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[marko]

Since landing a £20/pm 'all you can eat' mobile data package around a year ago, it's been Gizmo all the way, baby!

I've spent eight hours on the motorway with Gizmo going the whole time and it never faltered. There's 12 months of dust on my old iPod.

For the past few weeks however, it has been unusable. I have been experiencing all of the issues mentioned in these four threads...

"Gizmo on Android Connecting to Browse My Library but error when playing songs"
"Gizmo says preparing then goes to resume playback"
"Android Gizmo with v18"
"Gizmo - Long time "preparing" files to play on Galaxy 3"

As well as...
Gizmo connects, playback begins, and after about 30 seconds, stops, as in, hangs, maybe to give me another 30 second blast several minutes later.

At first, I thought it might be the server, but everything is fine there.
Maybe my service provider? I waited a day or so, and with no improvement, checked with them. Got to talk to second level support team (they speak english ) who assure me that there are no network issues and they deny throttling or shaping mp3 traffic. Indeed, when Gizmo won't work, the internet radio app on my phone streams radio just fine with no hiccups.

I've sat and watched the MC temp folder while requesting via Gizmo. Sometimes, it will make a full size mp3 file, 4-5mb in size, other times, it makes a tiny one, followed by a larger one. This seems to tie in with the 30 second burst, but not every time. It's odd. FWIW, AV software has my entire music directory and the MC appdata directory on its 'exclude' list for real time scanning.

This week, I changed hand sets which has made absolutely no difference, and I also have a brand new sim card in there.

The phone is an HTC One (2013) running Android 4.1.something. It is not 'rooted' or any other such malarkey.
MC is current.
Gizmo is from the Play Store, this week.

I'm seriously thinking about taking on another company on a 30 day rolling contract for a couple of months to see if it fares any better on another network, but I'm not wildly enthusiastic about this idea, and my gut tells me I'm unlikely to see any difference in performance.

The only action I have been able to follow is to play with the quality options in Gizmo. Feedback appears to suggest that the 320kbps option offers best performance. I'll try that and get back to you with further feedback.

I appreciate that with so many unknown factors involved, service provider, user server configuration etc. etc., these things must be as frustrating for J River as they are for me, but something is up. Gizmo has worked so well for so long, and now... not so well.

The server is well and reachable. It's creating 8 meg mp3 files in the temp folder in the blink of an eye.
My service provider swear they are not interfering, though I accept they are prone to lying.
J River are my last port of call.

I want Gizmo back online. What's up with it this past few weeks?

-marko.

[rjm]

Rolling back to a version of MC prior to your problems starting might provide useful data for what is at fault.

[JimH]

Did the server change in any way?  Win8, for example?

Is it the same problem when used locally?

[bob]

If you play mp3's through the highest option (320) they will NOT be converted (because there is nothing to gain from doing so).
That may be a hint as to what's going on. If mp3's ALWAYS played properly at that setting then I suspect there may be a timeout
on conversion issue or a http request logic change issue (we can't control that on the android device).

If the mp3's don't ALWAYS play properly at the 320 setting, I'd suspect the carrier.

It's also remotely possible tagging could be an issue. That could only be a possibility if songs you were trying to play are mp3.
The 320 setting will pass through the file with tags, the conversion settings will strip the tags.

[marko]

Server hasn't changed in a long time now, 3 years or so. Running Windows Seven.

Interesting info re. 320 conversion.The majority of my library is flac or ape, then some mpc and least of all, some mp3. I will try a playlist of mp3 only tracks and see how that fares.

Going to work last night, Gizmo useless. In the car, connects, browse, play........ wait..... get 30 seconds of sound about 10 minutes later, then nothing for rest of the trip, 30 minutes. Coming home this morning, and I get music all the way, with not a single hiccup. Gotta be service provider right? Either they're overloaded in the evening, or they're throttling mobile data or home connection or both? Doesn't explain why it hasn't been working in the morning's recently though.

