Cannot synch vortexbox-player

[david_syer]

I saw a load of posts from 2010 with people having similar sounding issues, all apparently related to mpd. I only got my VBA yesterday, so it's bang up to date, but it looks like the same problem:


# rpm -q vortexbox-player mpd squeezeboxserver
vortexbox-player-1.0-1.fc14.i686
mpd-0.16-92.fc14.i686
squeezeboxserver-7.5.3-1.fc14.noarch

# tail -f /var/log/mpd.log
Jan 27 15:37 : flac: flac lost sync
Jan 27 15:37 : flac: flac lost sync
Jan 27 15:37 : flac: flac lost sync
Jan 27 15:37 : flac: flac lost sync<
...

The symptom is that if vorexbox-player is synched with other players they all go haywire: stopping, starting, muting, who knows, but every few minutes there's a problem. If I unsynch it, there's no problem (so far, fingers crossed).


Is it a regression? Can I fix it somehow?

[andrew]

Looks like you have the latest of everything. The old 2010 bug you are talking about has been fixed in the version you have. VortexBox Player don't sync well with hardware players. Although I have never seen it do what you are describing.

[david_syer]

I'm not getting a warm fuzzy feeling about that. Is there any other software player that might sync with the squeezeboxes? Why was there so much fuss about squeezeslave vs. vortexbox-player (I gather the former used to be in VBA but no longer is)? Are they the same now, or is it worth trying the other one?

[Ron Olsen]

david_syer said:I'm not getting a warm fuzzy feeling about that. Is there any other software player that might sync with the squeezeboxes? Why was there so much fuss about squeezeslave vs. vortexbox-player (I gather the former used to be in VBA but no longer is)? Are they the same now, or is it worth trying the other one?


I've had relatively good luck syncing squeezeslave with Logitech hardware players.


squeezeslave is not installed by default, but it is still available in the VortexBox repository.


Here's how to set it up:


1. First, make sure vortexbox-player is set up and working. Do this by clicking "Submit" on the vortexbox-player page in the VB GUI. You have already done this, since you are using vortexbox-player on your VBA.


2. Now, install squeezeslave by

yum install squeezeslave

3. Now you have to configure squeezeslave by editing /etc/vortexbox/ss_list.conf.


The default for this file is



# cat /etc/vortexbox/ss_list.conf


0 00:04:20:00:00:01


USB 00:04:20:00:00:10



Since you are using a VBA, you want to delete the "USB" line so your /etc/vortexbox/ss_list.conf file winds up like this:


# cat /etc/vortexbox/ss_list.conf



0 00:04:20:00:00:01



Now that you have /etc/vortexbox/ss_list.conf set up, you can switch from vortexbox-player to squeezeslave by

switch-player squeezeslave

squeezeslave should now show up in the Player list in the SBS web GUI and on other SBS control devices.


You can set up sync parameters in the


SBS->Settings->Player->squeezeslave->Synchronize menu.


Then you can control sync from the SBS web interface (Select Synchronize&hellip; from the Player menu on the upper right side of the page) or from other SBS control devices (Duet Controller, iPeng on iPad/iPhone, SqueezePad on iPad, &hellip;).


I'm playing squeezeslave right now synced to a Logitech Duet Receiver, and they are playing in near-perfect sync, on a FLAC album from my library. Sync isn't always perfect, but it is fairly close.


You may be able to improve sync by adjusting the sync parameters on the


SBS->Settings->Player->squeezeslave->Synchronize page:


(Player Start Delay, Player Audio Delay, Minimum Synchonization Adjustment, Network Packet Latency).


I've left these parameters at their defaults, but other setting may improve sync with Logitech hardware players.


You can switch back to vortexbox-player by



switch-player vortexbox

[david_syer]

Seems to work, thanks (with no changes to sync thresholds). Why did I need to remove the "USB" line? Would I need to put it back if I reverted to vortexbox-player?

