Start of track missing from first track on album
Beantwortet
I have been experiencing an intermittent issue with playback from Tidal and Amazon on the Node N132, summarised in some bullets pasted below. I have raised a couple of Support Requests for this, and after much back-and-forth, I have been told this is likely to be a network issue (diagnostic logs include an error 'Controller::outputUnderrun').
While on one level I am happy to accept that this is 'just the Internet', and have allowed the ticket to be closed on that basis, I still have some doubts: I have no other network issues from streaming video, or online gaming, and there are no errors in my router's network log. I also have a ThinkBroadband quality monitor set up, and this shows no packet loss, or untoward latency.
So, I thought I would try this approach to see if anyone else has experienced a similar issue, or if there is any other advice out there.
Summary bullets:
- The issue manifests as the start of the first track on album missing the first second or so, then very quickly (barely perceptibly) fading in over the next fraction of a second.
- If I rewind to restart the track, it then plays properly from the beginning, so it is clear that the track itself is not at fault.
- Similarly, the same albums that manifest the issue can be fine in another session - it can either occur or not occur for the same track.
- I tend to play albums, rather than individual tracks or playlists, and this issue only occurs on the first track of the album, with subsequent tracks in the queue playing correctly (I have not yet observed it if I start playback from the second or subsequent tracks, but I rarely do this, so this should not be taken as an indication that it would not happen)
- When it happens, it tends to be on the second or third album played in a particular session, rather than the first one. (I don’t think I have so far noticed it happening with the first album played).
- It is difficult to judge exactly how often it occurs, because it may not be apparent if a track starts with a period of silence or a genuine fade-in, or if I am not familiar with the track (so I could assume it is a fade in, but actually it is this issue manifesting)
- It is difficult to be sure, but I have the impression that if it happens once, it is more likely to occur again in the same session, but there are days when I encounter no instances at all.
- It happens on both Android and Windows Desktop
- It happens on both Tidal and Amazon
- It happens regardless of whether I Play All, or play the first track and use Autofill to play the rest of the album
- It happens regardless of whether I delete the Play Queue before starting the next album
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Offizieller Kommentar
Hi Henricus
We agree it's your router likely - we haven't chimed in here because Seppi is on the same track we are. You mentioned contacting Support. I reviewed your account and we haven't seen any Support Requests from this e-mail address you registered with.
I am escalting you to our Support Crew, they'll be in touch via e-mail.
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Hi, another user here, what output / connection are you using on the NODE?
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Hi Seppi. Thanks for responding.
I'm using analog output, and ethernet for the network connection.
I've followed the advice of Support and restarted my router, and re-booted the player, but the issue still happens. I raised another Support Request to provide logs, and I can see the 'outputUnderrun' text that they mentioned, but this appears 3 minutes before I started to play the track (while I was still scrolling through albums), so I'm not convinced that text points to the cause of the missing part of the stream.
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Thanks, this rules out an external DAC and does then rather point to a networking issue. Can you play local music stored on a NAS / PC / Mac without issue?
Info on your Routers make, network switches would be handy.
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Thanks Seppi.
I don't have any local music to try this with. All my tracks are sourced by streaming.
I don't have a network switch. The player is plugged directly into one of the three 1Gbps Ethernet sockets on my router.
It took a bit of digging to get the router's make and specs, as to me it is just a Super Hub 5.0, supplied by my broadband provider, Virgin Media, but as far as I can gather, the relevant parts are:
Manufacturer/model: Sagemcom F3896LG-VMB
Broadband – DOCSIS3.1/3.0 Broadcom 3390S
As you have probably gathered, I'm not that familiar with networking technology, so it seems a bit odd to me that a very particular intermittent issue like this could result, with no other (apparent) symptoms, either in streaming music or any of the other things I use the internet for. Do you have a view on the candidates for any specific network action that may be the culprit here?
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The Superhub 3 was a nightmare device and VM still have issues with newer devices.
Bluesound uses a different method of “talking” on your network hence other devices appear fine. Unfortunately with VM you are stuck with their hardware if in a VM cabled area rather than an Openreach.
It may sound counterintuitive but do try configuring the NODE to use Wi-Fi and then unplug the Ethernet lead and see how it goes.
VM also add on the Plume Wi-Fi extenders (not sure of current costs) Sliver almost hexagon plug in devices with two Ethernet ports. Let me know if you have these.
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Forgot to say, the Superhub can be put into modem mode, you then add a third party Router and hopefully that works without issue. Buying from Amazon or Argos for easy returns if it does not help
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That's great thanks. A couple of suggestions for a way forward there.
I will also post something on the Virgin forum, so it would be useful if you could give me some more technical language for the way the Bluesound 'talks' on the network, that is different from what the Superhub expects. Maybe that will also help me find a compliant router, if I decide to go down the 'modem' route.
