Icecast Streaming Media Server

[WAB]

Lately I've came up with the following odd thing about my Icecast server: Clients, for some time interval, hear cuts in the music (like a bad CD) aka bad stream. Whats more, at no time, it keeps buffering again and again and that some times make the client to be kicked out. The higher the stream quality the more often the problem occurs.

Note that server and client do not encounter any bootleneck issues.
Average simultaneous listeners are 5 and peak 12.
Limits in xml are:

[karlH]

queue size is very small, we usually set to 500k not 100k especially if the burst is 64k.

karl.

[WAB]

Well, this seems to BE a problem.
I've tested this in several PCs with different broadban speeds (from 1Mbps to 100Mbps).
I've changed my settings according to your suggestion. No effext at long term
I think I mostly used winamp. I say I think because I hadn't paid attention to the player I'm using till I came accross this: http://icecast.imux.net/viewtopic.php?t=3950
At random times, and at random PCs (mostly with lower, but yet enough, bandwidth) winamp keeps "skipping" the "track" (like a scratched cd) and after a while it keeps buffering-playing-buffering (the result is the "cd-clipping"). Till now Windows Media Player, does not seem to have this problem even playin on 256 MP3 Stereo Quality (winamp fails on 48kbps Mono in the same PC at the same time).
I'm using Winamp 5.52 and WMP 10.
My guess is that this has nothing to do with client's Internet connection or server's load.The continuous bufferings indicate that there is a disconnection after an interval (interval starts from some secs and ends up less than 1sec)

Well I have the feeling my post looks quite fuzzy, but please give it a try everybody, because I don't want to come up with saying to people to prefer WMP to winamp

[karlH]

In cases of repeated buffering in the player, the usual cause is down to bandwidth starvation. Either because the link is saturated or the latency is too big for the TCP settings. If all players have problems then maybe it's the source client feeding at the wrong rate. Obviously there is nothing for us to check so we can only talk in general.

karl.

[WAB]

Well if so, I'll try to use an alternative to Muse for source client.
The link isn't saturated and the thing only occurs in winamp though.
Settings for latency are:

[karlH]

If there are players that can connect to the stream and playback without problems then it won't be an issue of the source client.

Don't think that the physical line is the only limiting factor on a network connection. Any connection over TCP will be subject to throttling depending how much can be sent without some confirmation. I may connect to your server and be only able to get 100kbps which is not enough for a 128k stream.

Without specific information to test with then it makes it impossible to check anything. It could be network problem or an old icecast version or maybe metadata inserts on a non-ogg stream. There's just no specifics to go on.

karl.

[WAB]

I know, you're right. I just pointed at that old thread in case it was actually an EOF problem.
Anyway are there any tools you suggest I could run to determine what are the real characteristics of my line?
I'll leave it here and let you know if I come up with something new, but as it is only with Winamp, it can't be a line problem.

[robertut]

I have a similar issue with stream transcoder. The transcoder keeps buffering, playing, stopping, reconnecting, buffering.... in an endless circle. All players are playing well, and stream transcoder transcodes well other streams, except mine.

[karlH]

It's unlikely to be a connection issue if winamp has an issue but other players (on the same machine) don't (not impossible but unlikely). Try disabling metadata requests which were a potential problem in earlier versions of icecast. Check to see if there are any issues with errors on the link, you may be experiencing lots of retransmissions, if you ftp/http a large file from the machine is the throughput near 100mbit/s for instance (or whatever the max link speed is).

karl.

[WAB]

I used BS player too, with no problem. Winamp really seems to be the problem. I guess not updating the metadata from Icecast is of no use as Winamp will always be checking for it. So, does anyone know how to disable metadata request from winamp?

[karlH]

It was in the preferences/options for the plugin, but it has been some time since I last used it. If it was metadata then we would of heard more about it. Maybe the winamp install is broken somehow, but do check the state of your network connection, if there are errors then it would affect performance.

karl.