[david_syer]

Looks like I spoke too soon. It worked for about an hour and a half (all of Part I and most of Part II or Handel's Messiah), but now it's acting up again. Might be a different problem since I see no "flac lost sync" messages since yesterday, but the symptom is the same - as soon as the VBA player (squeezeslave now) is in a synch group the whole group gets stutters, stops, starts, rewinds, and generally misbehaves. I changed the thresholds to 400-500ms each on the VBA player, and it had no effect. Now I'm stumped (and not very happy). Any more suggestions? Any data I can gather to help fix the problem in the software player(s)?

[andrew]

We dropped squeezeslave from VortexBox becasue it has so many problems. There are no software player that sync really well with hardware players. Logitech want's you to buy hardware players so they make their players very hard to sync too.

[david_syer]

OK, well I don't really care about millesecond level syncing. I just want to be able to stop and start the things together. Surely someone can come up with a way to do that. I tried setting "Don't maintain synchronization" while playing in the player settings (of all the players) in SBS. No dsicernable effect.


Is there any chance that ripping might throw the players out (I'm pretty much ripping continuously at the moment because I have a lot of CDs and the VBA is new)? All the players misbehave some of the time, but not all of the time. I'm not even sure its correlated with syncing to the VBA player now.

[Ron Olsen]

david_syer said:Seems to work, thanks (with no changes to sync thresholds). Why did I need to remove the "USB" line? Would I need to put it back if I reverted to vortexbox-player?


Removing the "USB" line prevents a (non-fatal) error on squeezeslave startup. If the line is there, it will try to start up on a non-existent USB DAC. You do not need to put it back if you revert to vortexbox-player, since they use different configuration files


(/etc/vortexbox/ss_list.conf for squeezeslave, /etc/vortexbox-player/mac_list.conf and /etc/vortexbox-player/mpd0.conf for vortexbox-player).

[Ron Olsen]

Andrew said:We dropped squeezeslave from VortexBox becasue it has so many problems.

The squeezeslave problems you allude to have largely been fixed in recent releases. There were some significant problems prior to the 0.97 release; it's now at version 1.0.210. Squeezeslave is being actively maintained and has a large Squeezebox user community; see http://forums.slimdevices.com/.....hp?t=83362 (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=83362)


for the support thread started by its current developer. This is a place you can go to ask questions and seek help as well as this forum.



There are no software player that sync really well with hardware players. Logitech want's you to buy hardware players so they make their players very hard to sync too.



Agree that Logitech wants you to buy hardware players. Logitech used to provide official support for Softsqueeze, a GUI software player. Support for this player has been dropped by Logitech.


The sync issue for software players is complicated because the machine running the software player is not dedicated to that use. Other processes (like ripping and encoding) can consume CPU cycles and throw off sync.

[andrew]

Ron Olsen said:




The sync issue for software players is complicated because the machine running the software player is not dedicated to that use. Other processes (like ripping and encoding) can consume CPU cycles and throw off sync.




I'm not sure that has much to do with it. I have run as many as 20 VortexBox players on a VortexBox Appliance while ripping wiht no problems. They maintained a tight sync to each other. Its only when you throw in a few hardware players that the problems start.


Logitech works hard to make it this way.

[Ron Olsen]

david_syer said:

OK, well I don't really care about millesecond level syncing. I just want to be able to stop and start the things together. Surely someone can come up with a way to do that. I tried setting "Don't maintain synchronization" while playing in the player settings (of all the players) in SBS. No dsicernable effect.


Is there any chance that ripping might throw the players out (I'm pretty much ripping continuously at the moment because I have a lot of CDs and the VBA is new)? All the players misbehave some of the time, but not all of the time. I'm not even sure its correlated with syncing to the VBA player now.




I'm almost certain that your sync problems are caused by ripping and encoding while trying to sync. The ripping/encoding processes are consuming most of the CPU cycles on your VBA, throwing off the sync. Sync of a software player to hardware players is best done on an otherwise idle machine.


You have several options:


1. Don't try to sync a software player with hardware players while you're ripping/encoding on the same machine that's running the software player.


2. Try increasing the real-time prioriy of the software player. This can be done using the nice command at startup, or with the htop command while the process is running. Using nice would require changes to the squeezeslave startup script, so using htop is probably your best bet.