I'll persevere 'til the weekend and if it's no better I'll try a three.co.uk sim and see if that's any better. If it's not though, sadly, I could be done with Gizmo, which would make me sad. Such a neat thing, shame it's so reliant on so many other factors getting their stuff right

I would sign up for a J River mobile data sim card

-marko

[Castius]

I've see similar issue with preparing and pausing.
I was going to start trouble shooting soon.

Widnows 7 home premiums 64bit
i7 8 gig
LG nexus 4

Gizmo audio&video
set to medium
Usually over wifi

Music files
mp3 random quality
OGG high

MC Client option
Audio: Convert when necessary
mp3 high bandwidth

[Matt]

This is a tricky one.

Gizmo uses the system media player to actually play a stream, so if playback starts, it's sort of out of our hands how to manage buffering, etc.  And with a fast connection, the system media player engine caches quite a bit of data.  That means it often has the whole song in memory only a few seconds after playing and can close the server connection.

Is it possible Gizmo is failing to prevent the phone from powering down?  When it's flakey, what happens if you keep touching the screen to keep it going?

Sorry to not have a better answer.

[Castius]

I played music for a good hour without issue last night.
I will try again in a area where the wifi is slow and see if that has and impact.
Anything else you want me to try?

[marko]

Update:
Gizmo has started behaving reasonably well during my commute to work and back, but nothing like as solid as I'd come to expect.

It simply won't play 20 - 30 minutes without some kind of issue.
At least once, playback will just stall in the middle of a track, either within the first 30 seconds, which is most common, and now and again, in the middle-ish.

When this happens, seeking within the track will not kick-start it. Advancing to the next track often gets things going again immediately, though quite often, this next track will also only offer 30 seconds of sound before stalling. Sometimes, when I can't be bothered, I'll just leave it, and out of the blue, five to ten miinutes later, playback kicks in again.

All rather frustrating and I don't like messing with it while I'm driving.

I drive the same route each day, and I have paid attention to the stalling in case it's happening in the same places all the time, but there's no pattern to it at all that I can see.
Gizmo is still set to ask for 320kbps conversions. I didn't take on a different service provider yet....

If the server connection is closed, does that mean that Gizmo would have to do the whole 'connecting..., completing connection...' thing again? If yes, then I don't think that's my problem as I don't see that. If no, then maybe that is part of the problem, and perhaps Gizmo could fire some 'keep alives' at the server during playback?

-marko

[Castius]

So far it seems to happen the most when my phone display is off.
If I hear the music pause I try to pick up the phone and unlock it.
As soon as I do that I see gizmo switch from preparing to start playing.
If I hear a really long pause. When I look at gizmo it shows the current song art with the resume playback button.
It takes about 4 or more song before it pauses. I'll try to use a timer next time.

[JimH]

So far it seems to happen the most when my phone display is off.
If I hear the music pause I try to pick up the phone and unlock it.
As soon as I do that I see gizmo switch from preparing to start playing.
If I hear a really long pause. When I look at gizmo it shows the current song art with the resume playback button.
It takes about 4 or more song before it pauses. I'll try to use a timer next time.

I seem to recall an Android setting for whether to play music when it goes into a certain state.  Under Applications?

[bob]

Update:
Gizmo has started behaving reasonably well during my commute to work and back, but nothing like as solid as I'd come to expect.

It simply won't play 20 - 30 minutes without some kind of issue.
At least once, playback will just stall in the middle of a track, either within the first 30 seconds, which is most common, and now and again, in the middle-ish.

When this happens, seeking within the track will not kick-start it. Advancing to the next track often gets things going again immediately, though quite often, this next track will also only offer 30 seconds of sound before stalling. Sometimes, when I can't be bothered, I'll just leave it, and out of the blue, five to ten miinutes later, playback kicks in again.

All rather frustrating and I don't like messing with it while I'm driving.

I drive the same route each day, and I have paid attention to the stalling in case it's happening in the same places all the time, but there's no pattern to it at all that I can see.
Gizmo is still set to ask for 320kbps conversions. I didn't take on a different service provider yet....

