Gaps between tracks using an external player...

[osh]

I have recently installed Subsonic on my Ubuntu 10.10 server. Previously, I was using Jinzora, and it is still installed, but the lack of development and support caused me to look for alternatives. But, because this is not a problem with Jinzora, makes me think it's an issue with Subsonic...

Note: my entire library is flac...

From home, I use an external player, and before each song plays, there is an extended gap of about ten seconds. This is whether or not I am transcoding. When I look at the m3u file, it doesn't look crazy, (when I compare it to the m3u that jinzora creates, the only major difference is the port 4040 and stream vs. Jinzora's mediabroadcast.php function).

If I use the embedded player, there are no gaps. But that requires me to transcode to mp3, since it seems that the embedded player doesn't recognize flac.

Ideas?

[ytechie]

All I can tell you is that this happens to me as well. Probably has something to do with the backend java services and controllers.

[BKKKPewsey]

What external player are you using?

[osh]

I have tried Totem, VLC and Banshee. All three are pretty much the same, with regards to the delay before playing any song.

[BKKKPewsey]

I have just done a quick test on a flac album using both MediaMonkey and VLC using "external player with playlist" and there were no appreciable delays between tracks
(not exactly gapless though - 1 sec silence max)
If you are using the straight external player then try the with playlist option

[osh]

Hmm, no good. Just tried both again. I thought that maybe it was network traffic causing the issue, since when I tested again yesterday, I was ripping some more CD's. But the embedded java player was gapless but external players and players with playlist were pausing about ten seconds before each track.

I'm going to dig into it a little more. From what I can tell, the m3u from Jinzora is passing some user and song database ID to a php page, and that's doing the lookup and streaming. So it's strange, but maybe it's the port 4040 or how it's going through the router, or something else.

For now, I'll just deal with transcoding to mp3 and using the embedded player. Leaving max bitrate not set should be essentially no difference, especially on these speakers that are attached. (It's not like this laptop has a high end audio card and system attached...)