Could this potentially fix the latency problem? I am not familiar with the airplay/rtp/rtsp protocols, so messing with that is beyond me I'm afraid. I had already considered forking the github repo to experiment with an asynchronous receive thread for the input stream in player.c in the hope that buffering the Airfoil stream independently from the player logic might fix the missed frames problem (replacing the current network receive logic with a simple get buffer call).
It's much better, the drop-outs only lasting a fraction of a second with an occasional longer lapse and (infrequently) the sound speeding up. When I recently saw an Airfoil mention in the development branch comments history, I decided to give the development version a try. No trouble at all streaming from Itunes from Windows or local Spotify or web-players. The "official" version of shairport-sync is totally unusable on this network with Airfoil: every few seconds sound drops out for at least a second, so I gave up.
This seems to fix the problem.This is with the latest development version of shairport-sync on Ubuntu 16.04 (pulse audio), and the latest Airfoil for Windows, on a WiFi network with excellent throughput but high latency (up to 150 msec, via a powerline WiFi adapter). Update: This problem also happens with Media Player Classic (MPC-HC).Īnother workaround is to change the output volume of Winamp or the affected media player to a lower volume – For example 90% instead of full volume. The WaveOut plugin also reports it is using 44100 Hz 16-bit so I’m a bit confused but relieved at having fixed the audio problem.įurther testing with the faulty DirectSound output in the Winamp settings could find no option that fixed it. Simply changing Winamp to use the WaveOut plugin solved my problem. However winamp’s DirectSound output status showed that it was already using this! In their case they say that forcing their application to output in 44100 Hz 16-bit solved their problem. Today I tracked down a topic that might explain why. It keeps the streamed radio or music in-sync around all the output devices so it isn’t annoying walking between rooms or being mid-point and getting clashing beats, music or speech.Ī couple of times I’ve noticed it crackling during loud parts of songs or especially on shoutcast radio streams when using Winamp. I use Airfoil and Airfoil Speakers, a cheap alternative to Apple and Airplay, around our house.