My ND5XS2 is often playing many hours per day. Most of the day it is playing an internet radio station in the background. I also have a Bluesound streamer that I use in my office.
I noticed something strange: If I start the same internet radio station on both streamers at the same time, they are more or less in-sync (maybe a few seconds difference). But while both streamers are playing, the difference slowly increases. After a couple of hours there is a difference of several minutes between them. The ND5XS2 is than lagging several minutes behind the Bluesound. When I stop the stream on the ND5XS2 and start it again, the two streamers are in-sync again.
I don’t notice any difference when listening to individual tracks. I checked a few times over the last week and I think it comes down to a difference of approx. 0.5 to 1 minute per hour. Today I started the streams at 11:00AM and at 16:00PM, the difference was around 4 minutes. I am not sure if the difference gets any bigger than that. It’s not really an issue, but I can’t explain it.
@Stevesky Since you seem to know surprisingly much on the radio side of things… Could you explain what may be causing this on the side of @whatu1tme2b ?
I have been playing the CREAM station (The Netherlands) lately and I noticed a short drop-out this morning. Maybe that is what is going on. I am not in the living room all the time when the station is playing during the day, so I hadn’t noticed such a drop-out before.
This one all comes down to clock skew. Two crystals used for timing are never the same and they have a ppm (parts per million tolerance). Naim equipment is typically around ±20ppm, but most units measure <10ppm
When two independent devices are asked to independently play with a file stream that has no timing information in it, then they will drift apart slowly but surely. Think of it of asking 2x car drivers to drive at exactly 30mph down the same road but they can’t look at each other to match speed. In practice they won’t be exactly at 30 and they will drift away from each other.
Saying this, crystal drift typically accounts for fraction of a second per hour (depending on how off the broadcast clock is), but on the Naim solution we do check audio clock crystal accuracy and will raise an error code if its completely off.
We don’t try and track the broadcast as that introduces either sample rate converters or software PLL’s that can be a bit “drunken sailor” and wander all over the place as there is nothing solid to lock on to.
re: Cream, NL - now with full extended metadata Just checked it (on a CI102) and typical buffer level is quite low as they don’t buffer much server side.- about 8secs worth buffered. Should ride over most internet events though.
Thanks a lot for the explanation. It’s so nice to have someone from Naim with so much knowledge here to help us with questions and information. There is indeed a considerable difference between CREAM and NPO Soul & Jazz (that I used to listen a lot to before it stopped) with regard to buffering. I asked CREAM if they are thinking about higher bit-rates, but no answer yet. Still it is amazing how good it sounds on my ND5XS2
Weird stuff…
much on the radio side of things… Could you explain what may be causing this on the side of 