jackelliott
Joined: 29 Sep 2015 Posts: 2
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Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2015 1:48 am Post subject: Refresh server buffer? |
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Our community radio station is using Icecast server on a PC at the radio station to receive streams over the Internet from local music festivals around town, and a copy of iTunes running on a Mac on the station's LAN is our listen client that plays the stream into the station's audio system and then to the FM broadcast.
Normally, the latency between the source client and the listen client is about six seconds, which is pretty okay. But if the source client stops running for whatever reason (computer being computers), or the Internet connection between the source client drops and we have to reconnect, a fallback mount file kicks in until we reconnect.
But after the source client reconnects, the latency from the remote source client and the listen client on the LAN increases to about 30 seconds. This is a bit unwieldy.
It's a little unclear to me whether the latency after reconnect is caused by Icecast waiting a while for the source client to refill a buffer before it switched over from the fallback, or whether Icecast switches over as soon as it hears the remote source client, but buffers the data before streaming it to the listen clients.
Either way, it's not a "slow listener" issue: By connecting to the server from the remote location I can hear that both the listen client on the station's LAN, and my remote listen client show the same latency.
If the Icecast server is stopped then restarted, latency goes back down to six seconds. But the listen client that feeds the FM broadcast (iTunes) simply stops playing when the stream stops, and it has to be restarted by hand. It does not attempt reconnect.
Is there a way to "flush" the queue in Icecast to reduce this built-up latency without stopping the stream so iTunes doesn't stop? |
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