If the server connection is closed, does that mean that Gizmo would have to do the whole 'connecting..., completing connection...' thing again? If yes, then I don't think that's my problem as I don't see that. If no, then maybe that is part of the problem, and perhaps Gizmo could fire some 'keep alives' at the server during playback?

-marko

The keepalives suggestion is interesting. I'm wondering if perhaps there has been a shortened timeout on the cell proxy server, this could help if so.

[nitephlight]

So far it seems to happen the most when my phone display is off.
If I hear the music pause I try to pick up the phone and unlock it.
As soon as I do that I see gizmo switch from preparing to start playing.
If I hear a really long pause. When I look at gizmo it shows the current song art with the resume playback button.
It takes about 4 or more song before it pauses. I'll try to use a timer next time.

hm okay i think i can help troubleshoot this, lots of experience debugging and testing on android. but unfortunately i do NOT have these same issues with gizmo (well to the same degree anyway)... lol. i would need someone (does not require root!) to send me a logcat file of the whole sequence from starting the gizmo app to having the above mentioned issues.

include your handset make, model, etc, whether your connection is wifi or data (if so carrier and 3G / 4G).

alogcat (you can record and export the log file)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.jtb.alogcat

any takers? ^ ^

[nitephlight]

So far it seems to happen the most when my phone display is off.
If I hear the music pause I try to pick up the phone and unlock it.
As soon as I do that I see gizmo switch from preparing to start playing.
If I hear a really long pause. When I look at gizmo it shows the current song art with the resume playback button.
It takes about 4 or more song before it pauses. I'll try to use a timer next time.

what happens after you press the resume playback? does it try to reconnect to the server or try to play the song, hangs and you just manually try to reconnect?


in a completely out-of-box scenario, your phone is very likely changing settings automatically to preserve battery and it is either cutting off your data connection completely or it is changing something that is causing the service to be interrupted.

[Castius]

Ok so i turned off my phone display turn off at 5 min.
I left the display on and it did not pause. So i think you're right.
Gizmo's method of preventing Android to sleep is not working.

[Castius]

When you hit resume it flashes to the song it stopped on. Then flashed back to the resume playback screen.

The log does show much.

[marko]

The keepalives suggestion is interesting. I'm wondering if perhaps there has been a shortened timeout on the cell proxy server, this could help if so.

I don't know much about this stuff unfortunately, I just wish it wasn't all so... fragile.

For example, if music is playing when a call comes in, the music pauses and allows me to take the call, and on ending the call, music resumes, which is great. However, if the call is a long one, when the call ends, music does not resume and I need to log back in to Gizmo, invariably losing whatever was in playing now, which is also a pain.

Also, somewhat typically, I have now gone four days of commuting and not one solitary blip from Gizmo. Perhaps my provider were experiencing service issues but just not declaring? I don't know. Anything that brings a more reliable user experience would get my vote.

-marko

[Castius]

Is there any way we can better help track this issue?

[marko]

Three weeks later, and Gizmo is still fine for me. I now firmly believe that my service provider were having 'issues' despite their claims to the contrary.

There is a lot of noise in this thread, much of it possibly unrelated to your own issues. I would advise a new thread, possibly linking to this, where you outline specific issues you are experiencing, and hopefully they can be picked off and get you up and running again.

-marko.

[marko]

New Gizmo is brilliant. With my typical usage, the ability to limit the cache to just one file ahead has fixed the wasted bandwidth issues I was experiencing.

Thank you for the recent work on Gizmo, I appreciate that there are one or two creases to iron out still, but overall, it's a joy to use now.

[Matt]

Glad to hear Gizmo is working well Marko.

It's possible your carrier is happier now that we don't use an audio mime type for the data transfer.  The read-ahead cache should also help you weather an up and down connection.

[InflatableMouse]

Although I didn't have the problems Marko had, just some minor hickups every now and then, the recent update seems more stable. My car radio doesn't sound much better than my phones speaker, so I sometimes I tuck the phone in the dash and just let it play. Reception is bad when its tucked in the dash but the new Gizmo seems to deal better with this then before.