Playback problems in Android app on Jellybean

[Skinjob]

This is an issue that's been around for a while in the Subsonic android app and is still an issue in the Madsonic app. When streaming MP3, playback pauses even though there is plenty of bandwidth and plenty of cached data. There is always an initial pause at about 8 seconds into the track, followed by apparently random pauses later on. When streaming Ogg the problem is more severe with the song restarting or skipping to the next track in the middle of the prior track. Based on posts in the SS forum, it looks like the problem only occurs on Jellybean. ICS seems to be OK.

Again, the problem is specific to the Andriod app and seems to have something to do with how the streams are being cached. On the same device, MiniSub works perfectly, so it definitely not an issue with bandwidth, transcoding, etc.

Here is a discussion from the SS forum describing the problem:
http://forum.subsonic.org/forum/viewtop ... ode#p48256
The original poster thought it was a transcoding issue, so I skipped to the posts that actually describe the real problem so you wouldn't have to read the whole thing.

Here's the bug report:
http://sourceforge.net/p/subsonic/bugs/64/

[gurutech]

What device are you using? My S3 has no issues at all, running the most recent Android OS (which I believe is JB)

[Skinjob]

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been super busy the last few days.

My phone is an HTC EVO 4G LTE, which is Android 4.1. The issue also happens on my Asus TF300 tablet, which is Android 4.2. On the Asus tablet it usually pauses about 15 seconds into a track, but doesn't seem to get the random pauses like the phone does. It also doesn't seem to happen on every track. The phone always pauses about 8 seconds into every track and also gets random pauses.

My wife's Motorola Photon Q is Android 4.0 and doesn't seem to get the pauses.

[Skinjob]

What device are you using? My S3 has no issues at all, running the most recent Android OS (which I believe is JB)

Do you by chance cache to the SD card on your S3? One of the posts in the subsonic forum thread I linked to mentioned that it seems to be a problem when caching to the internal storage and that caching to the SD card works OK.

I'm not using an SD card in my EVO since it has plenty of internal storage, but I think I have some old SD cards lying around I could test with. I'll post back with results.

[gurutech]

I'm not using an SD card at all. I'm actually trying to NOT cache any songs, as I have a "signature" file that updates with the song I'm listening to, however it only works as intended when listening from a desktop. When listening on my phone, the signature lists what is currently being cached, so it's actually a few songs ahead of what I'm actually listening to.

[Skinjob]

Finally got around to trying caching on an SD card and it didn't seem to make any difference. It still always pauses at the beginning of a track at about the number of seconds you set it to buffer, and then randomly a few times throughout the track after that. Setting it to prefetch only 1 song instead of 3 (where I normally have it) might help the random pauses a bit, but it's hard to say since it's intermittent.

[Skinjob]

FYI,
The latest 5.1 android app seems to have solved the playback problems I described above. Playback is stable now on both my phone and my tablet.

Madevil - don't know what you did, but thank you!