Unbearable rebuffering with poor quality internet radio streams (7.7.1)

[nicolas75]

Squeezeboxes have always had a lot of problems with bad quality radio streams.
However it seems worse with 7.7.1 than with previous versions.

There was this bug http://bugs.slimdevices.com/show_bug.cgi?id=3161 , now closed, which was about replay simply stopping when there is a problem.

During last days, I was listening to some internet radio streams with temporarily bad quality.
Those were almost impossible to listen with Squeezebox Touch.
You get several seconds rebuffering about every minute or so.

I was curious to try to listen to the same stream with PC players (MediaMonkey, Foobar, etc ...)
With those softwares, you can hear some artefacts sometimes, but you can really listen to the stream without real annoyance.
At the same time, I could see the rebuffering messages on the Touch screen, showing that you cannot listen to the stream with the Touch without getting mad ...

Is there some testing done from Logitech development, as far as radio streams stability is concerned ?

It should not be that hard to generate on purpose a not perfect mp3 stream, and see if squeezeboxes behavior is acceptable.

(Touch is wired, internet connection excellent, this is the stream which is sometimes unstable).

[bpa]

Have you tried increasing the "Radio Station Buffer Seconds" ? It increases startup time but it may help smooth over a lumpy internet streams.

[nicolas75]

Have you tried increasing the "Radio Station Buffer Seconds" ? It increases startup time but it may help smooth over a lumpy internet streams.

No, but the behavior is so bad compared to PC players replay that it cannot be only a matter of LMS settings.
Since replay is stopped during rebuffering, I would even think that increasing this number should make things even worse.

[aubuti]

No, but the behavior is so bad compared to PC players replay that it cannot be only a matter of LMS settings.
Since replay is stopped during rebuffering, I would even think that increasing this number should make things even worse.

The setting specifies the number of seconds of audio held in the buffer. So increasing the number of seconds increases the size of the buffer, and therefore decreases the interruptions. That is, if the stream is interrupted, there is more audio in the buffer to keep playing until the stream resumes.

The default setting in LMS is 3 seconds. If MM, foobar2K or others have larger buffers that would easily explain the different behavior.

[nicolas75]

That is, if the stream is interrupted, there is more audio in the buffer to keep playing until the stream resumes.

This is exactly why I said that I expect that increasing this number will make things even worse ...
[Edit : more audio in the buffer means more seconds needed to rebuffer, and since replay is stopped while rebuffering ...]

[aubuti]

This is exactly why I said that I expect that increasing this number will make things even worse ...
[Edit : more audio in the buffer means more seconds needed to rebuffer, and since replay is stopped while rebuffering ...]

Replay stops when the buffer is empty. If you have a bigger buffer, there is less chance of the buffer becoming empty.

Have you tried increasing the internet radio buffer size? What stream is it that is giving you problems?

[nicolas75]

If MM, foobar2K or others have larger buffers that would easily explain the different behavior.

Those softwares obviously don't work in the exact same way (which cannot give good results).
They do not stop replay while rebuffering occurs.