foobar2000 v1.4: internet radio disconnects

2018-09-16 14:42:07

After upgrading foobar2000 to v1.4 some radio stations started disconnecting every few seconds. It turns out in v1.4 network buffer is gone!

Now foobar2000 relies solely on 64 KB socket buffer (on Windows 7, just after foobar2000 restart), which makes foobar2000 unfriendly to burst-on-connect. The lack of buffer is easily observed in Wireshark as TCP ZeroWindow warnings, followed (or not) by RST.

This may currently be worked around by:
1. increasing foobar2000 output buffer to a very large value (10 seconds or more)
2. downgrading to foobar v1.3.20

Streams which constantly reconnect on foobar v1.4: (on Windows 7, with default 1 second output buffer)

http://power-stream.data.lt:8000/power
http://84.46.205.13/zipfm128.mp3
http://84.46.205.13/rc128.mp3
http://stream.radiorecord.ru:805/rr_128
http://stream.radiorecord.ru:8100/rr_aac_64
http://109.239.129.43:8010/megapolis-48.aac
http://fm04-icecast.mtg-r.net/fm04_mp3?platform=web
http://stream.loveradio.ru/12_love_56?type=&UID=5A87D8115A41D087E69935E2B80F69AF
http://forbes.streams.bassdrive.com:8128/
http://19983.live.streamtheworld.com/SLAM_MP3_SC

Best conditions to reproduce these disconnects:
1. Decrease output buffer to 50 ms
2. Use low bitrate streams
3. Restart foobar2000 before testing
4. Use Windows 7

Why network buffer had to be removed? Maybe it was not a bad thing after all? 192 KB is enough for any of the streams listed above, default 256 KB was perfect.

Re: foobar2000 v1.4: internet radio disconnects

Reply #1 – 2018-09-17 02:18:04

Like you, me and others are also wondering why this helpful option was removed (adjustment of network stream buffer size).  Since it has disappeared, there is no way to adjust for choppy radio streams.  Would appreciate it if one of the developers could comment on this, thanks!  Other refs:

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,116398.0.html

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,116419.msg960770.html#msg960770