Squeezebox is officially the worst purchase I have ever made

[brucegrr]

Also, what is your internet connection speed? Are there any other services/computers using the same connection at the same time?

[eganders]

And tell us about your wireless setup, distance, material you broadcast through (what the walls and other obstructions are made out of), signal strength, and the wireless channel you're using.

[rolf_the_wolf]

I have more or less the same experiances than ravinghill.
I use mixed Ethernet and WLAN on three receivers.

Listening to radio stations, almost every song, disconnection and buffer reload.

My ADSL line is 10'000 kbs (more than most of all users in the forum), can't be the issue.
Modem, router, WLAN, using Zyxel with 811.n, faster is not possible.
No neigbour, WPA2 protected.
Everything within 6 meter, no walls.

MySB is absolut crap.
As a result, I have to buy a server with SBS loaded.

Bottom line, I have in a second place Sonos installed. Works perfect since 1.5 years.

[ozbrit]

I have empathy with the OP. It's very easy for squeezebox owners in the US to be surprised at poor connectivity issues experienced by SB owners situated in other parts of the world. There are two servers in the US right! One in Germany, none in Asia, Africa, Australia or S.America!

I'm down-under and have have no re-buffering when listening to the same streams on my reciva based wifi Internet Radio's (I have two). But try them on my Squeezebox classic and they'll re-buffer. To emphasise the poor connectivity, I can set one of my Internet radio's to play a 160kbps mp3 stream and it'll stream nicely while the SB is stuck spluttering and re-buffering. If the stream is ok with reciva then the bandwidth here has to be adequate.
Yes the Logitech servers are a pain for some of us who have a few hops to bridge between our SB and the overseas servers.

Otherwise, I disagree with the OP, its a sleek bit of kit, if only Logitech would do something about the re-buffering crap we have to contend with.

[andyg]

On Apr 23, 2010, at 9:14 PM, ozbrit wrote:

> I'm down-under and have have no re-buffering when listening to the same
> streams on my reciva based wifi Internet Radio's (I have two). But try
> them on my Squeezebox classic and they'll re-buffer. To emphasise the
> poor connectivity, I can set one of my Internet radio's to play a
> 160kbps mp3 stream and it'll stream nicely while the SB is stuck
> spluttering and re-buffering the same as before I brought the Internet
> radio into play. I obviously have the bandwidth available.

Radio streams don't go through our servers (we'd go broke from the bandwidth costs!), so your distance to the server has no effect on whether a stream rebuffers or not.

[snarlydwarf]

I have empathy with the OP. It's very easy for squeezebox owners in the US to be surprised at poor connectivity issues experienced by SB owners situated in other parts of the world. There are two servers in the US right! One in Germany, none in Asia, Africa, Australia or S.America!

You have a misconception about how MySB works.

If you listen to a stream from "example.com", and are not using a local server, your player will make a total of two connections: one to MySB,com, and one to example.com.

The fist connection uses maybe a couple kbps. The connection to example.com will use whatever it needs based on the bitrate of the station. There will also be some packet overhead, but really that's not much at all.

So let's assume your theory is right and latency (not speed) to a remote MySB is the issue: if you deliberately slow packets down to MySB, what you will see is NOT buffer shortages, but slow response to commands (ie, you'd change volume and it would be jerky). The stream is still coming from example.com as fast as example.com and intervening networks send it.

MySB does NOT connect to example.com, get a stream and then send the stream back to you... that would be insanely expensive and no way could logitech afford to do that. Instead they tell your player to make a direct connection to the remote site and MySB just acts as a controller, without sitting in the middle of the connection.

I'm down-under and have have no re-buffering when listening to the same streams on my reciva based wifi Internet Radio's (I have two). But try them on my Squeezebox classic and they'll re-buffer. To emphasise the poor connectivity, I can set one of my Internet radio's to play a 160kbps mp3 stream and it'll stream nicely while the SB is stuck spluttering and re-buffering. If the stream is ok with reciva then the bandwidth here has to be adequate.

Bad methodology.

If you have limited bandwidth, using MORE of it and then complaining that you no longer have enough to stream is silly. You deliberately deprived your SB of bandwidth and then complain it drops? Why not download some torrents and stream some video while you're at it?

The difference you are seeing is most likely because of larger buffer space in your other radios. They are more able to 'ride out' network delays in your stream.

There is a solution to this, but you'd have to run your own server: which could then proxy the stream to your player, and have substantially larger buffers than the players allow with their limited RAM.

(The problem with this is it makes for longer 'startup' time... if you want 10 seconds of buffering, then when you press 'play' it will have to delay everything for 10 seconds. It can't buffer a stream without delaying it.)

Yes the Logitech servers are a pain for some of us who have a few hops to bridge between our SB and the overseas servers.

Otherwise, I disagree with the OP, its a sleek bit of kit, if only Logitech would do something about the re-buffering crap we have to contend with.

Having 120 servers in Asia, all on OC192's would do.. nothing for buffering issues.

The stream that needs the bandwidth is NOT from MYSB, but from whatever source you are listening to.

[ozbrit]

You can defend the Squeezebox system as much as you can, but it won't answer why my Reciva Internet radios have no problem keeping connection with a 160kbps stream while my squeezebox cannot.

My suggestion about reciva being able to connect and hold the stream even after SB has failed is very relevant. With SB having first crack at the bandwidth one might assume that it'd be the reciva thats being starved of bandwidth.

I bet you're in the US and never have this frustration.

[snarlydwarf]

You can defend the Squeezebox system as much as you can, but it won't answer why my Reciva Internet radios have no problem keeping connection with a 160kbps stream while my squeezebox cannot.

I answered it. You should take the time to read the post instead of reacting to what you think it is missing.

My suggestion about reciva being able to connect and hold the stream even after SB has failed is very relevant. With SB having first crack at the bandwidth one might assume that it'd be the reciva thats being starved of bandwidth.

Why would you think that? Do you think you can 'reserve' bandwidth by asking first? Hint: you can't. That's not how TCP/IP works.

I bet you're in the US and never have this frustration.

i have buffering when playing from overloaded sites.... Even when I use a local server. The problem is the remote site or the connection to them.

But my network is fine, and I have a nice 50Mpbs connection... Has nothing at all to do with where MySB servers are located.

The bandwidth they use is TINY.

Fix your wireless network, complain to your ISP, use something with a larger buffer.

Those are your choices.

Again, having 120 MySB servers in your hall closet, each with is own OC192 to the 'net, and each with a 1Gbit ethernet connection to a switch you plugged your SB into would do NOTHING for you.

the problem is your connection to the remote site, and insufficient buffering to cover up your issues.

[maggior]

but it won't answer why my Reciva Internet radios have no problem keeping connection with a 160kbps stream while my squeezebox cannot.

You describe this in a way that implies you are streaming BOTH the squeezebox and Reciva at the same time. Is this true? If so, that's not a fair comparison because both radios will be competing for the stream.

That's simply what Snarlydwarf is trying to point out to you.

[brucegrr]

This thread is a reminder that there is a lot of confusion about what mysqueezebox.com is and does. Perhaps this could be made clear in the instructions?

Certainly a problem with mysqueezebox.com can affect what happens downstream BUT it almost never the problem when it comes to the issues raised in this thread. Bandwidth problems are the service provider's problem. I have a 15mb connection. Plenty of bandwidth, yet unless the music service provider on his end has sufficient bandwidth and hardware....the music playing experience may not be satisfactory.