Kodi 17 music playback via library with interruptions [Solved]

Help and Support
1

Hi all,

wonder if I am the only one having this issue.
Since upgrading to kodi 17.x/ latest osmc, I have micro playback stutter on all my raspberry PI devices connected through WiFi. And I have no idea where it comes from.

The setup is pretty Simple:

  • Movies/Music files + MySQL DB on a NAS - E3-1220L V2 @ 2.30GHz, 16GB Ram, 4x4TB Raid 5 Array providing 330MBytes sustained read speed, 2x1GBps Bonded interfaces providing 2 1Gbps links - and effective speed of the NAS is around 940Mbps per interface.
  • The AP in my house is a RouterBOARD 962UiGS-5HacT2HnT which has 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz (We have quite some tables at home, and I had suspected the bandwidth being too low when my girls all watch their “stupid” youtube streams :} Note that both WiFi networks provide me around 300Mbps transfer speeds when connected with my Pixel C tablet on the same floor, 120Mbps when on floor down.
    The CPU of the AP is barely at 1% utilization during non benchmark operations. The AP itself is connected through a real 1Gbps Cat6 cable (I cable all my house with Cat6).

So - when I upgraded to Kodi 17.x, that is when it started.
The DB Got updated again, and I interrupted the upgrade on my Vero 2 device (Connected through ethernet) just to find out it has to scan all the Music library again. Which I did. Check the query here.
Note that all my devices are using the same MySQL library, the Vero 2 has a dedicated account, as this is the maste device (Updating the DB etc - connected by Cat6 and has the fastest CPU and most RAM).

What I noticed is that when I left the Video configuration in my “audio” devices (Raspberry PI’s are only used for Music playback), the audio got interrupted sometimes up to 5 seconds.
Activating the logs I saw that some queries went out to the DB Server during these gaps. Checking the MySQL queries, I noticed it was mostly about movies being tagged. I then decided to remove the video DB configuration from these PI’s.
This reduce drastically the interruptions in the music playback, but I am still not able to play-back the musinc without interruptions.

I lookuped up all PI configurations and thought it has to do with Multithreaded capabilities of the Kodi 17, but was wrong.
I replaced one of my PI B+ with a PI 3, just to confirm this. Didn’t work. Even though the PI3 is way faster than the PI B+, the micro interruptions still happen (1/2 to 1 seconds - much shorter than on the regular PI’s)

I have adapted all buffers settings etc. according to various sites advice. Still, not working.
See details of the advancedsettings here

I just don’t know what to do anymore. My problem is that I am a Music purist, and even when playing back through the low quality Raspberry PI ports, I still like it when there are no interruptions in the playback.

The logs don’t return anything, except the tagging of medias.
Could I disable the media taggind allttogether on the audio only Raspberry PIs?

Any hints on what to do next?

2

Try plugging the Ethernet cable in to a 100Mbps swirch if you can.

PAPlayer is very real time so slight disruptions can cause drop outs. I suspect if you play the audio with VideoPlayer temporarily you will not experience issues.

3

Hi Sam,

thanks for the hint.
I had configured dvdplayer, but it did not change the interruptions. They are still there. Not as long, but still exist.
I have the impression that over time it gets less, so I rather think it has something to do with filling all the gaps in the database. Also, the last osmc-network update reduced the interruption duration too BTW. So thx for that :wink:

IMHO, something is eating up lots of CPU power IMHO, to practially halt playback for a short-while, then releases the CPU to continue on working on the previous task. That’s the reason I had put in the PI3 to confirm/verify that part (which failed).

The Audio-player devices (Raspberry PI’s) are all at locations where there is no cable (the cables are for the Computers, and in the Living room for the Media-Center device so we can playback real HD content on the screen).
So all raspberry-PI’s are connected over 2.4Ghz WiFi.

Regarding the drop-outs - it is not drop outs actually, it is interruptions. The Music continues where it needs to continue after the stop. Nothing missing.

4

Enabling the video cache (also applies to music):
http://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO%3AModify_the_video_cache

may help. Make sure you use the format from the “Kodi v17 changes” box.

5

Your advancedsettings.xml needs to be updated to Krypton tags, see the link Popcornmix provided

6

You are absolutely right. I completely missed that one. Changing it… Will let you know if it is fixed :}

7

That was it… Really have to change the tags in the advancedsettings file to Krypton aga kodi 17. Then it works as smooth as before :slight_smile:

Thx again @Dilligaf & @popcornmix