Subsonic Forum

I have scoured the internet and searched through these forums for an answer. I have subsonic running on a Dell Poweredge 700 server tower with a Pentium 4 (2.8GHz) processor and 1GB of RAM running Windows XP SP3 on a DSL broadband connection. I have used this server in the past to run Simplify Media, my favorite and by far the best streaming program I have used thus far. When Simplify's demise was announced I went on the search for a replacement. I have tried Orb, AudioGalaxy, StreamToMe, ooTunes, etc. All have worked and streamed to me; however, all had their downsides.

I say all of that to say that I have been trying Subsonic and so far I love it. It has a rich feature set, but I am having a problem with playlists. I am currently using iTunes to control my media, although I am not married to it. I am willing to try other media players. I would be more than willing to happily donate to the project if I can get playlists to work.

Let me provide you with more details about my setup, the issues I am having and the steps I have already tried.

I provided my specs for my home server above. I have the OS, iTunes, and Subsonic all installed on the Local Disk (C:\). I have a second internal hard drive (Z:\) in the server with all of my media files on it. All of my music is at 128 and I have limited the iPhone app and the Subsonic server to this bitrate.

I have pointed Subsonic to my Z:\Music folder for all of my music files. I have the playlists saved in C:\subsonic\playlists. They are all m3u files pointing to the music files stored on the Z:\ drive. I am fairly confident that I have all of the settings correct.

I can get to my server through a web broswer and see all of my playlists files. I click load and the page seems to do something, but then returns to the home screen but nothing appears in the playlist frame. I also have an iPhone 3Gs running iOS 4.0.1 with the iSub app (I have tried z-subsonic) as well. Both can see the playlists, but both fail to load the playlist.

My playlist are fairly large and I use them to listen to my music more often than not. I can get to individual files and folders both through the web browser, my iPhone and a friend's Droid. Like I was saying, I generally use playlists to listen to my music collection on shuffle. I have playlists ranging in size from 1000 to 10000 songs. They are built in iTunes currently using smart playlists and based on genres.

I have tried to export the playlists to m3u files directly from iTunes, directly from mediamonkey, and using the iTunesexport tool. I noticed that the mediamonkey export had in addition to the filepaths a bit of EXT data. After some digging I found that iTunesexport could export the same information. I have tried that to no avail.

I originally had the playlists on the same drive as the music and that did not work. I have tried it on the same drive as the subsonic install and that is not working.

Can anyone tell me if there is a file limit on playlists? If not, any help to get this working would be most appreciated.

Interesting question, that I do not know the answer to, but I would suggest first testing a simple playlist using SS to make sure it is at least working properly.

I knew I was gonna forget somehting. I have tested a one song playlist both on the phone and in the web browser and it worked just fine in both. I created the playlist in iTunes as well.

Is there anything else with my configuration that could be causing problems. Should the subsonic install, playlists folder, and media folders all be on the same drive? Should I be using a static IP for the server rather than UPnP to open the port?

I have the iSub developer helping me and he says he can get the playlists to load, but it takes a long time to get a response from the subsonic server. Once he gets the response, the data flows pretty easily. Is there something I am doing wrong in my setup as described that could be causing this? Or anything I can do to make it faster?

All playlists that you want to access through SS must be in the directory spoecified in "Settings/General" It is not necessary tofor everything to be on the same drive, I have SS installed on my C: drive and all the media and playlists are on F: Problems can arise when you get into using NAS storage, or data stored on another server, but that can be solved as well. If you're just using local drives, you should be OK as long as the folders sre defined properly in Settings.

I ALWAYS recommend using a Static IP. Generally you want to assign a high address within the range so that interference from DHCP is unlikely, e.g. 192.168.1.253. I also always uncheck the autoconfiguration under network setting as I don't want something changing what I already have working. Plug and Pray works sometimes, but I don't want to rely on it.

Subsonic performance depends on many issues. Processing power, connection speed, media library size, and network configuration are all factors. It's a weakest link system that can be affected by anything not being up to the task. The trick is to identify where your bottleneck is and how to best adapt to get the best performace possible from your unique configuration. I love hardware and can't resist upgrading CPU, memory, and overall hardware performance whenever I can. Is your car a little slow? Put a V-8 in it and things improve dramattically. That said, properly configuring everything else can improve performance. Good router setup, gigabit lan operating efficiently, good Wifi setup, a server that doesn't have internal errors in the OS or is otherwise bogged down with other processing tasks, all these things can affect SS performance.

I have posted my key tips many times on the forums. You may benefit from the read, although I admit, it is a bit lengthy, there is a wealth of good information there that may help you identify things that can be slowing you down.

GJ51 wrote:I have posted my key tips many times on the forums. You may benefit from the read, although I admit, it is a bit lengthy, there is a wealth of good information there that may help you identify things that can be slowing you down.

Any chance you could point me to where this might be? A simple search yields far too many results.

