[SOLVED] Multiroom reciever drops out after a couple of minutes

[buisiham]

Hi,
im trying to setup an Spotify mutliroom setup. As the sender im using pi 3b+ connected via ethernet. As the reciever im using an pi zero w2 connected via wifi. I pretty much just followed the setup guide and every thing seemed to be working just fine for the first few minutes. But what happend next was that the reciever stopped playing after around 3 minutes and only white noise was audible. If disabled and reenabled the reciever via the webinterface of the sender it imidiatly continues playing for another 3 Minutes until the white noise returnes. I might be worth mentioing that the sender never "stops" playing. Its more like the reciever stops recieving. Maybe someone can make sense out of that?

Best wishes
Hamsi

[Tim Curtis]

The symptom suggests a network issue.

Run a 30 sec ping test from the sender to the receiver and see if the ping stats show any network issues for example excessive retries, dropped packets, long round trip times.

You can also try the commands below on the receiver which will also show network stats.

Code:

ifconfig
iwconfig

[buisiham]

The symptom suggests a network issue.

Run a 30 sec ping test from the sender to the receiver and see if the ping stats show any network issues for example excessive retries, dropped packets, long round trip times.

You can also try the commands below on the receiver which will also show network stats.

Code:

ifconfig
iwconfig

Hi, thx for the quick response. I try pinging from the sender to the reciever with not a single packet loss.
131 packets transmitted, 131 received, 0% packet loss, time 130192ms                                                                                                                                                                                  
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.995/8.212/210.868/25.898 ms

ifconfig also shows no packet losses
RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
TX packets 678  bytes 60377 (58.9 KiB)   
TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

[Tim Curtis]

Its not obvious to me what might be happening.

Assuming the Advanced options are all at their defaults for Sender and Receiver you could try:

- Run the Sender on same WiFi network as Receiver
- Swap in Pi3/3+ as Receiver
- Leave Sender on Ethernet and plug Receiver into Ethernet port
- Increase the ALSA buffer on Receiver and Sender

The goal is to isolate the issue

[buisiham]

Its not obvious to me what might be happening.

Assuming the Advanced options are all at their defaults for Sender and Receiver you could try:

- Run the Sender on same WiFi network as Receiver
- Swap in Pi3/3+ as Receiver
- Leave Sender on Ethernet and plug Receiver into Ethernet port
- Increase the ALSA buffer on Receiver and Sender

The goal is to isolate the issue

Thx for the input i give it a shot.

[Tim Curtis]

What audio device is connected to the Receiver?

[Zeable]

Was this ever resolved as I am having same issue?

I have a multiroom set up with two receivers and one sender to play music into my garage. After all three are booted up, I select play on the sender and get music streaming through both receivers. Everything is sounding great for the first 1-5 minutes. Then one of the receivers stops playing music and starts hissing with what appears to be white noise. This can happen to either receiver, and at times can have both hissing at me. If left alone long enough, the music will come back but ultimately will go back to hissing again.

Sender Raspberry Pi 5
Receiver 1 is a raspberry pi 3
Receiver 2 is a raspberry pi 4
SENZER CS20 Computer Speaker on each receiver
All wirelessly connect through a Netgear RAX120

If both remote speakers are set up as receivers, both experience the white noise eventually.
They will eventually come back but may take up to 10 minutes
Both have experienced the white noise at same time, HOWEVER, they did not go down at same time. It would be one and then up to maybe 5 minutes, the other might go to white noise.
If I make one or the other a standalone, not part of multiroom, they never appear to go into white noise.
The other one acting as a receiver will still experience white noise eventually.
If while in white noise, I go into the config of that receiver and restart the receiver using the button, the music starts playing again immediately. However, it will again go into white noise later.

Sender
Release Information
Release: 9.1.2 2024-09-28
Maintainer: Tim Curtis © 2014
Documentation: View release notes, View setup guide
Contributors: View contributors
License: View GPLv3
Platform Information
RaspiOS: 12.7 Bookworm 64-bit
Linux kernel: 6.6.51 64-bit
Pi model: Pi-5B 1.0 4GB
MPD version: 0.23.14

Input / Output
Sourcehttps://playerservices.streamtheworld.com/api/livestream-redirect/WBBEFMAAC.aac
Source formatCompression
Decoded toPCM 16 bit 44.1 kHz, Stereo, 32 kbps
Output formatPCM 16 bit 48 kHz, Stereo, 1.536 Mbps
ALSA modeLoopback
Audio chainMPD → Multiroom Sender
LoopbackOn
DSP operations
ResamplingOff
QualityOff
SelectiveOff
CamillaDSPOff
Volume typeHardware (On-chip)
Volume levelsKnob 16, ALSA -30.60dB, CDSP 0dB
Audio Device
DeviceMultiroom sender
Mixer nameMaster
InterfaceUSB
FormatsU8, S16_LE
Pi modelPi-5B 1.0 4GB

Receiver1
Release Information
Release: 9.1.2 2024-09-28
Maintainer: Tim Curtis © 2014
Documentation: View release notes, View setup guide
Contributors: View contributors
License: View GPLv3
Platform Information
RaspiOS: 12.7 Bookworm 64-bit
Linux kernel: 6.6.51 64-bit
Pi model: Pi-3B 1.2 1GB
MPD version: 0.23.14

Receiver2
Release Information
Release: 9.1.2 2024-09-28
Maintainer: Tim Curtis © 2014
Documentation: View release notes, View setup guide
Contributors: View contributors
License: View GPLv3
Platform Information
RaspiOS: 12.7 Bookworm 64-bit
Linux kernel: 6.6.51 64-bit
Pi model: Pi-4B 1.4 2GB
MPD version: 0.23.14

[Tim Curtis]

Very odd.

In the Sender and both receivers click the Advanced options button and set Opus frame size to 20 and see if that helps.

[Zeable]

Very odd.

In the Sender and both receivers click the Advanced options button and set Opus frame size to 20 and see if that helps.

All were set to 20ms but does not appear to have made any difference in the white noise issue.

However, just for giggles, I adjusted it to the max of 40ms to see if there is any improvement. While the issue is still there, as in the audio still drops and goes to white noise, it now recovers in about 3-7 seconds. Still annoying but the music at least comes back without the need to reset. I haven't noticed any sustained drops using 40ms.

[Tim Curtis]

What kind of network?

The multiroom feature depends on consistent, high throughput, low latency network where the receivers are all within a millisecond or so of each other in terms of receiving packets from the sender.