[PROBLEM] Airplay stuttering since moOde 9

[Hendrik42]

    I also had trouble with apple classical studdering. Today I changed a setting in the account section.

I am listening for more than an hour and the stuttering disappeared. See photo (sorry the text on the photo is in dutch, but if you open the account setting you will find the corresponding items. To me it looked more an apple music problem.

[Tim Curtis]

What was the specific setting?

[Hendrik42]

@Tim Curtis
Hi Tim,
I will try to translate in English,
There is a setting called Search friends

And right under that
Allow ‘finding on Apple account’
I put both off.
Because I dont like the initiatives from apple on friends and contacts.

Regards
Hendrik

[cramcram]

I wanted to give a quick update on the testing I did related to this issue:

• First, I swapped the SD card to rule out a faulty card as the source of the problem - the issue persisted.
  
• Then, I downgraded from a Raspberry Pi 3B+ to a Raspberry Pi 3B - the issue persisted.
  
• Finally, I upgraded to a Raspberry Pi 4 that I still had lying around - voilà, the issue is gone, and Airplay works flawlessly.
  

So, it seems the problem is related to the Raspberry Pi 3B and 3B+ models. For each of the steps above, I performed a fresh installation of Moode 9.2.0. The issue, at least in my setup, is reproducible.

[Tim Curtis]

Shairport-sync doesn't know about the Pi model so whatever might be causing the issue is prolly somewhere down in Linux or PiOS.

Troubleshooting would involve creating a generic PiOS Lite build with just shairport-sync and then providing a repro to the shairport-sync repo first to get an opinion on what might be happening and then most likely next to Pi Linux devs. Maybe an interested dev will take on the challenge.

[redm123]

Hi all! After having older versions running without any issues, I wanted to update to a more recent 9.x. However, I now also experience these audio dropouts with AirPlay. And AirPlay is my main usage...

My system is a Pi Zero 2 W, with HifiBerry DAC+ Zero. Nothing else connected, no disk, no USB, no Ethernet.

A striking correlation is that when I start playing AirPlay I also see the errors in `dmesg` every few seconds:

Code:

[Fri Apr  4 12:27:42 2025] mmc1: Controller never released inhibit bit(s).
[Fri Apr  4 12:27:42 2025] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_readframes: read 1295 bytes from channel 2 failed: -5
[Fri Apr  4 12:27:42 2025] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_rxfail: abort command, terminate frame
[Fri Apr  4 12:27:42 2025] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_readframes: brcmf_sdio_readframes: glom superframe w/o descriptor!
[Fri Apr  4 12:27:42 2025] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_rxfail: terminate frame

[Fri Apr  4 12:27:46 2025] mmc1: Controller never released inhibit bit(s).
[Fri Apr  4 12:27:46 2025] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_readframes: read 1402 bytes from channel 2 failed: -5
[Fri Apr  4 12:27:46 2025] brcmfmac: brcmf_sdio_rxfail: abort command, terminate frame

When I stop AirPlay, also the errors stop. I don't see the errors in any other situation. Specifically I tried loading disk (dd) and wifi (iperf, netcat, SMB).
Another observation is that pings to the Pi fail when there are dropouts. As if the system briefly freezes ...

It's reproducibly fine with prior 9.x versions. I tried a few versions back and forth. I also get no dropouts with playing radio, or from NAS. 

I wonder what shairport-sync does so special that it triggers this behavior?

[Tim Curtis]

I don't have a 02W but it works fine on all my other systems so not possible for me to repro.

There is a known issue with shairport-sync audio glitches when CamillaDSP is in the audio chain. This issue appears to be caused by incorrect latency being reported back from the CamillaDSP interface.
https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync/issues/1980

The workaround for this is to turn off synchronization in the AirPlay settings screen.

[redm123]

I don't think that's the issue here, or any "normal" audio glitches. And I don't have DSP active.
It seems the whole system gets briefly stuck, as it also does not answer pings when audio drops. This can from <1sec up to several seconds.
And just today the wohl system died (at least SD and Wifi it seems):

Code:

[Sun Apr  6 10:45:25 2025] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_fw_crashed: Firmware has halted or crashed
[Sun Apr  6 10:45:25 2025] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_fil_cmd_data: bus is down. we have nothing to do.
[Sun Apr  6 10:45:25 2025] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_cfg80211_get_tx_power: error (-5)
[Sun Apr  6 10:45:25 2025] mmc1: card 0001 removed

The part I really don't understand, why does it only happen with shairport-sync? (Well, at least from the things I tried) What is so special about it?

I would consider a hardware problem, if it wouldn't just work fine again when I roll back to some Moode release prior 9.x...

[Tim Curtis]

This issue seems to reference the problem you are experiencing
https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/1768

[redm123]

Thanks, didn't check github on the crash, yet. Question is how much this is related, how specific that crash message is... I mean, there could be a bunch of reasons that lead to a crash... It does not reference all the other errors I (and others) are seeing all the time when AirPlay is running (see above).