Install htop via

yum install htop

htop will show you a list of running processes. Fire it up and use the down-arrow key to select the squeezeslave line. Then keep hitting the "-" key until the NI (nice value) goes to -20. In Linux, a nice value of -20 is the highest priority. Processes with negative nice values get more CPU cycles than processes with higher nice values. Don't know how this will affect ripping/encoding, however. The downside of using htop instead of nice is that you would have to do this every time you restarted squeezeslave.


3. Do the ripping/encoding on a different machine. dbPoweramp, a Windows app, is a great ripper. It allows you to edit the tags prior to the rip, a big plus for obscure CDs, classical CDs, and compilation CDs. It avoids the "Unknown Artist, Unknown Album" problem that you sometimes see with the VB ripper. You can set up dbPoweramp to rip directly to the final file locations on the VB files share. dbPoweramp is also a faster ripper than the VB ripper, and will get you through a large stack of CDs much faster. It will remove the competition for CPU cycles on the VBA with squeezeslave, and should improve your syncing. Well worth the $39 for the premium version. See http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

[Ron Olsen]

Hmm...I think my hypothesis that ripping is causing a loss of sync between squeezeslave and hardware players is not correct.


I have squeezeslave on my VBA synced to a Logitech Duet Receiver and Transporter, and all are playing in near-perfect sync with the source being an mp3 or FLAC album in my music library. Ripping a CD at the same time seems to have little effect on sync.



All the players misbehave some of the time, but not all of the time. I'm not even sure its correlated with syncing to the VBA player now.



So perhaps there's something else going on in your system. What sort of misbehavior are you seeing? What hardware players are you trying to sync with? How are your hardware players connected to your network? Via Ethernet or Wi-Fi? Maybe there's an issue with your Wi-Fi network. Try resetting your network hardware and see if that helps.


To reiterate: I am able to sync squeezeslave with a Logitech Duet Receiver and Transporter, at the same time the VBA is ripping a CD. Sync is near perfect. Ripping the CD has little effect on sync. The hardware players are connected to the network via Ethernet.

[david_syer]

Thanks for all your time and helpful suggestions. It's quite hard to say what is going on here. Any ideas for metrics I can measure?


Even the hardware players now won't play anything at all from the VBA when synced (seems OK when unsynced, but hard to tell without data, and I can't be in all the rooms at once). Unsynced works, but that just isn't good enough for me, so it's good to hear that at least someone can get it working.


The hardware players also play fine synced together when streaming from mysqueezebox.com directly, so I don't think the network is a problem. But tell me how to measure it.


I agree with both of you that ripping makes no difference. There's hardly any CPU usage when ripping anyway, so a renice probably wouldn't have any effect. Empirically, when I stop ripping there's no difference to the sound from the players, irrespective of the syncing. (I think my original conclusion about the SBA player being a problem was influenced by the fact that this player was in the same room as me, so I didn't have good enough statistics on the others. Now I know they all suck but only when played through VBA.)


So my new 450 quid VBA is the culprit from where I'm standing. What is it doing, or what am I doing wrong? I'm not very happy with it yet. Someone restore my faith, please?

[Ron Olsen]

You still haven't told us what your hardware players are, and how they are connected to your network. This is important information. Please report this in your next post.


You could try power cycling your hardware players and rebooting your VBA to see if that helps.


I presume you are running SBS 7.5.3 since that's the latest version. Is that the case?


You could also post your questions on the Slim Devices forum: http://forums.slimdevices.com. Lots of SqueezeBox experts (and VortexBox users) there who may be able to help. I'm sure there are some debugging options you could turn on in SqueezeBox Server, but I'm not too familiar with them.


See what's in /var/log/squeezeboxserver/server.log &mdash; may be some useful info there.


There's really nothing wrong with the VBA &mdash; it works fine syncing squeezeslave with two Logitech hardware players in my system. So there's something in your setup that's causing the problem. Just have to figure out what that "something" is.

