Internet Radio on UnitiStar - BBC2 keeps dropping out

Have you tried “hard wiring” it to the router rather than WiFi - assuming that is practicable with your setup ⁉️

Ps I leave my Star tuned to Radio 2 all day, when I’m at work (to keep Titch the Dog happy). Hard wired to the Sky Q hub it rarely if ever drops out   

I’ve had a few drops outs recently with r2 on my nova. All hard wired and on,y appeared recently.poss a bbc thing?

Hi Steved, unfortunately it appears the Virgin Media Hubs can struggle with throughput and can start to act as a bottle neck and add latency.. I understand recent firmware upgrades have attempted to reduce the issue, but I see anecdotally it has reduced rather than removed the issue.

Now many platforms that are not using time sensitive data flows can happily cope with this.. after all there are protocols in the TCP/IP network to precisely handle this. So why does this often affect Naim devices and not say my Mac, Windows or iOS device?.. well, and certainly with the legacy streamers, the Naim streamers have limited network memory resources compared to a PC... and the way computer platforms handle this sort of bottlenecking is to increase the network buffers at each end... the Naim streamer can only go so far before the flow gets interrupted.. you may find this issue only happens at certain times of the day when your ISP backhaul is busier so additional latency is added.

Now ironically you might find the issue is apparent on Ethernet and not on Wifi or vice versa... Naim tune the network dynamics differently between the two.. and so if the latency is just on the edge... this might be a mitigation.. An alternative is to use an a UPnP media server such as Asset for web radio.. and in which case it acts as a kind of proxy helping insulate you from latency issues.

It's only the VM Superhub 3 that has this problem. Eg my Superhub 2ac is fine.

And it's not a throughput problem, but rather than the Superhub 3, or more specifically the Intel processor chip, allocates too high a priority to some internal housekeeping tasks and that can affect latency, which makes it rubbish for gaming in particular.

I doubt if that is the problem here though. The Superhub 3 is what VM give pretty well everyone now and we don't see that many complaints of BBC iradio not working. Tidal yes, but not BBC. I'm not sure what to suggest though other than restarting everything.

best

David

Thanks all for your replies. I'm afraid hard wiring isn't really viable, at least at the moment. I've also tried Powerline but Naim Support have told me that Powerlines won't work with Uniti Star (seems bizarre to me!). So I'm stuck with wifi for now. I have switched everything off and on again and I'll have another go at Radio 2 in the next few days.

Frustrating that a £3.5k piece of kit, plus the fastest broadband available, is a less enjoyable Radio 2 experience than my 30 year old radio alarm clock!!!

Cheers, Steve

You should definitely try restarting your VM Superhub.

Does the problem affect all BBC stations or just radio 2? Does it make any difference whether you select Radio 2 HD or the ordinary R2?

Does the problem affect different non-BBC internet radio? Like Linn for example or Paradise?

Is it equally bad at different times of day?  For example at the weekend is first thing in the morning, later in the morning, afternoon and evening all equally bad?

To test whether the wifi is the issue, can you run a long ethernet cable between your router and your Star, just laid across the floor or whatever. You don't need anything special for this and they cost very little in whatever length from multiple eBay suppliers.

best

David

I had this problem with all the BBC stations on my Qb Ethernet wired.  I found the solution to be to close down the app whilst listening.  Bizarre I know.  

Regards,

Lindsay

steved posted:

Thanks all for your replies. I'm afraid hard wiring isn't really viable, at least at the moment. I've also tried Powerline but Naim Support have told me that Powerlines won't work with Uniti Star (seems bizarre to me!).

I doubt Naim meant that powerline adapters won’t work, rather than that they can behave erratically. You may find that using one helps you, or not, but they pump a huge amount of RFI round your house, and have been known to cause many problems, including with Naim streamers. If you really can’t use a wired Ethernet connection, I would stick with WiFi. 

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

... So why does this often affect Naim devices and not say my Mac, Windows or iOS device?.. well, and certainly with the legacy streamers, the Naim streamers have limited network memory resources compared to a PC... and the way computer platforms handle this sort of bottlenecking is to increase the network buffers at each end... the Naim streamer can only go so far before the flow gets interrupted.. you may find this issue only happens at certain times of the day when your ISP backhaul is busier so additional latency is added.

Thank you, Simon, this helps. Does iTuner on the new streaming platform use a longer buffer, please? I was reading that they can buffer a whole track, but wasn't clear if this is relevant for iRadio. (I hope not, otherwise I should presumably have bought the NDX2 rather than NDX recently!).

I'm asking since I have dropouts, sometimes of a minute or two, when my beloved Deutschlandradio is "retuning, or restoring history" (same issue on 272 and NDX). Other stations don't seem to have that problem.

