To all people currently listening to music via Controller

[bluegaspode]

I'm quite sure that many people are listening to music through their controller (either by built in speakers or headphones).

There is currently a development in the 7.4-version of the firmware, which seems to make this feature unusable - music starts to stutter every 5 seconds.

I'm currently not very happy on how this situation is resolved.
It is just said, that this is a hardware/controller issue, that its a non advertised feature and that it will only be solved in 8.0 firmware (which I guess is only ready in december or later).

Details can be found in the corresponding bug-reports:
https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=13777
https://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11283

I'd really like to see more people getting involved - if you have the time, please go ahead and try out the current 7.4-beta version of SqueezeBox-Server (your controller will upgrade automatically) and compare your listening experience with the controller in both versions.

If you get the same effects like me (stutters all the time, while it was ok with the 7.3-servers) please take your time to comment and vote on the corresponding bugs !

I really fear that these changes could make version 7.4 unusable for everyone wanting to listen to music via controller. As this version is the base to use SqueezeBox Radio I/we would get into a very awkward situation.
Either do without SqueezeBoxRadio or the very nice 7.4 firmware - or do without music from controller

Unfortunately I'm on holiday from the day after tomorrow so can't follow the topic anymore.
Hope that the future development doesn't make me unhappy.

[Mnyb]

Hmm I reported one of these bug's and I'm not sure if it ever worked with 7.3.x . I have no memory of it doing so.

One of the odd problems is that, people get different results ?
both for playback and headphone switching ?

I have no problems with the headphone switching since somewhere late 2008 it did not work to begin with on 7.3.1 but I've had no problems with 7.3.3 .

The Audio playback on the other hand is not working for me and with the latest 7.4 it has returned to the heavy stuttering problem.

But I'm not convinced that it ever will work.
The controller seem to have very limited resources CPU and memory and battery, and I think that they doing the right thing to make it a better controller even if audio playback will loose.

It's not a good portable anyway considering weight and battery time
If you theoretically solve the problem, the solution will possible include flooring the cpu at max clock frequency all the time while headphones are in.
will the battery last a whole album then ?
And is it's wifi really capable of transfer at those rates, what would these kind of constant "disc write" do to the flash.
It's limited wifi I speculate is a trade-off made because in normal controlling use, you don't stream that much data, it does not need to be as good as a SB3 or SBR.

I think that an audio player only lasting 30-40 minutes sitting 3 meters from wifi AP is a big marketing liability. So I'm starting to think that it was a mistake to ever fit it with an headphone out anyway.

It would be nice to vacuum the house with a controller in pocket and heaphones, but i'm starting to think it's a lost case.

This is my opinion anyway.

[bluegaspode]

Mnyb - its nice to know that you don't take care for controllers playback.
Frankly: telling us 'I didn't use it recently, don't need to and don't think that it could work at all' isn't really helping here I think.

Anyway - for me it was working - battery lasts 4 hours, which is very enough for me to use it in dayly life:
- to listen to music while doing housework (not bothering my wife listening to some other music)
- to listen to music or radio when going to bed (not bothering my wife already sleeping).

My headphone-applet was downloaded >200 times just this very september (!), so there are more people outside, who seem to use the feature of playback and are accepting some small glitches (like using an extra applet for headphones to work).

The controller playback was a very workable solution with 7.3.3-firmware and a week ago also with 7.4 firmware - now it isn't. This heavily degrades my acceptance towards the 7.4 firmware (which I'm unfortunately will be forced to use for the radio in the future).

At least I want to have back the quality of playback beeing present just one week ago !

[andynormancx]

I can confirm your findings. As I have said before audio playback on the Controller has been nearly flawless on 7.3.x for me. Switching works as it should and playback works well, even with FLAC.

I've just tested the latest 7.4 (r7571) and switching still works ok.

Playback however is not good. With FLACs it starts glitching after 5 seconds or so and keeps glitching regularly. With high bitrate MP3s it glitches less regularly, but still glitches.

The diagnostics show that the playback and decode buffers are more than 99% full while it is playing and glitching.

[Teus de Jong]

IMO it has gotten much worse the last week or so. In the beta forum I mentioned that the bandwidth problem seems for the main part solved (for FLAC at least; I get a consistent 100% at 1500kbps, which should be sufficient for 16/44.1 FLAC). What I hear now is not the stuttering that comes with bandwidth problems. But the glitches have become more frequent and more severe. Maybe Mnyb is right and they are caused by the low horse power of the controller?

I bought the duet mainly for two reasons: to be able to control my TP and for occasional headphone listening (the receiver went to my daughter who controls it with her laptop). With Mnyb I'm beginning to feel like this is a lost cause. I understand the urgency to get the 7.4 build out for the Radio. I could wait (again) till 8.0 if I could at least feel a bit assured that the problems with the playback are solvable...

Teus

PS: headphone switching has always worked here, so there are also people involved that don't download bluegaspoles utility.

[Muele]

I experience glitches after installing 7.4. Never had glitches before.

Mostly the glitches disappear after a while while the controller is in its cradle. Haven't really used it outside the cradle recently.

I could get 3-4 hours playback with 7.3.3/4.

I will check the bugs later and cast my vote.