Well, I don‘t have any ideas anymore. Nothing in the volumio and mpd logs, there‘s simply no obvious reason why it cuts.
I guess you have to stick to the standard streams then. I can‘t do anything more.
Yes, I appreciate the effort. I am thinking that there was a time that worked correctly and one point stopped doing it.
In the same way it will be solved. 
Do you think this may have to do with “our” problem?
https://volumio.org/forum/possible-bug-statemachine-increaseplaybacktimer-t11921.html
To be honest, there are so many topics at the moment concerning playback issues, drops etc.
Maybe yes, maybe no, I have no idea whether it has something to do with it or not.
playback-stops-randomly-after-the-update-513-t11460-20.html
audio-play-stops-after-while-t5830-80.html
volumio-526-stability-t11837.html
Marco, I do not know if I mentioned it before, I did so many tests that I do not remember it anymore.
I tune RP flac and if in the console I do mpc playlist I see the URL of the file that is being played.
When it is cut, if I do mpc playlist, there is nothing, it is deleted.
I do not know if this serves any purpose …
regard
That‘s really strange and explains the silence. The question is why this happens in the first place. I would have expected some info in the mpd logs.
- Only appears in all RP emissions. On other stations flac does not.
- I have 2 Rasp3 with different DACs working at home with the same Internet provider and both are cut.
- I did a test that was so disconcerting that I did not dare to tell you: I downloaded 3 flac RP blocks, I uploaded them to a web server of their own, they play correctly! I do not want to assure you yet, I have to keep trying.
- I can not think of how to “hunt” the bug.
Marco, do you think of asking again users who want to try to play a block or two of RP adding it as web radio?
At last I do not know if the problem is only me.
regards
Hello Marco, I told you that Logitech Media Server has a plugin for RadioParadise and also presents cuts. I try it.
The community and the developers are very disoriented. forums.slimdevices.com/showthre … (Plugin-v2/page69
regards
Hi Marco, after reading that with LMS they have the same problem, also in JRiver, it seems to me that the solution is to download the Flac file locally and then play it.
The first time will have a delay depending on the size and then you can use the playback time provided by RP to download before the current playback ends. When the playback starts, the previous one is deleted.
I will try to do something with my limited knowledge, if only to test.
regard
Daniel
Hello Marco, I was finally able to make the idea that I had commented to you work, to make a download of the RP block, to play it, in the end to do the same again.
It really works fine, there is not a pause that is annoying at the end of the block playback, at least with my connection.
I developed it in python, which was the simplest for my knowledge. I run it via SSH with Putty, there are a couple of folders that you may have to create and install some Python library to make it work.
You will understand that it is an amateur job, but it works, it is not cut, it is a pleasure to listen for hours without intervening.
I pass the code to you if you want to look at it:
https://pastebin.com/Vi07p4tY
I hope you understand that it is an amateur code, it only serves to approach the idea from another point of view.
regard
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
I was already working on a download-solution in order to fix the dropout issues (which I still don’t have personally by the way but obviously some others). The problem is that I didn’t get the metadata in sync while playing audio so I stopped this approach.
Did you see what Bill wrote the other day?
Hello Marco, since last night I am trying it, it seems to work well, at night I can have a preliminary conclusion.
What is soothing is that the problem exists and it is not in our hands to remedy it.
I think you should stop all the probable developments, you have to wait for Bill.
An option to obtain the metadata would be for RP to implement something similar to what it is using now, that with each topic upload a file with the metadata, hence you already know how to read them. Does it seem to suggest this to Bill?
Regarding downloading the pack and then playing it, in my little program what I do is read the time of each one and present the data during that time. It is very rudimentary, but generally works well.
regard
Yes, the Radio Paradise official forum is full of reports regarding problems with the flac stream (both the former dynamic one and the newly created static stream). Even the normal 320 kbps AAC streams have had outages the last days.