Many thanks,

Stefan

David Hendon posted:

And it's not a throughput problem, but rather than the Superhub 3, or more specifically the Intel processor chip, allocates too high a priority to some internal housekeeping tasks and that can affect latency, which makes it rubbish for gaming in particular.

David with TCP there is a direct relationship between latency and throughput for a given window memory size, so increased latency equals reduced throughput.

The issue was with the specific intel chipset, if they have moved away from that chipset in the very latest devices then that is good.. I hadn’t heard that. What chipset have they now moved to our ofinterest?

Stefan Vogt posted:

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

... So why does this often affect Naim devices and not say my Mac, Windows or iOS device?.. well, and certainly with the legacy streamers, the Naim streamers have limited network memory resources compared to a PC... and the way computer platforms handle this sort of bottlenecking is to increase the network buffers at each end... the Naim streamer can only go so far before the flow gets interrupted.. you may find this issue only happens at certain times of the day when your ISP backhaul is busier so additional latency is added.

Thank you, Simon, this helps. Does iTuner on the new streaming platform use a longer buffer, please? I was reading that they can buffer a whole track, but wasn't clear if this is relevant for iRadio. (I hope not, otherwise I should presumably have bought the NDX2 rather than NDX recently!).

I'm asking since I have dropouts, sometimes of a minute or two, when my beloved Deutschlandradio is "retuning, or restoring history" (same issue on 272 and NDX). Other stations don't seem to have that problem.

Hi Stefan, these window sizes are inbuilt into the network interface memory on the streamer and so is the same for all network connections, whether they be local or internet. This network transport window memory is not the same as or related to the application audio buffer memory .. the latter sits above the network processing and is simply related to how much actual audio sample data is held in an application buffer.

Although I only have the low level details for the legacy streamers (NDX, NDS etc) I don’t believe the network window memory is increased on the newer streamers, however the application audio buffer on the newer streamers is very much increased, but unless the server increases the rate of transmission in terms of time, which I doubt for web radio, I can’t see this making much benefit on the new streamers.. this will contrast with web audio streaming and local streaming on the new streamers where the server will transfer as quickly as it can. For those situations where the latency spikes up, which is common, then the increased audio buffer will help whilst the lower network window buffers get depleted or totally empty.

Its quite likely that if you have increased network latency for whatever reason, you may indeed find some web stations are fine, whilst others are not.. it simply will boil down to the round trip delay (ie the time for a packet to be successfully transported) between your streamer and web radio station server. Those stations with minimal added latency either via the internet route or server end will most likely work, those with increased latency might have dropouts.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

David Hendon posted:

And it's not a throughput problem, but rather than the Superhub 3, or more specifically the Intel processor chip, allocates too high a priority to some internal housekeeping tasks and that can affect latency, which makes it rubbish for gaming in particular.

David with TCP there is a direct relationship between latency and throughput for a given window memory size, so increased latency equals reduced throughput.

The issue was with the specific intel chipset, if they have moved away from that chipset in the very latest devices then that is good.. I hadn’t heard that. What chipset have they now moved to our ofinterest?

I didn't say they have moved chipset and indeed they haven't. From what I have read in the VM forum they have released a firmware update that has helped, but it still doesn't fix latency for gaming. However they have no problem delivering downloads in excess of 200 Mbps.

VM are now using the Superhub 3 for all their domestic broadband customers, so for example with the IOS 11.4.1 bug that meant iphones wouldn't stay connected to certain wifi access points, including the Superhub 2ac and below, VM just replaced those with Superhub 3 on demand.

Anyway my point was that if BBC iradio streams didn't work with the Superhub 3, EE would have had a lot more discussion of the problem on the forum than we have had.

best

David

Some of the front lights don,t work on my Superhub 2ac, VM wanted to send an engineer. I suspected he would change me over to the Superhub3, so I cancelled as it still does what I want....I don,t do gaming, but have not heard any good reports about Superhub3?

David, I think you might be mis understanding my point.. the situation is a combination of the web radio station, ISP, broadband access router, home network and crucially client streamer.. it’s this particular combination end to end with specific components with specific properties that causes the dropouts through TCP latency/throughput. I expect this combination, specifically the Naim stream client in the grand scheme of things is not that common, but sure please do (or others) raise it on their support forum about interworking issues with Naim streaming clients. Latency can affect many things in terms of flow throughput and not just computer gaming.

I thing Gazza’s suggextion is probably sensible for Naim/Virgin customers at this time, at least keep the old ISP virgin hub router just in case issues arise.

