Internet Radio too slow/too fast

Dear Friends,

Since a few weeks I am going nuts about internet radio stations (Belgium: StuBru, MNM, Klara…) suddenly playing too slow, then accelerating again playing to fast. Looks like the steaming speed is variable. Sometimes the radio streaming also stops.

I have the same problem on Naim Uniti Nova and on several QB’s. The issue is only with internet radio stations. Tidal streaming works fine (so it is not my home network. Uniti Nova is connected with internet cable not wifi, same for QB’s).

Does anyone has similar issues and how can we fix this? Thank you. Joël.

Paging radio guru @Stevesky

In the meantime, i’d suggest rebooting your router, to rule out that being an issue.

Thanks Claire for your (very) quick reply. Rooter rebooted, same issue on the first radio song…

Ok, i’ll let Steve advise, then.

Assuming you’re running the latest Firmware and up to date version of Naim App?

If you play the station via vTuner on a computer or mobile device do you get the issues? You can search for a station to play via this link: vTuner Internet Radio

Tested: yes, the problem of slowing/accelerating radio stream is the same when listening to vTuner Internet Radio.

Complement of information: not sure if this is related but also few weeks ago the radiostations in Belgium are pushing you one 10-sec advertising slot everytime that you connect or reconnect with a streaming station. After the extra advertising you catch the normal streaming (and you should have no further issues or push messages).

So, now we know it is not a Naim issue.
If you have a smart phone you can turn off Wi-Fi and use cellular data to try and play from vTuner? This will help show if it is a router issue.

Tested: no issue when playing vTuner on smartphone using cellular (wifi off). If that woud mean the router is the issue, I do not understand why Tidal streaming works fine. Only radio streaming is an issue.

Do you get the same issue on something like Radio Paradise? That’s listened to by lots of people on here and I assume would have been noted if there was a problem.

It could be a DNS issue and the selection of the stream. On your computer can you set a manual DNS to use Google or another provider IP address? If it fixes the issue you can see if you can change it in the router or contact your provider for support.

Hi @Joel1

We have seen this problem before - its from smart advertising systems that try and match playback clocks with broadcast clocks to avoid buffer under-runs or over-runs in their system. Its a software based asynchronous sample rate converter at their end.

They can be fooled if the playback app does a burst read of audio at the start of play (so there are many seconds of audio so it does robust playback) but in turn completely confuses their algorithms on clock measurement/data consumption. If the playback app has very small buffering then it stops oscillating far quicker and appears to work.

In practice from an end consumer there is nothing much that can be done. The bad audio data is encoded in the MP3 or AAC stream server side and we just playback at the correct rate.

With regards

Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.

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You can try contacting the station to report the issue
see Heeft u een vraag? | VRT.be

Also are your other stations all OK, if so points to problem with that group of stations.

Strange behaviour, I also listen to the Belgian public radio stations on an NDX2 and they always work flawlessly.

The 10 second ads are also unknown to me on these channels, can this be caused by your specific internet provider pushing ads?

Hi,

I have the same issue on my unitilite and it’ s very annoying.

I reported it at vrt and I suggest you do the same.

Regards

Christophe

Hi,

I got an answer from VRT. They have general issues with their icecaststreams and the issues described in this post are a known problem. They did ask supplier of these streams to find a solution as quick as possible.

Best regards,

Christophe

Hi Christophe,
Thanks for your reply. I will also report it to VRT (already did to the “ombudsman”) to keep some pressure. I must say that in the mean time the problem is less frequent (although not fully solved).

Joël.

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