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LASTFM people, PLEASE read the "Annoying sound skips" issue and respond

 
    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 2 2009, 19h55

    LASTFM people, PLEASE read the "Annoying sound skips" issue and respond

    I am now only a couple of days away from cancelling my subscription.
    The skipping and general crap playback on Windows now is beyond a joke, and I haven't seen a response from LastFM (if you have replied then forgive me).

    I really need to see this sorted. I really love the service, and do NOT want to cancel, but I am now reverting to Winamp, and my own library every day as the LastFM client on windows is simply not working properly.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
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    • Jul 12 2009, 21h00
    Subscription now cancelled. The skipping is still there, and I have seen no explanation or update from the LastFM staff.
    Very sad.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 12 2009, 21h02
    I am just glad I was only on monthly recurring. Furthermore I can no longer recommend the service to my friends and contacts. Big shame. Hopefully it will be resolved at some time and I'll be back... :(

  • Have you ONCE considered the fact that it might have been on YOUR end?

    The best definition of a gentleman is a man who can play the accordion - but doesn't.
    --Tom Crichton
    Using Windows is like walking Middle-Earth: A freaking wizard around every corner.
    • fr0ggeh disse...
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    • Jul 16 2009, 22h29
    Many times. Nothing has changed here. I can stream movies and get a 1 MB/s or more download on good sites.
    It isn't JUST the fact that the service has gone to shit, its the fact that NOBODY from LastFM support has responded to these posts...(This and the original thread)

    And have you ONCE considered that YOUR attitude is one that in real life would leave you lying prone? You don't know me, yet ask a question in such a way that is obviously meant to be belittling, condascending and holier than thou. Perhaps you should consider your own actions before jumping down peoples throats.

    • lozzd disse...
    • Equipe
    • Jul 17 2009, 10h12
    Hi,

    Can you please go into more detail about these skips. This will help us try and figure out where they are being caused. Are you hearing gaps in playback, or just stutters where the song skips forward slightly with no gap?
    If you're using the client, can you play whilst having Help -> Diagnostics -> Radio tab open, and check to see if any of the buffers drop to the very bottom?


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  • Hey,
    I have the same problem. I am not going to cancel though because Last FM work fine on anything but Vista.
    There are buffer drops at the end of the log file. I have manually increased buffer size, but that just buffers the whole song.
    I have also been watching the network activity. The Last FM player is less than 1% most of the time.
    At times the player will buffer a song and skip playing it.

    I hope that is enough information.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 17 2009, 16h57
    Right, thank you for the response lozzd. See the other thread for other people experiencing the same problem.
    Anyway, the skipping is only slight, but happens often. It is as though a millisecond or so of a song disapears, causing a very slight jump in the sound, almost like hitting the top of a cd player during playback.
    Typically, just testing now on my laptop on wifi, and after 3 songs, no skips...
    The buffers don't appear ever to drop below a third full.

    I will test later on my desktop PC.
    Both are running Windows 7 RC.
    The main PC is an Intel E8500 Core 2.processor.
    Problems started occuring long after installing W7, although I do have to run the client in Admin mode as it does not find the soundcard otherwise...(a bug which has been mentioned before)

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 17 2009, 19h09
    Ok. More thorough test. It didnt happen for the first 4 songs, then I heard it. (It doesn't seem to be doing it as much right now).
    Anyway. The glitch was tiny, but like a slight bump on a CD player as I said. I recorded the screen as I was playing and went through it. The software didn't record the sound, so there isn't much point posting it, but the buffers stayed normal. It is as though there is a fault in the music file itself. The one playing was "Shine" by David Gray, so I can't replay through Last FM, but it was towards the end of the song.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
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    • Jul 17 2009, 20h39
    Just to add, it has been very low on skips tonight, but it has done it 4 times in the first 5 minutes of one of my favorite tracks...EF - Tomorrow My Friend...(edit 5 times now)...prompting to close Last FM and fire up Winamp.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 18 2009, 11h47
    Just did another test on a track that was fully playable, it skipped once on 2 of 3 plays each at a different point, buffers solid. (http buffer at 200+ k all the time, the others at between a third and 2 thirds all the time.)

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 19 2009, 22h08
    Ok more testing... Been listening to Spotify for 30 minutes without a single click, pop or skipped beat. Definitley a problem with Last FM player on Windows (7 RC in this case)

    • lozzd disse...
    • Equipe
    • Jul 20 2009, 12h00
    Thanks for the feedback. It does seem to suggest that the problem might be with the actual stream that's being delivered, rather than with the buffers running out on your machine itself.
    If possible, can you note where you hear the skips, and tell me if they occur in the same place every time? (I need to find out whether it's our streaming software, or the files on disk themselves)

    Thanks!


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    • fr0ggeh disse...
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    • Jul 20 2009, 15h00
    See my post 2 up..."Just did another test on a track that was fully playable, it skipped once on 2 of 3 plays each at a different point, buffers solid. (http buffer at 200+ k all the time, the others at between a third and 2 thirds all the time.)"

    The skip occured in different places. And didn't skip on every play. I played the same track 3 times. Twice it skipped, and a different points. Although they were within about 10 seconds of each other.

    Gonna fire it up again now, and see how it's behaving today :)

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 20 2009, 15h54
    More testing. No skips in ~6 tracks... using the web player. Now listening on client, 1 almost unnoticeable skip so far in 5 tracks. It seems to be behaving quite well at the moment.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 21 2009, 23h02
    Skipping quite a bit tonight again... :(

    • lozzd disse...
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    • Jul 22 2009, 11h24
    Thanks for the feedback. We'll have to look into this into more detail, and appreciate your patience.


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    • fr0ggeh disse...
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    • Jul 22 2009, 21h37
    Ok... I fired up the client and got a skip in the first minute of the first track. I switched to web-player and not a flicker so far in the first 15 minutes. It's looking like the web player is okay, and the client has issues, at least on my PC. Someone please write a plugin for Winamp or Helium eh? :) I think my subscription is about to run out now, so I may not be able to report any further findings.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 22 2009, 21h38
    Tempted to do it myself, but haven't written a line of code in 4 years.

  • I'm seeing the same thing ... about once in the middle of five songs for me.

    When it happens the Diagnotics->Radio bars are all plenty full.

    If I had to guess I would say it's probably a mishandled edge case in the DirectSound output buffer. The fun thing about these is they are often very driver specific.

    Good luck. I did audio programming for a few years on Windows and I don't envy whoever has to fix this.

    fr0ggeh, are you using SoundMAX audio drivers?

    • lozzd disse...
    • Equipe
    • Jul 24 2009, 11h08
    mikem2011, thanks for that input. I seem to remember once upon a time we had these issues and it was Windows only, because of DirectSound. However, I think this problem, or at least one similar to it, also happens with the Linux client. It's hard to pinpoint to an exact place at this time.


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    • fr0ggeh disse...
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    • Jul 24 2009, 13h02
    @Mikem2011, I am using an external usb DAC (Beresford 7520), it just says "USB Audio codec" in the settings.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
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    • Jul 25 2009, 14h01
    I am definitely finding the web player to be less trouble than the client. Although this could be a coincidence.

    • fr0ggeh disse...
    • Assinante
    • Jul 26 2009, 14h13
    Oh well. My subscription has now run out. So no more testing. I'll await a solution...

  • lozzd,

    I don't have a linux desktop machine to test on, but I don't see the problem at all on Mac OS X.

    It would be nice if there was a waveOut option on Windows so we could at least tell you if that works or not.

    I'll try the web client in a bit.

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