BBC Radio iPlayer and the Squeezebox Touch

[Jonathan Swain]

Calling all Squeezebox Touch owners!… Bought myself one last week. Previously, to get the R3 Listen Live HD and Listen Again streams, I had been using a desktop PC with a fine Terratec 24/96 soundcard feeding a digital amp via SPDIF. But the desktop PC was getting old and clunky (its cooling fans were as loud as the average Hoover). So the Squeezebox Touch seemed a sensible route to take - i.e. once you have set up a mysqueezebox.com account, and downloaded the 3rd party BBC Radio Applet to the Touch, the Touch will do its Radio iPlayer thing as a standalone unit (no noisy PCs required to control it).

So far so good, but there’s a problem, and I wondered if this rang bells with any other Touch owners. On both the HD Listen Live Stream and the Listen Again streams, there are small blips/glitches circa every 75 seconds. The streams are both AAC encoded, with HD at 320kbps (fine), LA currently at 128kbps (can that be right - it’s what my Touch is telling me). …. Now….turn on the PC, fire up the Logitech Media Server and switch the Touch to the Media Server on the PC, then call up file types in the Media Server advanced menu and disable native AAC….and the glitches go away! …..I’m not tech savvy - does this mean that there is some lossy transcoding going on (if it does, I’m unaware of the overall sound quality being adversely affected)? …..

Anyway, I’d rather listen with the PC off, and the server on mysqeezebox.com doesn’t have the functionality of the Media Server on the PC, so you can’t change the way it decodes streams. …..Any of this familiar? If so, all fixes or suggestions would be more than welcome.
All best
Jonathan

[french frank]

Hello, Jonners

I'm sure there are techies who can advise on this - when they log in

[french frank]

No suggestions yet for Jonathan?

[Bryn]

A Personal Message to Dave 2002 might do the trick. He seems to be the principal Squeezebox enthusiast here.

[french frank]

A Personal Message to Dave 2002 might do the trick. He seems to be the principal Squeezebox enthusiast here.

And johnb?

[Jonathan Swain]

Thanks ff and Bryn, will probably do that. Found that I was able to email directly the designer of the BBC Radio Third Party Applet, and he says he is looking into it.... Don't think it's a problem at the BBC end, or there would have been quite a few comments about it on these boards!
All best
Jonathan

[johnb]

Jonathan,

I'm not sure how much I can help as, although I have been using Squeezebox Duet and Touch for many years, I have never used mysqueezebox.com as such. Whenever I listen to Radio 3 iPlayer I am running Squeezebox Server (now called as Logitech Media Server) on either a PC or a Server, both of which are a different room to where I listen. (I use Triode's excellent 3rd party plugin.)

On occasion I get effects similar to very short tape dropouts but usually things are fine. (I attribute the dropout effects to problems with the BBC stream on that particular day.)

The Touch has 'native' support for AAC, so if you change 'Native' to 'Disabled' in the Advanced/File Types/AAC and are using the Logitech Media Server the incoming AAC will be transcoded from AAC to FLAC on the PC, before being sent to the Touch. This is a completely loss-less process so there is no adverse effect on audio quality but I'm puzzled why this solves your problem.

LA currently at 128kbps (can that be right - it’s what my Touch is telling me)

The actual bit rate is 320 kbps, not 128 kbps. The Triode's plugin displays the bitrate information that the BBC includes in the iPlayer LA stream and this has been incorrect for at least a year.

Sorry I can't be more help but the best course of action is to contact whoever wrote the plugin that you are using and/or to visit the very helpful Slimdevices Forum: http://forums.slimdevices.com/

(Triode also has an excellent Spotify plugin which provides an infinitely better search facility than Spotify itself does.)

By the way, it is worth looking up what the recommended settings are for both Touch and Logitech Media Server to get the best audio quality from the device.

From memory, these for Logitech Media Server (located in Settings/Player/right button at the top) are:

Crossfade: None
Smart Crossfade: Disable
Volume Control: Output level is fixed at 100% (this is important)
Volume Adjustment/Replay Gain: No volume gain

The options on the Touch (Settings/Audio) are :

Crossfade: None
Volume Adjustment: None
Fix Volume: 100% (important)

[Jonathan Swain]

John - I’m very much learning where the Touch is concerned, so it is a great help to know of others’ experiences, given the common factors involved. I am also using Triode’s plugin (it seems to be called a plugin on the Logitech Media Server, whereas on the Touch itself, it is called an applet). …. Perhaps I should say at the outset that the Touch has lived up to all I have read about it. As yet, I haven’t used it for playing back stored music files from an external drive (that voyage of discovery is yet to come), because I want to get the radio side sorted before moving on. Reviews - and various forums - have mentioned that the Touch’s internal server is basic and not especially user friendly/intuitive - and that is certainly my experience so far. It seems much easier overall to always connect through a PC or Mac with the Media Server up and running. Easy identification and control of (and switching between) Servers (3 altogether?) on the Touch appears to be a bit of an afterthought/bodge job by the designers of the firmware. Either that or I am more of a dinosaur than I thought I was.

