Streaming to Android Phone Seizes

[species8472jj]

Hello,

Basically, the problem that I have been having is streaming music from my home to my Android phone. I'll be listening to a song, and it keeps "stopping" and "starting". I know it is not able to download fast enough to keep up with playing the song, so it has to stop - download more of the song - and start up again.

All of my music is stored on a WD My book live (attached directly to the router via an ethernet cable). The subsonic software is housed on a Windows XP machine which is also connected to the router via an ethernet cable. Below, you can see the version of Subsonic and the type of installation I am using (Apache Tomcat).

Version 4.6 (build 2583) – December 6, 2011
Server Apache Tomcat/6.0.35, java 1.6.0_31, Windows XP (44.1 MB / 86.2 MB)

Originally had Subsonic installed as a Windows service. I had read when people installed it using Apache Tomcat, they got faster results, so I thought I would give it a try, however, my results were the same. Also, I am using port 8080 which I believe is Subsonic's default.

And finally, my phone is 3G, and I did do a speed test and got around 1 MB/sec. 3G is not nearly the fastest, but I would think it is adequate for music.

If anybody has any suggestions on how to address this, I'd really appreciate it.

Thank you in advance.

[BKKKPewsey]

Try putting some music directly on the server and testing with that.
That way we will find out if its the WD Live connection that is the problem.

[species8472jj]

Hello,

I tried the suggestion of putting some music on the server to see if the results are improved. I did some testing this morning playing music I copied to the server and music that is saved on my "My Book Live", and the results were very similar.

If anyone has anything else I could try, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thank you.

[BKKKPewsey]

OK we can now eliminate the WD Live from the equation.
Now lets eliminate the phone/3G - access your server from outside your LAN using a normal web browser on internet.
Test again.

[species8472jj]

I accessed the server from work and listened to a few songs with no issue.

That being said, it must be something with the phone.

Are there any tweaks or adjustments that can be done with the phone or the subsonic app that can help with the problem I'm having?

Thanks you!

[bushman4]

One more thing to eliminate... what happens if you use your phone, but on your local WiFi network instead of the 3 (or 4)g network?

Glenn

[species8472jj]

I just tried playing music through my phone on my local network, and it worked fine.

I then turned off the Wi-Fi on the phone, and I tried playng music again, and the the problems returned.

So, I would think that the issue is streaming with 3G.

If there is anything that can be done, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Thank you.

[GJ51]

I have a suggestion, but some find it a bit of work to get right.

The best way to improve performance over 3g is to lower the bandwidth that SS is putting out to the device so that the data rate is low enough that the phone doesn't have to wait on data. Unfortunately, that can also sacrifice quality and depending on how picky you are the lower bitrates can become almost unlistenable depending on what codec you use.

I was able to get the best results by transcoding all of my library to the ogg format for playback on Android. But there are a few complications that have to be dealt with . First, SS depend on ffmpeg to do all the transcoding. Unfortunately, not all versions of ffmpeg are created equal and I have not yet been able to get the latest version of Subsonic to transcode to ogg without problems. The best solution I've found for now is to drop back to vesion 4.4. I also have one site tha's 4.5. using the ffmpeg distributed with 4.4 and it works as well.

Once you are back in 4.4, or using the ffmpeg that comes with 4.4, set up mp3 > ogg using the following string.

ffmpeg -v 0 -i %s -f ogg -vn -acodec libvorbis -ar 44100 -aq 2 -ac 2 -map_meta_data 0:0 -

The quality and bitrate can be adjusted by changing the -aq 2 parameter to aq (0-9). The lower numbers are lower quality and bitrate. - aq 2 provides good quality at about 96kbps and usually maintains the stream even under very poor 3g conditions. You can go up to 4 or 5 and get quality that's virtually undistinguishable from the original and will still work well on most 3g connections.

In the older SS versions, the transcoding is a bit different than it is now in 4.6 and you get seperate enties for each transcoding. Once you enter the new setting only check the box for "enabled" and leave "default" unchecked. Save and then go to the Settings/Players and turn on the setting for mp3 > ogg for your android player that your phone connects with.

Not elegant, but it works.

HTH

[species8472jj]

First a big thanks for everyone's help.

I have one question. Your last suggestion makes sense. You said that I can use SS 4.4's ffmpeg file with 4.6, the current version I'm using.

I do not see an ffmpeg file in the SS directory, so I'm wondering how I would substitute 4.4's ffmpeg.

I hope my question makes sense.

[bushman4]

ffmpeg would be in c:\subsonic\transcode on a windows system... or in %SUBSONIC_HOME%/transcode in general.

Glenn

[species8472jj]

What I did was replace SS 4.6 ffmpeg file with SS 4.4 ffmpeg file.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like you can use ffmpeg (with SS 4.4) with SS 4.6. I entered the transcoding script and enabled, and when I went to play the music, nothing happened.

When I went online to play music, again nothing happened, so I suspect SS 4.6 doesn't like SS 4.4's file.

I don't know if anyone has experienced this.

My next step would be to try to roll back SS 4.6 to SS 4.4, and try the script again to see what happens.

[GJ51]

I've got 4.5 working with the 4.4 ffmpeg. I haven't tried it with 4.6 yet.

If all you're interested in is music, version 4.4 will work just fine. I actually prefer 4.4 for a music only site.

If you want video, I've found that 4.5 or 4.6 works, but even then you need to update to the latest fmpeg to maximize the use of mutiple core processing. When you do that you lose the mp3 > ogg functionality. So I now have one site for mobile use that just serves music, and another site optimized for video.

A bit frustrating, but it works.

[bushman4]

Why not just put two copies of FFMPEG in your transcode directory, one that works well for music and one that works well for video... name one FFMPEGVid.exe or something. Then just set up separate transcoding settings for video and audio extension...

Just a suggestion. I'm not an OGG user, so I must admit, I've just kept current and occasionally just updated my ffmpeg executable and been fine.

Glenn

[GJ51]

That's a great idea!

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a try soon.

[bushman4]

Make sure you are using the STATIC ffmpeg builds, not the SHARED ones. The SHARED ones share functionality between FF apps by "library"-ing the functions into DLL's, which the STATIC ones are all compiled into each executable.

Good luck!

Glenn