Start with a fresh Java install to the latest version. If you have Java already, uninstall, then do a clean install of the latest version. If you use a 64 bit browser be sure to get both 32 & 64 bit Java.
http://www.java.com/en/download/faq/java_win64bit.xml If you have SS installed, uninstall it and delete the Subsonic directory (Windows).
Disable any DHCP services in any VOIP equipment or other additional routers you have. Only ONE router/device per network should handle DHCP assignments.

Most problems are due to improper setup on the router. Setting a fixed internal ip address for the server and proper port forwarding rules on the router are essential for long term stability.

Never use port 80 or 443 - ISP's often use or block them and these are also the default ports on WHS for the remote login page. 8080,8081, work fine. 808X always works. I've seen others use different port numbers that have caused install failures.

READ: http://monroeworld.com/android/subsonic/ This is the Windows tutorial but most of the concepts apply to any setup. Specific setup instructions for other Operating Systems are available in the Tutorials section. http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=6 and on the Subsonic website at http://www.subsonic.org/pages/installation.jsp

In Subsonic Settings/Network - UNCHECK " Automatically configure your router to allow incoming connections to Subsonic (using UPnP or NAT-PMP port forwarding)." make sure to hit the SAVE button, you may have to scroll down to see it depending on your screen size. UPnP or Plug & Pray works sometimes, but not very often and you're better off learning what's going on anyway. You're dipping your toe into the network mgmt. thing anyway, might as well learn what's going on as home networks don't get simpler as time goes on. As your network gets more complex, you're going to have to learn this stuff! No time like the present.

Manually assign a fixed intenal IP and static route to your server at the upper end of the address range of the router, out of the way of DHCP, e.g. 192.168.1.254

Set up your router manually. uPNP might work, but most often it doesn't. Learing how to do it will be a skill you'll love having as your network grows.

Check the Subsonic Control Panel to make sure it's using the right port you're going to use. I typically use 8080 - 440, 8081 - 441, etc.

Set up port forwarding in your router to direct traffic on the selected port to your server. Consult your router documentation to do this, they are all a bit different.

Learn your external IP address assigned by your ISP. Go to http://www.canyouseeme.org/ enter your SS port number and click the Check box to be sure the Subsonic port is open.

Test your setup by entering your external IP:port# to see if it connects. e.g. http://98.117.185.5:8084/ If it works, you're good to go.

Thank you sir. I have followed these instructions. I uninstalled everything and reinstalled it. The issue I am having now is that I am being told that my server name is already in use. How do I regain access to my server name?

larryo108 wrote:Thank you sir. I have followed these instructions. I uninstalled everything and reinstalled it. The issue I am having now is that I am being told that my server name is already in use. How do I regain access to my server name?

Ensure you do not have ANY other installs of Subsonic running. Stop the newest service on your server, and go to Settings/Network and UN-check 'Access..' and click Save. If you have donated, ensure you have registered your new server, by using the reg code provided in your email. After the registration entry (Donate link now gone?), nav back to Settings/Network and check the 'Access..' box, and click save. Restart service on the server. Test.

Thank you for the response Alpha. However, I do not have a registration code. I have not donated yet because I am still trying to figure out my playlist issues during my 30-day trial period. Without the ability to get my playlists to load, I will have to move onto another streaming service.

Just saying, when I load a 500 items playlist, it takes about 30secs to load. 1000-10000 seems unreasonable. Also, another thing I heard some mobile port dev say was this:
All the playlist data is received as url parameter, and since the url has a fixed length somewhere (in the browser, in the server too) the playlist item count is limited by that.

Not sure if this is only true for his mobile ss client or for the official ss webUI too, you might want to ask Sindre Mehus (the main dev) about this, only he may now the ultimate answer.

They me be large playlists, but I don't think they are unreasonable. Like I said, I prefer to listen to my music by grouping different genres together and listening on shuffle.

I have used other streaming services and none have ever not been able to load my playlists, just had other issues. Lots of buffering and other issues. I love the ability to cache the next song, but I need to be able to access my playlists.

I am also trying mytunesrss at the same time to see if that will work, but I can't even get to my server using mytunesrss.

Thanks for the reply though.

Just saying, when I load a 500 items playlist, it takes about 30secs to load. 1000-10000 seems unreasonable.

This is a good description of the behavior, but I also disagree that 1000-10000 seems unreasonable. Considering how great just about every other aspect of subsonic is, this issue is incredibly frustrating. It's hard to imagine a good reason that the playlist sizing issue hasn't been receiving more attention from the developers. Every time I've poked around google over the last few months for forum discussions about this issue, I find a few more people complaining about it. Every time a new version of SS is released, this is the first thing I check.

For the record, I run subsonic server on an athlon x2 3ghz box with 4gb of memory. The machine runs winxp 64 bit and sits on 3mbit/1mbit ATT fiber. It manages to stream songs and serve up moderate sized playlists beautifully. Larger playlists choke subsonic most of the time...both android and standard web clients.

I admire anyone who has the fortitude to listen to more than two days worth of music. Not to mention the patience to assemble such a list.

You're all better men than I am.