One other thing though, that gives me some pause in accepting this as 100% a network issue:
That post describes an issue that sounds pretty much like mine. Obviously an earlier version of the device, but had clearly been a (resolved) firmware issue at some point in its life. Unfortunately, the OP doesn't come back to say how their particular instance was resolved.
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I had a quick trawl on the VM support website, plenty of posts about putting the Superhub into modem mode along with suggested Routers, along with issues such as clients dropping connection. This all the info you need otherwise you will end up getting bogged down in tech talk. Perhaps put a post on their forum about the issues you have and ask if getting your own Router would help?
Do try using Wi-Fi - quick to test.
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Thanks again for your help, Seppi.
Would you care to recommend a router that we know works with Bluesound?
I'm a little busy at the moment, so I'll probably try on WiFi some time next week, to see if I can nail this down as an issue with the Virgin ethernet. (It isn't so quick for me to do, partly because I would need to work out how to do it, and then the issue itself doesn't reliably manifest, so there may be a couple of days waiting for it).
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Router recommendations, best to contact Bluesound and ask what they suggest
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Yes, quite right. To be honest I'd been hoping someone from Bluesound would have been on here by now. I don't think I'm going get that sort of help from the guys on the end of the Help Request emails, who are just looking at it from a purely diagnostic perspective. As far they're concerned, it's a network issue and now it is for me to 'contact your Internet Service Provider for further assistance'.
But we seem to be concluding that the latest Node is to some extent incompatible with the latest equipment supplied by one of the biggest broadband providers in the UK (according to Wikipedia, approximately 5.8 million customers as of Q2 2023). Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Superhub 5.0, if this is true, then there must be some marketing implications here. As a minimum, it should be made clear before purchase in the UK that the device does not fully support use with VM Superhub 5.0 out-of-the-box, and ideally Bluesound should be specifying the appropriate workaround for this (eg use on WiFi only, or use the Superhub in modem mode), if there is one.
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Thanks Tony. I use a different email address on public forums like this, to be on the safe side.
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I have responded to the Support Request email your escalation generated, providing the ticket numbers and the associated email address to the Support Crew, so they can join it all up. Thanks again.
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For visibility to anyone else who comes looking with the same problem...
I have just had a call with Support, using Team Viewer to look at my PC and network. I was unable to reproduce the issue (of course), but after a bit of conversation, the conclusion was that the cause of the missing audio fragments is just 'the regular behaviour of a network', and that it happens to everyone sometimes, not just me, and there is nothing wrong with my player or router.
This was kind of my starting point for the original post: "on one level I am happy to accept that this is 'just the Internet', and have allowed the ticket to be closed on that basis". However, the feedback on here seemed to imply that this shouldn't be happening and I could fix it by sorting out my network, most likely the router.
Does anyone have anything to add to this?
(By the way, the email address associated with this profile is different from the original post, as that sign-in stopped working for some reason, probably to do with me using a different email address from the one use for my initial Support request.)
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It happens to me often too.
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Thanks for letting me know Soul Man. It's good to have some confirmation that I'm not on my own here.
For what it's worth, I have the impression that there are 'good days and bad days' for this, regardless of anything that I may be doing differently on the network, which makes me think the culprit is upstream network congestion, rather than anything happening locally, but I could be wrong.
I think I have at least one workaround for this issue, and am evaluating some others (it takes a while to be sure whether they work or not, due to the nature of the problem). I'll post again here when I know more.
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I'm not sure I'm happy with this post being marked as 'Answered' with a reference to my supposedly dodgy router. The conclusion of the 1:1 with the Support Crew via Team Viewer was that there was nothing wrong with my router or any other part of my set-up, and that this issue falls into the 'Stuff Happens' category. I have added a request to the New Features board for a pre-buffering option that could help mitigate this.
In terms of workarounds, I find it relatively straightforward to just hit Pause in the Now Playing Control before playback starts on the first track, then Back (looks like a Rewind button in the desktop version) to start playing the track. I originally thought I would only do this for tracks that I had previously found to be susceptible to this issue, but have found it simple enough to do it habitually now.
As I never experience the issue between tracks on an album, I thought I would also experiment with adding the album to the Play Queue, rather than starting playback via Play All or by selecting the first track with Autofill set. I have had some limited success with this - it doesn't work when the previous track in the Play Queue has already finished (so playback has to be in progress for it to work), and it didn't work where the two albums involved were on different music services. Otherwise, I have not experienced the issue (yet) if I add the album to a currently-playing queue. (It does, though, remove any tracks added by Autofill, even if I Add Last; and I prefer to choose my next album once the previous one has finished playing, so this option isn't great for me.)
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