[david_syer]

SBS version is listed in my first post (7.5.3). Players are Logitech Radio, Touch and Player (half the Duet without remote), all connected to Wifi (I tried wired ethernet yesterday on one of them and it didn't help). They work fine on their own from the internet, like I said, but not with VBA. Do they all have to receive streaming bytes independently from SBS, so 3x the network bandwidth? Maybe there is a bottleneck getting bytes from VBA to the players? Any suggestions on what to measure?


The SBS server.log has some perl stacktraces. They look harmless, but there are a lot of them:


[11-01-28 18:35:29.1645] Slim::Display::Display::string (888) Error: missing string BBC
[11-01-28 18:35:29.1660] Slim::Display::Display::string (888) Backtrace:

frame 0: Slim::Utils::Log::logBacktrace (/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/Slim/Display/Display.pm line 888)
frame 1: Slim::Display::Display::string (/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/Slim/Player/Player.pm line 187)
frame 2: Slim::Player::Player::string (/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/Slim/Control/Jive.pm line 3348)
frame 3: Slim::Control::Jive::_localizeMenuItemText (/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/Slim/Control/Jive.pm line 1967)
...



And there are some lines that look like UI errors, which maybe mean the UI wasn't dong what I wanted, but don't look streaming related:




[11-01-28 18:43:40.5958] Slim::Web::JSONRPC::requestMethod (383) request not dispatchable!
[11-01-28 18:43:40.6068] Slim::Web::JSONRPC::requestMethod (383) request not dispatchable!
...



This one looks more interesting (but I'm guessing, and there are only a couple):


[11-01-28 14:24:10.6368] Slim::Networking::IO::Select::__ANON__ (146) Error: Sel
ect task failed calling Slim::Networking::Async::HTTP::_http_read_body: illegal
file descriptor or filehandle (either no attached file descriptor or illegal val
ue): at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/Slim/Networking/IO/Select.pm line 149.
; fh=Slim::Networking::Async::Socket::HTTP=GLOB(0xb4 fd680)



That's about it, I think.

[rbd2rbd]

You might have a duplex mismatch on your VBA network connection.


Run command "ethtool -S eth0" and check for transmit/receive errors.




//Roger

[david_syer]

OK, I think we might be onto something finally. I moved the VBA to a short cable right next to the router and everything now works fine (except that it's now too far from my hifi and I can't use the software player at all, so the original post is irrelevant). I didn't see your last message before I tried this, so I haven't looked at ethtool. I did, however, get a tcpdump last night while everything was going haywire, and I'm not really sure what to look for in there but there *are* a lot of frames coloured black or red in Wireshark (which I take to be an error). The largest population of these is a set of "TCP RST" (reset) frames originating on the hardware players and aimed at VBA. Is that telling me something?

[david_syer]

I spoke too soon again... I played Ein Deutsches Requiem and 3 Bruckner symphonies back to back and there was no problem wit hthe new setup. Now I can't play a single track from Handel, Watermusic. Is it possible the FLAC files are bad? There are no errors showing in ethtool.

[Ron Olsen]

david_syer said:OK, I think we might be onto something finally. I moved the VBA to a short cable right next to the router and everything now works fine (except that it's now too far from my hifi and I can't use the software player at all, so the original post is irrelevant).


Interesting. How was your VBA connected to your network before this change? With a long Ethernet cable or via Wi-Fi?


My VBA is connected to my router via


1. A short Ethernet cable from the VBA to an Ethernet switch.


2. A short Ethernet cable from the switch to an Ethernet wall outlet.


3. A long Ethernet cable from the wall outlet to a patch panel in the basement (cable is in the walls)


4. A short Ethernet cable from the patch panel to the router.


All this works fine. My VBA is in my office on the second floor, and the router is in a closet in the basement.


So lengthy runs of Ethernet cable will work with a VBA. Sounds as if your problem was due to a faulty Ethernet cable. Have you tried a new long Ethernet cable that would allow you to place the VBA at your listening area? Should work if the cable is good.

