PromyLOPh/pianobar — Issue #164: Audio stops in middle of song
Author: chaseadam
Created: 2011-10-09 17:32:16+00:00
State: open

I have pianobar running on my wgt634u wireless router (OpenWRT) and it is driving my DAC over USB. Ever since I moved, the audio drops occasionally. I have not discovered a pattern to the drops, but I have attempted as much debugging as I know how to do without much success.

Symptoms:
* Audio stops
* Timer keeps on ticking
* Data keeps coming
* No libao buffer underrun
* Audio starts again on next song

Things that changed during the move:
* switched from DSL to a Cable modem
* gateway is now another openwrt router instead of the Westel DSL modem

Really annoying workaround:
* pause and unpause

Debugging attempts:
* libao debug: There do not appear to be buffer underruns when I experience the stopped audio. Of course after I pause or start a new song there is always a buffer underrun at the pause or end of song, that is normal.
* proxy: I used a debugging proxy to see if pianobar just stopped receiving/asking for data. Using a proxy I was unable to reproduce this issue, which made me think that pianobar was having difficulty maintaining connectivity.
* tcpdump on router: Pianobar appears to keep getting data even though no audio.

The wgt634u is not particularly powerful. It is ~200MHz with32MB RAM. When I login to the box using openssh-server, the key exchange will make pianobar pause for a split second, but will start back up again without issue.

What else can I use to debug? Is there a debug configuration setting? USB debugging to see if it is my DAC which is getting confused because of some small timing inconsistency?

This may be related to issue 146.