I don’t know if it’s just a problem for me or if others experience it too, but both on my phone and PC, I find the service play.volumio.com to be rather unstable.
I love the service because it’s fantastic to listen to my collection even outside my home network, but I think some improvements are needed to enhance playback stability.
Often, playback suddenly stops, but the interface shows that the track progression continues: it’s as if the “play here” temporarily disables, and playback continues on the local network.
In general, I’ve noticed that if you start playback without doing other operations in the browser, everything works fine, but if you open another window or switch to other apps on your phone (that don’t use audio), interruptions occur easily.
I can rule out a connection issue because I’ve done such tests even with a full and powerful Wi-Fi signal.
My configuration:
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
Volumio 3.661
I usually play music from play.volumio in .flac 16 bit/44 Khz
EDIT: I’ve just noticed the configuration options in Multiroom settings, I could improve the situation by adjusting some of these parameters?
But that’s still probably what it is. Both ends need reliable and fast bandwidth, especially to broadcast and stream lossless music. If I listen at work, it’s perfect. My home Volumio is running on a Pi4 via ethernet, so 1Gb/s and my work wifi is about the same. If I listen to flac files at othe locations with ok wifi, it often buffers. 320kb/s mp3 is much more reliable.
One thing is buffering due to a slow connection, about that I have nothing to say: the reason why it happens is obvious (for example, it often happens to me in the car when I drive through areas with poor data signal).
What I’m referring to is another type of problem: it seems like sometimes the “play here” gets lost.
I’ll give you an example: earlier I was listening to a Hi-Res FLAC (24/96) album with play.volumio on my work PC. For over 20 minutes I didn’t have a single second of buffering, the connection was very smooth. At some point, however, the audio stopped, I couldn’t hear anything.
On the interface I could see that the track was still going. I disabled “play here” and re-enabled it, and then I could hear it again but the song was ahead of the point where it had stopped, as if the playback had continued on the local network but hadn’t been streamed to the work PC.
This is the thing that happens to me too often… and it’s quite annoying
I apologize, it was not my intention to rush.
While waiting for a response, I want to report another anomalous behavior: it is happening quite frequently that the streaming randomly stops, then restarts the song from the beginning or from a point far from where it was interrupted. Or, even worse, without any reason, after a few seconds of interruption, the playback continues with another track from the album…
Hi, I’ve tried using this before. Is it the ‘play here’ feature? Like when I use the web link to listen on phone outside the house. Do you need to leave the DAC on at home for it to work yes? I need to choose the headphones output of DAC as the device for it to work but isn’t reliable. Not sure if it’s meant to work that way, or has to be on same network. I only have one volumio hardware device.
I’m not sure if I understood your request correctly. In any case, yes, it’s the feature that allows access to the Volumio interface and to listen to music even when you are outside your local network (e.g., using your phone’s data connection when you’re on the go). The only thing that needs to be on at home is, of course, the device on which Volumio is installed (Raspberry Pi, PC, mini PC, etc.) and the internet connection.
@Ema82 Thanks for the reply. I only have one Volumio device, a RPi4 (which stays powered on) but turn off the DAC it is connected to when not in use. Play here works again (PC browser tab, same network, just have disable and enable the device if not).
I was trying it out using the volumio mobile app (off wifi) - you have to select an output device ‘headphones’. Was hit and miss, assume worked with cached content. One of the devs said it’s not meant to work.
Yeah I thought in the past the connected DAC had to be on as well, but just testing now it seems to work with it off and selecting ‘Headphones’ as the output device.
Will try those other settings of yours if that improves the responsiveness (edit: I don’t have multiroom). it would be handy to access my own library when I get sick of streaming. Most stuff is on Tidal anyway but not all.
(bit like Plex Amp and Roon Arc)
I think there’s no need to select “Headphones” as output device.
Playback is completely independent of the components (e.g., the DAC) you have at home. When you start playback from your phone it’s the phone’s hardware (its internal DAC) that handles the playback, just like it does for any other application that uses audio. So there’s no need to handle the playback options.
No advice for the problem mentioned at the beginning of the post?
What can I do to minimize the stability issues when listening from an external network?
To summarize:
Audio cuts out while the song progression on the interface continues (as if it were playing on the local network);
The song resumes if ‘Play Here’ is enabled and re-enabled, but the resume point is random: sometimes it resumes from a different point of the track, sometimes from the start, sometimes it even starts a different song, either previous or next
As stated before, I want to clarify that these issues are independent of the network signal.
When there is low connection, it is normal to experience buffering interruptions, and I cannot complain about that. However, the issues mentioned above are of a different nature and occur even with full Wi-Fi signal at both the source and the receiving device.
The play.volumio URL was introduced when “Play Here” became a premium feature. This service has always remained in beta and has not been developed in tandem with the official build releases.
We appreciate your useful reports and will consider them as we monitor the development of an official and updated play.volumio service.
Thank you, Davide.
I didn’t know that play.volumio was a beta feature. I think it’s a really important function that gives Volumio an extra edge. Being able to access your collection from an external network is fantastic and very useful. So, I hope the development team can work on it to officially release a stable version.
Thank you anyway for making it available even in beta: even with some instability, it’s still usable
