[PROBLEM] Audio glitching when MPD's FLAC streamer is activated

[Always_In_The_Moode]

Hi,

Has anyone using MPD's streamer with the FLAC encoder noticed that the audio playing out of Moode, particularly ones that are Hi Res, seem to glitch near the beginning of the track? 

I activated the MPD FLAC streamer and enjoyed the improved sound quality when streamed to my car, but when I returned home to listen through my main HiFi set up, I noticed glitches that weren't there before.

I turned off the MPD FLAC streamer and all is well again.

I appreciate this is more likely to do with MPD itself than moode, but I wanted to check it wasn't just me before I explore how to report this to the MPD maintainers. 

Thank you!

[Tim Curtis]

You mean MPD's HTTP server option in Moode Audio Config?

1. What model Pi are u using?
2. Try the LAME encoder instead of FLAC. LAME encodes the source at 320K MP3 and should produce excellent quality.

[TheOldPresbyope]

I vaguely recall someone else commenting on something like this but, sorry, my google-fu is failing me this morning.

One note. The MPD documentation says of the httpd plugin

It is highly recommended to configure a fixed format, because a stream cannot switch its audio format on-the-fly when the song changes.

Have you tried adding

Code:

format "44100:16:2"

to your httpd audio_output stanza? ETA or something higher if you want "hi-res".

Just a thought.

Regards,
Kent

[TheOldPresbyope]

Turns out I have a few minutes to be a little more long-winded.

1. I get that your glitches seem to be in the DAC stream yet I addressed a technical point about the httpd stream, but MPD and its interaction with ALSA is a complicated machine (to me, at least) and I can imagine some action within it blocking another.

2. In this vein, not only should you be reporting more to us about your setup (what RPi model, DAC, other moOde settings but also looking at the mpd log (/var/log/mpd/log) and reporting any error or warning messsages that may be popping up when changing tracks. You might want to bump the mpd logging level to verbose for this exercise.

3. The MPD maintainer doesn't accept vague problem statements. Be prepared to present detailed information if you go that route. 

The MPD docs say...our bug report should contain:

•    the output of mpd --version
  
•    your configuration file (mpd.conf)
  
•    relevant portions of the log file (--verbose)
  
•    be clear about what you expect MPD to do, and what is actually happening
  

My experience has been that this level of information is expected for almost any question. Further, if not running the current release of MPD, then you may be admonished first to update it and see if your problem still occurs.


Regards,
Kent

[Always_In_The_Moode]

Thanks folks!

It's running on an rPi 4 2Gb RAM, standard moode build OS at the latest version. DAC is Topping D50s.

I just have the music source connected via NFS to the OMV NAS on the same network, the pi is connected via ethernet so bluetooth/wifi are off, DLNA is enabled, I have turned off lazyload as it works quicker with Firefox that way (Safari was just too slow in either mode), worker threads boosted, all other features are off.

I had a look at the MPD GitHub for reporting bugs and yes I see what you mean, they need a lot of detailed information before they will progress.

I will try the suggestion about using LAME MP3 320K and see how that goes.

I will also try to find the time to produce more detailed logs when the glitching happens again.

Thanks again!