[Ron Olsen]

david_syer said:

I spoke too soon again... I played Ein Deutsches Requiem and 3 Bruckner symphonies back to back and there was no problem wit hthe new setup. Now I can't play a single track from Handel, Watermusic. Is it possible the FLAC files are bad? There are no errors showing in ethtool.




If you haven't resolved this already, you could try playing the FLAC files using another computer -- foobar2000 or MediaMonkey on Windows, or Songbird on a Mac are some players you could use for this. Other choices are also possible. This will let you know if the problem is with the FLAC files or something else.


http://www.foobar2000.org/


http://www.mediamonkey.com/


http://getsongbird.com/

[david_syer]

Good idea. I copied a FLAC file from one of the tracks that was misbehaving to a local drive and it played just fine with Rhythmbox, so I think the bits are fine.


The original ethernet set up was


VBA -> Homeplug (short cable)
Homeplug -> Router (short cable)
Router -> Wifi relay (short patch cable)


I changed it to


VBA -> Router (short cable)
Router -> Wifi relay (short patch cable)


but I'm not really convinced it's any better.


As I mentioned before, it all works fine when streaming from an internet server, and now that the VBA is directly attached to the router, the route that the bits take to the hardware players is identical, isn't it? So there must be something wrong with the VBA-Router connection? I tried two cables (both brand new) so I don't think it's a bad cable. Could the VBA hardware be faulty? I still don't have a good metric for what is wrong, and what the difference is between internet and local streaming, so it's quite hard to pin it down.


Thank you again for your help and your patience.

[Ron Olsen]

Whenever I have mysterious network problems, I power cycle everything in my network:


1. Power down your Logitech hardware players.


2. Power down your computer and VortexBox.


3. Power down any Ethernet switches, home plugs, and WiFi access points.


4. Power down your router.


5. Power down your cable modem/DSL modem/Wi Fi relay.


Wait 30 seconds.


6. Power up your cable modem/DSL modem/Wi Fi relay.


Wait for a solid Internet connection; this takes about 30 seconds on my cable modem.


7. Power up your router.


8. Power up any Ethernet switches, home plugs, WiFi access points.


9. Power up your computer and VortexBox.


10. Power up your Logitech hardware players.


This usually clears weird networking problems for me, and is my standard procedure when my network is acting screwy.


Note: "Power down" means to turn off the device and remove the power plug, so it has no power to it at all.

[david_syer]

Well, it has been working well for over a day now, without any wholesale power cycles (I probably restarted VBA at some point, but the players and network boxes have been on the whole time). I wish I knew what had been wrong the first time. I hate having a problem just go away without understanding why. Thanks again for all your help. I'll be back if it goes screwy again.

[david_syer]

Wahh! It's broken again. What did you say before about duplexing? Maybe the difference between VBA and MySqueezebox.com is that the hardware players always have a route to the MySqueezebox.com through the router, but sometimes they lose their route to VBA internally? How can I test that theory? Can I get inside a hardware player and test its network setup?

[Ron Olsen]

If you want more debugging help, you're going to have to provide much more detailed info on the problem. "It's broken again" is insufficient to do any debugging.


If "it's broken again" refers to networking/inability of your players to connect to SBS on your VortexBox, once again I suggest a full power cycle of all your system components as described in a previous post.


If you've tried that and things are still broken, I suggest posting your problem on the Slim Devices forum: http://forums.slimdevices.com. There are many SqueezeBox and networking experts there who may be able to help.

[Dennis A]

Andrew said:We dropped squeezeslave from VortexBox becasue it has so many problems. There are no software player that sync really well with hardware players. Logitech want's you to buy hardware players so they make their players very hard to sync too.



Please restore SqueezeSlave to VortexBox as an option for users who cannot use VortexBox Player.


SqueezeSlave problmes have been fixed. SqueezeSlave works great! SqueezeSlave is active and supported by its developer. I sync SqueezeSlave to several Duet Receivers. All play in virtual perfect sync with each other.


With droping SqueezeSlave from VortexBox, I am required to restore SqueezeSlave on the VBA I bought from VortexBox each time I install a new version. It would be better to have the function I purchased at least as a supported option. There seems to be no reason why VBP should be forced on those of us who want the sync and other features that don't work on VBP.


