Gapless issues on 3.21 thread vanished?

Any word from naim support whether they've replicated this problem and/or are working on a solution?

Nope, still dropping. Curios how it is more noticeable with some albums that others.

Worth a try.

Over to you Naim.

Dusty,

Agree, not been an issue until now when I decided to get nostalgic with  the Moody Blues On a Threshold of a Dream and the gapless issue has hit me with a thud dropping out several times.

Cheers

Bill

I hadn't read this thread, but having just been brought out of my reverie by an unexpected gap whilst listening to Hookworms, you can add my name to the list of unimpressed customers.

FYI I was playing FLAC over wired network with no transcoding.

regards

Nick

Played about a bit with Wireshark this afternoon to see when the NDS hits Asset to pre-fetch the next track - looks rather late to me. With 16/44.1 material the buffer seems to last 15-20 seconds; that's how much time the music continues to play after the NDS has stopped reading the current track from Asset. The next track does not get fetched until the final second or less, so if Asset takes a while to process the request and start serving, the buffer could well be completely empty. On 24/96 material the buffer lasts about 5 seconds, but again the pre-fetch is in the final second.

Now, I don't have perfect time sync between my asset server, my Mac where I'm running an RDP session to the server and my ears, but it does seem that the pre-fetch is rather late. I wish I'd done this before upgrading so I could see if the old version had a different pre-fetch strategy, say when the buffer is 75% empty.

Also, the buffer indicator on nStream only starts to drop in the final seconds, not steadily from 15-20 seconds out (16/44.1 material) as you would expect from the observed buffering behaviour.

None of this helps fix the issue... but an interesting hour humouring my inner geek.

Bump....again.

@TJ - Saw you post recently on another nStream thread, so am hoping you will do so here as well. 

Thanks.

Hook

Dave, interesting thanks.. Sometimes when doing gapless the error gap is just not long enough to get a pause and you get a crackle/click instead... a little disconcerting.. This is on the NDX.

I have the same issue with a SU, homeplugs, synology. Just chased support for a response, y'know any response - like we're looking into it, you're imagining it, a fix is on the way - just any response really.

Yes Simon, it's usually just a small glitch, which is why I expected the problem to be an internal buffer management issue. I was hoping the pre-fetch occured a few seconds before the buffer was exhausted, which would definately point to an internal issue stitching the 2 tracks together before feeding to the DSP/DAC. With the pre-fetch being relatively late, it could still be a latency issue when the uPnP server responds. Hello Naim....? Anyone care to comment?

Dave, I think you have it in a nutshell. Hopefully we will hear from TJ or other that the fix is on its way.

Simon

TJ has confirmed naim are looking into this issue.

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...16#29865740418915116

Just listening to Maceo Parkers Soul Classics (a live recording): gaps! Tried Stefano Bollani & Hamilton de Holanda (O Que Sera) before - which has also been live recorded - with the same result. To say it frankly, with the new firmware SU doesn't play gapless anymore!

SU + Synology NAS + 1000baseT Ethernet

I guess we could do that here while we're waiting for TJ's progress update:

How about

Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Abbey Road (side 2)

The Beatles (White Album)

The Dark Side Of The Moon

Wish You Were Here

The Wall

Ok, as much as this bug is "bugging" me. I'm surprised at how much gapless music I actually listen to.

SO NAIM, come up with a fix..now. Not in the New Year, please.

Nd5xs, flac, no gapless problems. checked with sos band "In one go" and Chic live in Japan.

Dirk, remember the issue is intermittent. Also advising what your buffer levels go down to between tracks would be telling. It's when the buffer occasionally drains to 0% we hear the glitch or gap.

Confirming what upnp server you are using would be interesting. 

If your upnp has a very fast database and a quick access NAS it might be you are mitigating the late pre fetch that Dave observed on the LAN with the later Naim firmware.

My guess, and it is only a guess, is that this issue may have come about through modifications of the code for the Party Mode function.

Simon

Hi Simon, I am using Twonky Media on QNap 119. Nd5XS is connected by WLAN. Buffer goes down to 0 for a millisec and up again. Still there is no drop. Counterchecked again with Luther Vandros "Live radio city music hall 2003". I swear: no problem! 

Interesting, perhaps it effects the NDX and NDS only?? I'd be suprised, but Naim are on the case anyway so hopefully for the rest of us we should get a patch before too long.

Simon

New buffering symptom this evening.

Playing DSD transcoded wav (176.4/24) Shostokovich Symphony No. 5 via JRiver on my wired ND5XS using the play queue the buffer emptied 5 seconds from the end of the first movement and playback stopped completely. I scrolled the track back (using S2T on my ipad) a couple of minutes and playback started but again stopped 5 seconds from the end with the buffer empty. I had to go back into the play queue in order to get the next movement to play.

Pretty much giving up listening on my ND5XS at the moment.

Hi, to be honest that sounds more an issue with your upnp server than anything else. How have you transcoded the DSD file? See if it still happens if you use a different upnp server temporarily.

Simon

Simon you may well be right (I haven't had a repeat of this problem) as I am still getting to grips with the settings for JRiver and have issues such as it skipping tracks when switching between DLNA servers for files at different sample rates/bit depths.

Would like to see an update on progress on this gapless playback problem nevertheless.

I spoke too soon. It has happened again i.e. a track stopped 2 seconds before the end (during a silence). The buffer showed as 0% and it wouldn't proceed to the next track on the same album. Am using JRiver and configured a separate virtual DLNA/UPnP server to handle DSD iso files which it outputs as 24bit 176KHz PCM and these show as WAV in n-stream. Not sure whether there are other UPnP servers which can handle DSD iso.s so I haven't tried your suggestion. The problem hasn't yet occured with other file types although I do get the "skipped track - can't play" message quite frequently especially for the first track of an album added to a play queue. This issue arises regardless of the file type.

I'm beginning to think that there is a communication issue between the n-stream controller and JRiver but that it might not necessarily be the fault of the JRiver server if the pre-fetch buffering in the new firmware/n-stream is flakey. It could also be that my ND5XS has developed a fault as I did have issues when updating to the 3.21 firmware which stalled and had to be aborted and restarted.

With so many issues and little or no feedback from Naim (on this gapless issue at least) I'm really not sure whether my problems are caused by faulty hardware or by my upnp server configuration. 

Nstream is probably an innocent party in this. All it does it give the media file reference to the renderer(network player) so it can fetch the file from the upnp server. In turn Nstream is fed these references by the upnp server. So in all honesty it does point to the upnp server issue rather than anything else if there is a corruption in trying to play a fetched file from the upnp server.. or the file is cutoff prematurely

Simon

A quick update. I've disabled the JRiver renderer and control point options and things are more stable now (apart from the gapless issue see below). I think that JMC's control point functionality may have been conflicting with that of nstream and causing some of the issues I was having. Thanks for the advice Simon.

Have tried playing Pink Floyd's DSOTM from a USB stick into my ND5XS and had 2 dropouts (between tracks 3/4 and 6/7). The buffer behaviour is as described earlier i.e. it starts to empty between 5 and 7 seconds before the end of a track and sometimes is empty when the new track starts.

Clearly if the gapless problem occurs on the USB input it cannot be simply UPnP server related but a problem with the new firmware.

Would like to know what is happening about a fix for this issue.