Audio hickups when playing media from networked LaCie Mini harddrive

Submitted by carter040 on Thu, 2007-08-30 18:11.

I've been running my sirocco quite smoothly after solving some initial problems.

My wireless network was not up for it, so purchased a new router WRT54GL, changed some settings for my wireless adapter in my Sony VAIO AR31m

Changed the settings in my router for the packet size to 576 (or so) so that when streaming from the internet, sound would be constant without hickups

now i have the networked drive, playing audio from it, makes my sirocco have lots of hickups.... the bandwidth used of my wireless network isnt even 1%

MTU of the networked hardrive is 1500

i used to have a buffer of 50ms, but also tried 100 and 200 ms, these also suffered from hickups...

what can i try, what can i do, i would suspect that keeping my packetsize on the network small, would reduce the hickups, but i can hardly configure this for the local network....

might the new drivers improve for this?

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The problem is that the task

Submitted by Aaron on Fri, 2007-08-31 21:50.

The problem is that the task manager figure does not describe the conditions on the wireless network. This figure relates to the potential throughput of the your PC.

You could try using software like Ethereal, which will capture all of the network traffic. However, I'm not aware of any tool that lets you measure load on a wireless network. 802.11g is advertised as 54MBps, but the actual throughput in practice is substantially lower.

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Total bandwitdht used cant be much higher

Submitted by carter040 on Fri, 2007-08-31 21:26.

Considering that taskmanager indicates 1%, i presume (and help me if i'm wrong) that this is the bandwidth used to download the songs from the share (lets say a total of 1 Megabyte per minute) and streaming the data to the sirocco

so if we multiply this by 2, this still would not (in my opinion) have to lead to dropouts etc...

are there tools to monitor this?

i can imagine when putting strain on the network, because of lets say copying gigabytes of data from one place to the other, this would cause dorpouts..

but.. I'll try the new drivers, and post what happens

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I don't think the

Submitted by Aaron on Fri, 2007-08-31 17:33.

I don't think the fragmentation will help much, but it could make a small difference.

The task manager figure is the percentage of your PC's network connection bandwidth that is being used. The usage for your wireless network is different, and unfortunately, that resource is likely more contrained. Of course, the audio files are being sent over the wireless link to your PC as well, and this is eating up wireless bandwidth.

If the Sirocco works fine when you're not streaming from the NAS, this pretty much confirms that is what's happening.

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Getting the 1% from taskmanager

Submitted by carter040 on Fri, 2007-08-31 08:10.

The 1% (or even way less) is indicated from Taskmanager on my laptop, which is the only wireless device (next to the sirocco) communicating with my router

Set the G-only thing, and was wondering, if playing around with the Fragmentation and RTS settings of my wireless router might be helpfull, they are currently both larger than 2000 (dont remember the exact settings)

Should i bring those down?

J

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Definitely try the new

Submitted by Aaron on Thu, 2007-08-30 23:20.

Definitely try the new drivers then, as well as the G-only setting. You should be able to get the working buffer down to 200ms.

Where are you getting the 1% usage figure from?

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Using the (i think) 2.0.0 drivers and XP

Submitted by carter040 on Thu, 2007-08-30 22:50.

I've installed the 2.0.0 drivers (the first ones available for Vista) because i WAS running Vista,

the networked drive is connected through a cable to the router, so only traffic is to and from my laptop over the wireless network... and the network load is quite low, cant imagine sondigo sirocco can only work on a network that is not used by any other traffic... as i said, network load is less than 1%

i'll try the G-only setting...

is there hope for me? 500ms is totally out of the question, i often also watch video, and i need a short buffer...

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Hi, The new drivers might

Submitted by Aaron on Thu, 2007-08-30 19:20.

Hi,
The new drivers might help with this- which driver are you using now, and are you running Vista?

Adding the networked drive is definitely putting more strain on your wireless network, which may be causing the drop-outs. I'd recommend using a higher buffer (try 500ms). Do you have any 802.11b devices on your network? If not, try setting your router to "G-only" mode.

Also, if it's an option, try connecting the NAS unit through a wired path to your PC.

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