Re the audio settings: all done. Re the blips/glitches, we have very different experiences (which is of concern to me given we are both using the same plugin/applet). Mine are nothing like tape dropouts (level loss) - and more like a hiccup. Not louder than the what they interrupt, but that very interruption makes them seem so. And you can almost predict them to the second (every 75 seconds - give or take 1 or 2 at most). Triode wondered if it was something in flash layer causing them. Hopefully he will report back to me, but it sounds as if I should warn him that the experience is far from universal. I picked up the tip about disabling native AAC on the Media server from one of the many online forums about the Touch and the R3 HD stream. No-one, as far as I know, has similar problems with the Listen again stream (as I do). …..Anyway, thanks for responding. May I ask if you are using the latest Touch firmware - maybe that is where the problem lies?
All best
Jonathan

[johnb]

May I ask if you are using the latest Touch firmware - maybe that is where the problem lies?

That is a very pertinent question, although I have no idea whether your problem is related to the software/firmware version. I am still running 7.6.1.

Over the last year some of the new releases of Squeezebox Server/Logitech Media Server have not been as thoroughly debugged as they should have been. This seems especially true of the x.x.0 issues, e.g. 7.6.0 which was particularly bug-ridden. Because of that I've disabled the automatic update and will only move to a new version when there are definite benefits.

Although I am not recommending you revert to an earlier version of the software, should you ever want to do so all the previous releases of Squeezebox Server/Logitech Media Server are available here: http://downloads.slimdevices.com/

I have found that, after installing a version of SBS/LMS on the PC, the Touch will automatically download and install the appropriate Touch firmware.

I'm sure you will be very pleased with the Squeezebox Touch once your bugs have been ironed out. It also performs very well when playing CDs ripped to a hard drive, or indeed captured Radio 3 programmes.

[Jonathan Swain]

Thanks John. I'll check with Triode before downdating (?) to 7.6.1, but it does seem to me to be a logical next step! At least, I can't see any harm in trying.

[Globaltruth]

There is currently an open bug with the iPlayer plugin which renders Listen Again useless if you are using sync'd players.

You can read more about it here

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=687826#post687826

Very frustrating, and, for once, it doesn't seem Triode can fix it - and the original bug they were trying to fix has been marked 'closed and fixed'

[Jonathan Swain]

Thanks globaltruth. That link makes interesting reading: many shared experiences. I’m not using sync’d players - so that’s not a problem for me. Preferred mode is to run the Touch as a standalone radio for R3 Live and Listen Again. Easy to do from the Touch….. but then there are those glitches every 77 seconds. Playback via the PC allows disabling of native aac on the Logitech Media Server, and the glitches go away. …… Listening over the past few days, and I wonder if there are other problems (along with the glitches) - less obvious, but insidious nonetheless. The dazzling and very disturbing performance of Britten’s Violin Concerto performance in this past weekend’s Sunday Concert (Daniel Hope, BBCSO, Andrew Gourlay) brings, with native aac enabled, some alarming spreading of the solo violin across the stereo spectrum. It’s better - more tightly positioned - with aac disabled, but then the overall tone is thinner/toppier. …. Anyway, I feel sorry for Triode - he’s doing his best to keep us R3 listeners happy, and - unless my understanding is way off - some one else is sabotaging his efforts.

[Globaltruth]

Bye bye Squeezebox??

Anyway, I feel sorry for Triode - he’s doing his best to keep us R3 listeners happy, and - unless my understanding is way off - some one else is sabotaging his efforts.

That seems to sum the position up. I've now raised a bug for this particular problem, but must admit to becoming rather weary of an audio system which I seem to be testing rather than being able to use. this is by no means the only bug/problem/issue I have had with this technology and support and fix times seem to depend upon the whim of the software developer (Triode is remarkably diligent, others less so).

I've been exploring some alternatives including the SONOS solution (now much cheaper) and the Apple Airplay/Airport/Apple TV/iTouch combination (which works out loads cheaper if you've already got an iTouch and probably explains why SONOS have dropped their prices).

The Apple threat may also explain why Logitech support does not look as if it is a major area of investment or concern for them - they have recently produced some Airplay speakers which competes directly with their own product line.

Odd.

I wonder if the writing is on the wall for Squeezebox?