Considering the above, will you consider restoring SqueezeSlave to a VortexBox-supported option in a future release?

[Ron Olsen]

Dennis A said:
Andrew said:We dropped squeezeslave from VortexBox becasue it has so many problems. There are no software player that sync really well with hardware players. Logitech want's you to buy hardware players so they make their players very hard to sync too.



Please restore SqueezeSlave to VortexBox as an option for users who cannot use VortexBox Player.


SqueezeSlave problmes have been fixed. SqueezeSlave works great! SqueezeSlave is active and supported by its developer. I sync SqueezeSlave to several Duet Receivers. All play in virtual perfect sync with each other.


With droping SqueezeSlave from VortexBox, I am required to restore SqueezeSlave on the VBA I bought from VortexBox each time I install a new version. It would be better to have the function I purchased at least as a supported option. There seems to be no reason why VBP should be forced on those of us who want the sync and other features that don't work on VBP.


Considering the above, will you consider restoring SqueezeSlave to a VortexBox-supported option in a future release?




Squeezeslave is still available on VortexBox, despite what Andrew has posted. It may not be installed by default, but it is available in the official VortexBox repository, just like other services that are not installed by default (Subsonic, Transmission, bliss). So rather than considering it a "non-supported" package, think of it as a "not installed by default" package.


Vortexbox Player is not installed by default. You have to click the "Submit" button on the VortexBox Player page in the VB GUI to install it.


What more do you want? A GUI button to do the squeezeslave installation and a GUI page to do the configuration? Andrew is not going to provide this. Just follow the instructions I posted earlier in this thread to get squeezeslave up and running.


It's an unfortunate fact that you're going to have to do this every time you do an iso install of a new version of VortexBox, but that's the way it is.


I agree that squeezeslave is a viable alternative to VortexBox Player, for those that want gapless playback of FLAC files and sync with Logitech hardware players. You can do this, but you have to use the command line to get it.


I will create a page in the VortexBox wiki that describes how to do this (basically what I posted earlier in this thread). I will continue to provide Andrew with a squeezeslave rpm package whenever ralphy (the squeezeslave developer/maintainer) releases a new version. That's about the most support you're going to get.

[Dennis A]

Ron, thank you for the fast and complete response.


Squeezeslave is still available on VortexBox, despite what Andrew has posted. It may not be installed by default, but it is available in the official VortexBox repository, just like other services that are not installed by default (Subsonic, Transmission, bliss). So rather than considering it a "non-supported" package, think of it as a "not installed by default" package.


Sorry, I just went by what Andrew wrote.


Vortexbox Player is not installed by default. You have to click the "Submit" button on the VortexBox Player page in the VB GUI to install it.


VortexBox Player WAS installed by default when I upgraded to v 1.8. I had been using SqueezeSlave, and with version 1.8 install, SqueezeSlave was not installed, and VortexBox Player was running.


What more do you want? A GUI button to do the squeezeslave installation and a GUI page to do the configuration? Andrew is not going to provide this. Just follow the instructions I posted earlier in this thread to get squeezeslave up and running.


I had followed your instructions before I wrote the suggestion. Thanks.


What I suggested was an option to select either software player. I believed that the posted code could be linked to a GUI button, similar to the selection of MP4 mirrors of MKV video files. I did not realize that the request would be complex to implement. I understand that this will not ever be provided.


It's an unfortunate fact that you're going to have to do this every time you do an iso install of a new version of VortexBox, but that's the way it is.


I believed that I was suggesting a method to overcome this unfortunate fact.


I agree that squeezeslave is a viable alternative to VortexBox Player, for those that want gapless playback of FLAC files and sync with Logitech hardware players. You can do this, but you have to use the command line to get it.


I will create a page in the VortexBox wiki that describes how to do this (basically what I posted earlier in this thread). I will continue to provide Andrew with a squeezeslave rpm package whenever ralphy (the squeezeslave developer/maintainer) releases a new version. That's about the most support you're going to get.


