Problem with iPod dock audio encoding from HC200 to HC300 to amp

[MarkD]

Hi all,

I've just added a Dock for iPod (Control4 brand), connected the audio output to the HC200 in the family room, enabled the "audioserver" on that HC200 and found that when I play from the iPod (iPhone, actually) that the audio is playing back too fast (sped up) and stuttering!

Setup is... as above... Dock audio to HC200, HC200 encoded stream over ethernet to HC300, HC300 audio out to 8-channel amp. The whole system is controlled with an HC1000v3 but I *assume* that controller isn't directly handling the audio stream at all? System is 1.7.4.36.

Anybody seen this before and have any suggestions? Is there another service that needs to be enabled on any other controller or device?

...and while I'm at it... why the heck didn't Control4 make the Dock encode and stream audio over ethernet? If they had, I'd be putting docks in each of the kids rooms and elsewhere... but it seems ridiculous to me that I need one controller per dock! Or is there another way?

Thanks!!

[Cyknight]

Speeding up sound etc is usually an indicator that the time is off. You also shouldnt have to enable anything manually, I'd suggest turning off that audio server, and re-do the ipod dock from scatch, leave services alone.

[Matt]

When the product was first developed ('08) (..and I am not sure if it is still the case) – Apple would not allow for a certified apple product to have a built in digital encoder.

Matt

[MarkD]

Cyknight... before I enabled the "audioserver" service on the HC200, I got NO sound at all. A click could be heard as the amp started to send power to the speakers, but no sound. At least with the service enabled I got SOME sound. Hmmm...

I'm sure I'll stay up much too late again tonight trying to make everything work!

[MarkD]

Matt... so, this is Apple's fault? That didn't occur to me... but I'm honestly not surprised... Sigh.

[MarkD]

The problem remains...

I have disabled the "audioserver" service again on the HC200... but then I get NO sound whatsoever. I note that this service is enabled on the HC300 and HC1000.

I have removed the iPod Dock from the project and recreated it from scratch. No luck. I'm still getting the sped up playback with brief pauses every second or two.

Any other suggestions???

[MarkD]

Cyknight... what does "usually an indicator that the time is off" mean, exactly? Could the fact that my system doesn't currently have net access - and therefore may not have system times all in synch - have a bearing on this? Or something else?

[Cyknight]

Indeed - what I meant is that it does not have all controllers/speakerpoints at the exact same time. As the system uses real time to synch all system audio outputs, this is a requirement. Any funny stuff like fast/slow streams are, as said, indicators there is something incorrect in that setup.

A system not on the net does not have access to a time-server, so yes it becomes likely - especially over time - to create synching issues.

[MarkD]

...it does beg the question, why wouldn't Control4 have made all secondary controllers synch with the primary and let the primary controller synch time over the Internet... that way I might not have this problem. Control4... it's a bit of a love/hate relationship...

[RyanE]

MarkD,

That is *exactly* how it is *supposed* to work (the Primary controller gets NTP from the Internet, serves NTP to the other controllers), but some network setups seem to cause this issues, for some reason.

RyanE

[Cyknight]

As per Ryan - while it should work that way (as in it's implemented to) a number of network setups seem to fail to do this nicely - particularly when not connected to the internet (and the NTP service). Note that this is generally a degrading issue, so losing internet for a bit due to some ISP problem usually won't affect you right away, but a system permanently disconnected tends to start showing these issues.

[MarkD]

Thanks for the answers! However, it has occurred to me to ask: does "online" mean "has access to the Internet" or "has an active 4Sight account"? Because the network *is* online at home... but I let the 4Sight account lapse. Perhaps I need to be sure the network configuration is correct with the gateway specified since most IP devices are on fixed IP rather than DHCP.

[Cyknight]

It's used in both situations, but for the above - it needs an internet connection, but not a 4sight license.

[MarkD]

Busy, busy summer for me... but my trouble persists.

Does anybody have ANY suggestions for how to get the various controllers' times synchronized? I believe all devices have Internet access... but things are getting worse: I'm now getting unpredictable playback even without the iPod dock.

And how can I actually check the time on a given device?

The setup is this:

HC1000v3 as the Master Controller

HC300 as Z server and with audio outputs connected to 16-channel amp

HC200 (2) attached to tvs and one of these connected to the iPod dock

Any other detail I can provide? Thanks!!

[Cyknight]

Controllers actual internal time can be checked only via an SSH session to each controller.

What router and network switches do you have - what is your ISP and is it a separate modem or a modem/router combo.

One method of forcing a re-synch is to manually shut down the time server (ntpd) on the main controller, reboot and re-engage (allow some time) then reboot the other controllers, this all requires either system manager or an SSH connection.

While time can be set manually on each controller - you'll never get it perfect that way, which is what causes the issue to begin with.

Another method that sometimes works is setting a systems timezone different (and back).

Have you tried a reboot of the system? Router - let is start up - rest of networking - main controller - let it power up all the way then restart/cycle the other pieces of equipment. This may get things back in synch - if it does but it deteriorates again then that's a big pointer to network being the root cause.

[MarkD]

Cyknight - thank you! I followed your suggestion to stop ntpd and reboot the PC, restart ntpd, then reboot the other controllers... and it SEEMS to have allowed my iPod Dock to stream properly!! Over the coming days we'll see if the "regular" MP3 playback is resolved too. But, I'm optimisitc - so a BIG THANK YOU for your suggestion. =)

Cheers,

Mark

FWIW... router is a Netgear WNDR3700v2; switch is a Dell 24-port gigabit unit... carefully chose an unmanaged unit since I was led to believe that managed switches can cause problems. ISP is a very small, very local wireless carrier you've never heard (Firefly Networks) of as I'm rural. =)

[Cyknight]

Glad it's doing ok -if it hadn't after that things would likely have been more complex to solve.

Network gear is perfectly fine (managed switches are indeed not recommended - they can be made to work fine but essentially you dumb them down to an unmanaged switch, so except for some rare occasions...).

While I do not know the ISP - the fact that it's wireless is of some importance.

Many wireless ISPs change your IP address often which can affect 4sight and sometimes streaming internet music, they sometimes have odd MTU settings which affects the same things. Both of these issues can be taken care of but are not part of this thread.

That said, wireless ISPs also sometimes have often rotating DNS servers - which can on occasion affect a controllers ability to find web-services, even minor ones such as time-servers. So if the issues comes back/gets worse you may want to look into assigning DNS servers - either via the router (don' know if the netgear allows it) or by assigning static IP addresses to all the controllers and using public dns servers instead of the router.