Tidal dropouts - probable cause

There hasn't been much (or any!) reaction to this posting here, but although I don't use Tidal I would like to thank Johnell for drawing this to our attention because I had been musing about getting VM to upgrade my broadband to 300 Mbps so that I could get a Superhub 3. So now I won't be doing that!

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David

I've actually got the Virgin engineer here as I'm typing and he says this is a known issue with the superhub3 that is causing real problems for online gamers.  With that in mind it would be interesting to hear from anybody who is experiencing the drop-outs that isn't using a Virgin superhub3 or one of the cable modems on the list.

I pulled the superhub 3 out and luckily I still had the 2 Ac. The issue is the three has major issues with certain routers up the chain from the house resulting in drop outs at regular intervals. It was very frsutrating and whilst they denied there was an issue they allowed me to swap back to the 2.

there was a 180 page forum post on this very issue. No idea if they have fixed it yet.

One benefit of having a Virgin engineer who knows what he is doing is that he has got the broadband working as well as he can.  It's a shame I'm going to have to revert to the 200Mbps service just to use Tidal:

Impressive speeds but the ping isnt great at 18 msecs. I can normally get 6 msecs on my VM 200 Mbps service, which makes your point really.

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David

Ping test happily cruising along at 12 milliseconds then a 922 millisecond spike..........bye bye Tidal. 

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing. @Phil  Harris are you following this?

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David

David, I flagged this thread up earlier this morning for Phil to see. 

Thanks Richard. It's very unusual to see this level of detail about a problem potentially affecting such a large proportion of the UK-based customers of Naim streamers, so I thought Phil would be interested, as you did too!

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David

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, there is a test that Tidal users who are experiencing regular drop-outs can run in real time to see if it is an increase in latency times that is causing their problem.

If you have a pc or laptop, open a command window and type: "ping -t 8.8.8.8" (without the quotation marks), this sets up a constant ping to a Google server.  Then start using Naim/Tidal and wait for the drop out to occur.  As soon as it does, do a Ctrl-c in the command window to stop the ping and you will get the minimum, maximum and average ping times for that run.   I usually have an average of around 25ms which is a tad high but I see peaks from 700ms upwards and each one of these has caused Tidal to drop-out.

Please bear in mind that all this test will do is prove if it is latency that is causing your problem, it obviously won't tell you what is causing the latency.  However, and I may be completely wrong in this assumption, the fact that the ping is going to a google server which has nothing whatsoever to do with Tidal points to it being caused by something common.  Draw your own conclusions.

bump.

Hi, I have just seen this, although the latency and subsequent UDP  jitter issues typically used online gaming and real time apps is different to Tidal streaming which uses TCP (where jitter is mostly irrelevant) adding latency is not going to help, especially if nearing marginal conditions on the Naim streamer... but the occasional latency spike won't generally be an issue again you already very marginal. From what I understand the new Uniti models should be more resilient to this compared to the earlier Naim streamers...

However I hope Virgin provide you with an alternate/improved modem.

BTW to the post above, ICMP Pings are only going to show specific latency conditions in certain scenarios, and really of limited use here unless there is something fundamentally wrong.. which would probably affect everything/most things. To look at latency issues here that affect Tidal you need to monitor the line and the TCP flow with WireShark or similar and Analyzer the dynamics... and I have done this with Naim development.. the odd increase in latency for a non QoS enabled service, like on the public internet is fine and normal . This is why TCP is used for the transfers.

The OP is using the latest and current VM superhub 3 and the only alternative is to go back to an earlier Superhub (2 or 2ac) neither of which VM have stock, although from time to time they recover one from a customer moving onto their top tier broadband.

From googling the issue, the chip manufacturer hasn't yet issued a firmware upgrade, which as its nearly a year and affects many well known cable modem products used in North America, probably means that they have found that can't in practice solve it with a firmware upgrade or that the cable modem implementations can't upgrade that firmware with a software update. It feels rather like they will need a Superhub 4 avoiding that chip set.

In the meantime the OP is going to roll back to a Superhub 2 and it will be interesting to hear if that fixes his problem, which it probably will as it started when he was "upgraded" to a Superhub 3.

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David

I do think this will  make marginal difference at best however, the only way to tell is look at the TCP trace. However TCP is designed to manage exactly this (varying timing and quality of connection), and this quite different from real time apps which use UDP which are essentially fire and forget streams where the timing of the packet can be important. It is the average latency that is important with TCP over several seconds (which in this case is showing 23mS on the shown path which is excellent)... with UDP (as with real time apps such as gaming and enterprise voice) the spot latency at a point in time affects the packet at that time..and therefore that peak will have an issue.

With Tidal I quite often see occasional peak latencies to their Akamai servers - this is quite normal.... but a high average latency then incurring an additional peak can be too much for the older Naim streamers. On the trace one would look for packet resend requests following that peak latency to see if the TCP engine recovers.

The other caution is that Ping uses ICMP and can be handled differently to other IP packet types such as TCP and UDP and so the timing shown can be down to the responding ICMP state machine... one would typically need to look at multiple sources to gain any sort of definitive idea of what is exactly happening .. although such a peak suggest further investigation.

Simon, you obviously have extensive knowledge of this area, indeed it was you stating the problem is down to latency that led me to my find out what my possible/probable cause is.  I'm still waiting for the Virgin engineer to pop back and refit the SH2 but he's doing it as a favour so I'm loathe to chase him.  

I'm paying extra for the 300 Mbps service which the SH2 cannot handle so I'll see what speeds I get and whether to save some money or not.  TBH the speed is a secondary consideration and as long as the drop-outs stop I'll be happy. 

I hope I haven't mislead people into thinking that the SH3 is the sole cause of this problem as there are so many other variables but everything points to it in my case.  I will report back.........

@Johnell, I also suggest it is worth contacting Naim just to see if they have a later firmware for your streamer.... it might be beta but it might address your issues better... good luck with your Virgin hub issue, and do let us know how you get on... yes the latency issues may well be the issue here,  but the occasional short latency spike shouldn't unduly affect things unless already all on or close to the edge.... grabbing a network trace is the only way to be sure to see what is happening

Richard told us he did refer the thread to Phil a few days ago, but he didn't respond with any suggestions......

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David

Hi, I have posted on the Virgin forum regarding this. Interesting to see what they come back with http://community.virginmedia.c...-issues/td-p/3532592  

As I said in my first post, Virgin denied all knowledge of this when I put the question to them.  What I find even more unacceptable is that according to the guy that came to my house, Virgin have not even advised their own engineers that there is a problem with the SH3 even though they are regularly dealing with the issues.  It's doubtful whether you'll get any answers in their forum but please keep us posted.  

I'm hoping to have my SH2 refitted this week, did you keep yours?  

Hi, no I didn't . I posted the thread to encourage others to lobby for a solution and statement. I am expecting something  back about unsupported devices . 

This has been ongoing for many months, long before you and I got the problem, and there are numerous forum threads about it.  With all due respect, if the ongoing lawsuit hasn't forced a resolution I very much doubt another forum thread will.  

Hopefully Intel will come up with a solution that can be "flashed" onto affected modems but I wouldn't bank on anything happening until the lawsuit is resolved. 

Fair comment, I think I'll just move to BT. Good luck ! 

You too mate....just make sure the BT modem isn't on the list!!!!!!

I have a Superhub 3 and have absolutely no problems streaming tidal, or anything else for that matter, although I don't stream Tidal via a Naim device.  I was surprised by this to be honest

I am using MacMini +  Audirvana plus specially to stream TIDAL and having absolutely no issue, but of course my ISP + router are not the same as the OP's.