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

David, I think you might be mis understanding my point.. the situation is a combination of the web radio station, ISP, broadband access router, home network and crucially client streamer.. it’s this particular combination end to end with specific components with specific properties that causes the dropouts through TCP latency/throughput. I expect this combination, specifically the Naim stream client in the grand scheme of things is not that common, but sure please do (or others) raise it on their support forum about interworking issues with Naim streaming clients. Latency can affect many things in terms of flow throughput and not just computer gaming.

I thing Gazza’s suggextion is probably sensible for Naim/Virgin customers at this time, at least keep the old ISP virgin hub router just in case issues arise.

 

Simon

With respect, I certainly don't misunderstand. I was merely disagreeing with your original sweeping comment that VM Superhubs have this problem so the OP is stuffed (or words to that effect). 

But I do agree with Gazza's suggestion of hanging on to a Superhub 2ac if you have one, as I do myself. It is a time-limited solution though as they are out of support by VM (which in turn has no support contract for them with Netgear) and VM will indeed replace it with a SH3 if something goes wrong, because that is currently their only option.

best

David

That’s what I suspected with the old hub. Having not had a problem I had not really followed the SH3 issue on the VM forum. Is it me, but VM seem to have taken about a year to put out a fix?

David, my comment was based on all the resources on the web that are thrown up when you put ‘ Virgin superhub latency issue ‘ into your favourite web search engine ... so I feel it is fair to assume when reading through some of them that there is, albeit now mitigated to some extent with a partial work around, an issue with flow latency with the recent Virginmedia superhubs.

As it’s flow latency that can interfere with the sussesful playout of a media stream from a Naim streamer.. then it’s right to point these aspects out..

Finally flow latency will vary from environment  to environment, and some users could just be at the wrong end of the Gaussian curve.

No one is saying one is ‘stuffed’ even using words to that effect, there will always be options, like using a different ISP, or run a Virgin superhub as a modem only and then into another router... or grin and bear it...  but surely you wouldn’t want to not give the OP that info and hope and ideas to mitigate?

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hi Steved, unfortunately it appears the Virgin Media Hubs can struggle with throughput and can start to act as a bottle neck and add latency.. I understand recent firmware upgrades have attempted to reduce the issue, but I see anecdotally it has reduced rather than removed the issue.

 

I have to believe that you are not deliberately misunderstanding me Simon, so I will have one last go.

This is the part of your original post that I thought was inaccurate and unhelpful.

The Superhub 3 is by far VM's main cable modem/router product and regardless of whether or not the recent firmware upgrades have fixed the latency problems caused by a badly designed Intel component in the SH3, if this was causing widescale dropouts on BBC iradio, we would have seen far more comment about that on the forum.

So it's wrong to assume that just because the OP has a SH3, that is the cause of the problem, which your post suggested as I read it.

I am sure we all agree that latency in the SH3 could be a contributory factor or even the determining factor in one or another case but iradio dropout does not automatically follow from the presence of a SH3. That's what I am saying.

Incidentally using an after market router instead of the SH3 router doesn't help because the Intel chipset concerned is causing the problem in the cable modem not the router so an external router of whatever type doesn't help with that SH3 problem.

best

David

David I am not sure where you are going with now I am afraid you have lost me... so let lets drop it between us and I can get back to the OP if they have a further query on dropouts.

My observation on David’s last reply is if it’s the modem chipset rather than the router that is affected, and some comment on the web suggests this but the termininology and language is loose so it’s hard to be sure, then the latency issue will affect all communication frames at layer 2 which could cause a serious throughput issue for all flows, so I really would replace the router for another model or ISP if that is  the only model available, perhaps clarification can be sought from VM.

There is very little processing of frames at layer 2 and it’s surprising to me if it’s not all or mostly hardware off loaded. Most network processing is done to packets, which are layer three and are processed by a router not a modem... modems are lower layer functions that contain DSP chipsets and the like, and provide basic reencapsulation type activities around data packets as well as often manage a basic PPP type protocol to allow Ethernet to pass through them over a point to point link... think of a modem like it a specialised media and codec converter that data packets pass through untouched.

I'm not going to continue to argue with Simon as he knows much more about this stuff than me, but as I have read the 50 page or so thread on the VM website and some US postings in other places about other affected cable modems, I have understood the problem is that the Intel chip concerned prioritises internal housekeeping stuff, of which it contrives to find a lot,  above handling throughout data and so introduces multiple and ongoing latency spikes. It is unclear whether the recent firmware update has sorted that out, but as it took about a year for any update to appear on any affected cable modem worldwide, it obviously wasn't easy for Intel to solve.

Using a separate aftermarket router has no downside and no doubt lots of upsides but has no effect at all on this latency issue. That's not my opinion; it's what the gaming guys report.

Anyway the OP's radio 2 problem may be a result of this SH3 problem (although personally I doubt it) but it's just not correct for anyone to say that it is an inevitable outcome of using a SH3.

best

David