I listened for a few hours yesterday and for the first time I had problems with it - after some time, the stream had lots of continous hiccups during playback. It was not completely interrupted but of course it’s not possible to enjoy listening anymore. Restarting the stream solved the issue for a while.
Maybe they finally manage to fix these problems. Otherwise the only stable solution would be to pre-download the files and play them locally. This would require a lot of refactoring for the plugin, basically a restart from scratch.
Here with the static stream is cut when the server goes down, there are no cuts while it is up. And it’s usually down for hours. I guess it’s in the testing phase.
I pass the python code that I used to download the blocks. DO NOT LAUGH.
https://pastebin.com/tuaCq1b2
Bill changed the static stream URL again, the old one soon won’t work anymore.
The code doesn’t look so bad, no worries.
I’m currently working on a bigger change. What already works is downloading the first flac file, local playback of the downloaded file and showing the correct metadata of all songs. The problem is that the first download might take lots of time. A single file may contain up to 8 songs and downloading it requires up to a minute or even more depending on the internet connection and also on the server side of Radio Paradise which obviously isn’t the fastest at the moment. During that time there is silence and it seems that the GUI is stuck (which it isn’t). So I need a workaround for that time. Maybe starting to play the Jeopardy main theme during the download.
I noticed that in the morning hours it is slower, then in the day the download normalizes.
In the mellow channel, there is no (never) 4 songs, the Main does, up to 8.
Maybe you can start the download of the next block first, while still playing the current block. In this case we would only have to wait for the first time.
Now, if Bill changes the system, I do not know if it’s worth the effort.
Here we do not see Jeopardy …
Sure, that’s how I implemented it. The question is just what to do/play when the stream is started the first time.
Maybe something from the previous block …
Here is a first version of the Radio Paradise Volumio Plugin that downloads the songs before playback. This should avoid interruptions or cuts during a song while listening! Please be aware that this is an early version of the plugin that might have issues. Don’t use this version if you don’t want to have the download feature.
Installation Instructions:
If you want to give it a try, please install it manually. Before doing so, please open the Volumio UI in your web browser, navigate to Settings > Plugins > Installed Plugins and both deactivate and uninstall Radio Paradise. Afterwards open a command shell (e.g. Terminal in macOS), ssh into your volumio machine and execute the following commands (one by one):
wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/0saehm5ewtm0r2f/radio-paradise-downloader.zip?dl=1 -O radio-paradise-downloader.zipmkdir ./radio-paradise-downloaderminiunzip radio-paradise-downloader.zip -d ./radio-paradise-downloaderrm radio-paradise-downloader.zipcd ./radio-paradise-downloaderrm -Rf /data/plugins/music_service/radio_paradisevolumio plugin installcd ..rm -Rf radio-paradise-downloader
In the browser, navigate to Settings > Plugins > Installed Plugins and activate Radio Paradise. Now you can start the plugin and choose one of the FLAC streams.
How it works:
When starting a flac stream for the first time, the plugin will always play “Everybody wants to rule the world” by Tears for Fears as the first song. It comes bundled with the plugin. This is to avoid silence at the beginning because the download of the first real event might take quite some time depending on the speed of the radio paradise servers and the amount of songs inside this event (up to 8). The next songs will always be download in the background and should start automatically. All flac files are downloaded to the folder /home/volumio/rp-flac. The plugin makes sure that only the two most recent flac files will be kept (current and next one) while older files will be deleted automatically in the background to avoid running out of disk space over time.
Issues:
The download of the next event starts as soon as the last song of the previous event has started playing. Depending on the length of the last song, the size of the next event and last not least the speed of the Radio Paradise servers, this timeframe might not be long enough. If this happens, the playback would start before the new file has been completely downloaded and the result would be silence when the event starts playing. Please report if this happens (and how often).
Changes:
I removed the Rock and Groovy Mixes because they are not working at the moment and always would play the same few songs (according to Bill from Radio Paradise). 
I included the brand new static flac stream as a third option. It behaves like a classic web radio but unfortunately there is no metadata. Maybe it’s worth to give it a try anyway.