Intermittent performance at the beginning of the song

[yeungw07]

Hi,

I setup the NAS with Minimserver installed recently. However, when I streamed the song to the speaker, very often, for the first several seconds of the song, there would be intermittence for 1-2 secords. Afterwards, the song would be streamed smoothly.

My environment:
NAS: Synology DS116, with DSM 6.1-15047 Update 2
UPNP server: Minimserver 0.8.4.2
UPNP controller: KEF LS50 Wireless App at Android handset
Speaks: KEF LS50 Wireless

I captured the log from the Minimwatch in my PC, attached for your reference. In the log, at ~17: 46 and ~17:56, the intermittence issue happened.

Meanwhile, I streaming the songs from another UPNP servers (Cocktail X12) to the same speaker and App. It played smoothly without intermittence.

Would you advise how to resolve the issue? Many thanks!!

Regards,
Patrick

[simoncn]

This sounds like a network issue. The log doesn't show anything unusual. How is the NAS connected to the rest of your network? Can you try the Synology media server on the DS116 to see if you get the same problem?

[yeungw07]

Thanks Simon for your response!

The NAS is connected to the wifi router (TP-Link dual band router, newly purchased) via a LAN cable.
The speaker is connected to the same wifi router via another LAN cable.
The handset is connected via wifi connection. Signal strength is strong, with throughput over 80Mbps via internet (limited by broadband bandwidth).

I read the log in NAS, when the song began, the NAS upload speed was about 1MB/s to 1.8MB/s only, not high at all.

Today, I made another test, restricting the throughput of the Minimserver software in NAS to 800kB/s. Then, repeated playing songs. It shown obvious improvement. I played continuously for the whole afternoon, so far, no intermittency found....It looked strange, right?

I tried Synology DS Audio software, it was even worse, it couldn't even jump to the next song after finishing the current song....I've sent the Audio Station log to Synology for investigation as well...

Regards,
Patrick

[simoncn]

You said that the speaker is a KEF wireless speaker and also that it is connected via a LAN cable. Have you disabled the wireless radio in the speaker?

[yeungw07]

Hi Simon,

Yes, the wifi is not connected in the speaker. I didn't configure the wifi setting in the KEF at all, such that Iit can be connected via LAN cable only. I expect it can be more stable....

I'm imagining that when the data was sent too fast (which is 1.8MB/s only indeed), one of the component wasn't able to cope with the speed and process the data, so, some data was ignored and led to intermittence....when it was tunes to 0.8KB/s, all components could process and talked properly, so, the intermittence issue can be improved.....is it so?

Thanks a lot!
Patrick

[simoncn]

I tried this on my DS115. For a 16/44 FLAC file, there is an initial peak of about 400 KB/s which then drops to about 70 KB/s. For a 24/96 FLAC file, there is an initial peak of about 1000 KB/s which then drops to about 400 KB/s.

The renderer (the KEF speaker) should use the TCP/IP protocol to control the amount of data sent by the server, so that the renderer doesn't receive more data than it can handle. It sounds like your renderer might not be doing this correctly.

I am interested in what made you try the workaround you have found. Did you see a post from someone who had used this approach to solve a similar problem?

[yeungw07]

Hi Simon,

That really sound strange to me. the 1.8MB/s speed shouldn't be a fast data for modern technology at all.....

I checked the forum online for the issue at the beginning, but couldn't find similar issue.

Then, The KEF suspected that the issue might be due to wifi speed or stability. I swapped a new dual band wifi, hoping the issue can be fixed by the clearer 5GHz band, but disappointing....

Then, I take out wifi connection for the speaker at all, and used LAN connection to ensure connection stability. But still disappointing....

Then, I observed the upload speed in the NAS, which was so low that the physical connection shouldn't be a bottleneck at all. So, I tended to suspect the issue was due to the "too high" speed that one element couldn't handle it in time......finally, I fiound the bandwidth control function in the NAS and did the test...and it looked much better.

In these two days test, there were still some strange issues, like it didn't jump to the next song, the controller app shown a text saying that someone is controlling my speaker and it would play to another song, etc. but it didn't happen frequently and can be resolved by resetting the app or the speaker.

Thanks a lot!!

Regards,
Patrick