Thanks for the description. It is easy to understand and worked fine. No wiki addition is needed for me.


Given two alternative VortexBox software players, each with valuable and mutually exclusive features, implementing a method to select one or the other from the GUI seemed logical and reasonable. I now understand that I am wrong and way off base.


I appologize for suggesting it.

[Ron Olsen]

No need to apologize; you weren't off base in your request. Your request is logical and reasonable. I was just making you aware that your request wasn't going to be implemented by Andrew, based on what he has said. He has invested a lot of time and effort, along with others, to create VortexBox Player and give it the capability of playing high-resolution files that squeezeslave cannot play.


When he did this, squeezeslave had a number of issues that have since been resolved. However, the issues with gapless FLAC playback and synchronization with Logitech hardware players have not yet been fixed in VortexBox Player, and may never be fixed; hence the need for squeezeslave for those users desiring these features.


I created a wiki page for squeezeslave: http://info.vortexbox.org/tiki.....ueezeslave (http://info.vortexbox.org/tiki-index.php?page=Squeezeslave)


This should be useful to others who want the features provided by squeezeslave that are missing in VortexBox Player.

[Dennis A]

Ron,


Thanks. I read your wiki instructions. They are clear, complete, and helpful, like everything you contribute here. I highly value your help and your advice.


I understand that the suggestion will not be implemented. I also understand the investments of inventing VortexBox Player for high-resolution files. Additionally, I understand that SqueezeSlave had issues when VortexBox Player was invented.


SqueezeSlave has been fixed. VortexBox users wanting synchronization and gapless FLAC playback need SqueezeSlave.


VortexBox Player, on the other hand, has not been fixed. VBP's lack of synchronization and VBP's lack of gapless FLAC playback remain. It appears that those VBP shortcommings will never be fixed.


VortexBox is a GREAT idea, and as it becomes better known, many customers will be unaware that by using your instructions they can have synchronization and gapless FLAC playback. Only the small percentage of customers that visit this site in depth will have the chance to get full value from VortexBox. Most will miss the full potential. I thought that adding a GUI selection would improve VortexBox and make more customers more happy with an excellent product.


Not-Invented-Here is common, yet it seems odd in an open source product.

[Dennis A]

UPDATE:

A friend sent me a link**

It states:

10 May 10 Sync support for VortexBox PlayerWe now have sync support in VortexBox Player. You can sync VortexBox player to hardware players. Please help us test out this new feature. Update your VortexBox using the Update manager. Sync another player to VortexBox player and see if syncing works for you.

An effect when syncing six Duet players with the VortexBox-Player was the first song played 10 seconds or so then there was no sound from anything for 15 seconds. *This play/silence cycle was repeated many times.

I switched back to SqueezeSlave and sync works fine.

Has anyone else tried the new VortexBox-Player with sync?

[Ron Olsen]

If

rpm -q vortexbox-player

shows

vortexbox-player-1.0-2.fc14.i686

your are running the latest version.

If sync with Logitech hardware players doesn't work with this version, there is nothing newer to try.

I think Andrew's news item of April 10, 2010 was optimistic but inaccurate.

[Dennis A]

Ron,

vortexbox-player-1.0-2.fc14.i686*is the version installed on my VB. *It seems to have been installed in February.

It must have been some sort of Internet screw up. *My buddy says while the E-mail had the line "Posted: 10 May 2010," the header had

Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 01:28:07 +0000
Subject: vortexbox.org



Well, at least the VB is up-to-date now.

[Ron Olsen]

I just tried syncing the latest version of VortexBox Player with a Logitech Duet Receiver, playing 16/44.1 FLAC files from my SBS library. *Sync was sometimes good, but mostly off by about a half second; enough to be noticeable.

I switched from VortexBox Player to Squeezeslave and repeated the experiment. *This time, sync was a bit off at the start of the first track, but quickly locked in and Squeezeslave was soon playing in sync with the Duet. This sync continued as subsequent tracks were played.

So my experiments suggest that Squeezeslave is still preferred over VortexBox Player if you want to sync with Logitech hardware players, even with only one hardware player in the sync group.