Airplay / ShairBridge has delay of 5-7 seconds before starting playback (or forward/reverse a track) - normal? How to decrease?

[cjh]

C4 system that has been installed for some time. Running latest OS 3.4.x / controller is a EA5. Nearly everything is wired except we have several Triad One's *wireless* in rooms without ethernet connections. Those are the rooms that we tend to do a lot of Airplay to. Each room has its own ShairBridge driver setup, unique broadcast name, etc. Network is unifi APs with Pakedge switches, pfsense router. 

Here's the issue. Starting playback from say an iphone using Airplay to the room takes a good 5-7 seconds before sound is heard. Sometimes that could be 10 seconds. Shuttling tracks forward/reverse, starting a different track, etc. also takes 5-10 seconds.

It "feels like" given the network and hardware in play that is an absurdly long buffer time. 

Q - normal? if not, where can we start poking around to shorten the time between start and hearing playback?

Thanks! 

[South Africa C4 user]

I guess it depends on many things including how quickly your amps turn on and how many zones you are airplaying to.

My kids use ShairBridge regularly and never complain.  I did a quick test on my system now (first time I’ve personally used ShairBridge in years) and it took me 3 seconds to hear sound (playing to 3 zones on a 12 year old amp).

[cjh]

9 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I guess it depends on many things including how quickly your amps turn on and how many zones you are airplaying to.

My kids use ShairBridge regularly and never complain.  I did a quick test on my system now (first time I’ve personally used ShairBridge in years) and it took me 3 seconds to hear sound (playing to 3 zones on a 12 year old amp).

Thx.  One zone / Triad One is the amp. Thanks for the info about the 3 seconds. 

Would love to hear from anyone using ubiquiti + triad equipment w/airplay.

[Cyknight]

17 hours ago, cjh said:

Q - normal? if not, where can we start poking around to shorten the time between start and hearing playback?

5-7 is long, though having a lot of wireless devices can certainly increase that time. Know that the C4 system will try to buffer for the lowest common denominator.

There will also be a delay for Airplay to begin with (which could be 1-3 seconds, again depending on network speed/latency).

 

The two things that are likely to affect the speed it takes are

-System settings under digital audio (you may well be able to adjust these in HE: under monitoring look for 'digital audio' or 'digital media').

You can lower the max quality (if only using airplay, you can basically lower it to the lowest setting without ever noticing a difference), for the latency settings:

Audio Latency Profile:  Depending on the complexity of the project, select from one of the three profiles below.

Level 1 (Default) - Ideal for most systems. Recommended for hardwired ethernet-based audio streaming devices, but can also work for projects that include a small number of wifi-based audio streaming devices.
Level 2 - Recommended for larger systems that utilize controller HDMI outputs for audio streaming and/or multiple wifi-based audio streaming devices.
Level 3 - Recommended for the largest systems that utilize several controller’s HDMI outputs for audio streaming and several wifi-based audio streaming devices.

 

-You (wifi especially in your case) network speed.

[Topfox]

2 hours ago, cjh said:

Thx.  One zone / Triad One is the amp. Thanks for the info about the 3 seconds. 

Would love to hear from anyone using ubiquiti + triad equipment w/airplay.

I’m seeing 5 secs in my system. Room already on so no waiting for amp to start.  Apple Music paired to shairbridge. Select a song, song starts gets to 5 secs and then I start hearing it. With that said I don’t have any clipping of the song. So when the sound does start at the 5 sec mark it is the very beginning of the song. Happens if I switch to another song as well. Exact same 5 sec experience.  I have a CA10, EA5v2 and a CORE3, Triad Matrix, Triad PAMP, all ubiquiti gear, AC-HD APs. 
 

Delay hasn’t been new for me. I always just assumed it was C4 doing some sort of buffering. Especially since once things do start playing I haven’t missed any of the song. 

[Topfox]

1 hour ago, Topfox said:

I’m seeing 5 secs in my system. Room already on so no waiting for amp to start.  Apple Music paired to shairbridge. Select a song, song starts gets to 5 secs and then I start hearing it. With that said I don’t have any clipping of the song. So when the sound does start at the 5 sec mark it is the very beginning of the song. Happens if I switch to another song as well. Exact same 5 sec experience.  I have a CA10, EA5v2 and a CORE3, Triad Matrix, Triad PAMP, all ubiquiti gear, AC-HD APs. 
 

Delay hasn’t been new for me. I always just assumed it was C4 doing some sort of buffering. Especially since once things do start playing I haven’t missed any of the song. 

Something else to consider is C4 is Airplay 1. I think that on its own has a couple of second delay for buffering. 

[cjh]

6 hours ago, Cyknight said:

two things that are likely to affect the speed it takes are

You can lower the max quality (if only using airplay, you can basically lower it to the lowest setting without ever noticing a difference), for the latency settings:

Audio Latency Profile:  Depending on the complexity of the project, select from one of the three profiles below

Thx for this (and to the others). We've changed the latency profile to level 2 since we do have wifi enabled amps... and I also noticed that in the distributed serve config two of our wifi enabled devices (an ea1 and a triad) were enabled. Took both those off/out of the config.

Shall see how this effects the buffer time.

Much thanks.