will be in this release is a ~45s buffer and an option to switch to a minimum buffer size instead in case you are experiencing issues.
The large buffer also will only be available on 3rd Generation devices and newer (iPhone 3GS and newer, iPod Touch 3G and newer, all iPads), the older ones are too short on memory.

[March]

I recently re-installed iPeng on my iPhone because I had problems with it (causing my LMS to hang when browsing and making it unavailable for playing or streaming)
Now my iPhone is not showing up in iPeng as a player anymore. How can i reactivate my iPhone as a player?

[pippin]

I recently re-installed iPeng on my iPhone because I had problems with it (causing my LMS to hang when browsing and making it unavailable for playing or streaming)

On what system is LMS running?
This usually means there's something wrong with the LMS setup, usually it means LMS is still scanning the library.
Or did you maybe increase the maximum number of tracks in the playlist beyond 500?

Reinstalling iPeng almost NEVER fixes anything, the only exception being iPeng crashes on startup.

In "overloading" cases, actually re-installing iPeng will make things worse because then iPeng has to re-request all cached data.

Now my iPhone is not showing up in iPeng as a player anymore. How can i reactivate my iPhone as a player?

Settings->Enable Playback->Restore Playback (the green button in the bottom of the screen).
If you don't have an "Settings->Enable Playback" menu, playback is already enabled, if you don't see the player you are probably connected to MySqueezebox.com, not your LMS.