Diagnosing audio streaming issues
October 1, 2023 2:02 AM Subscribe
When wireless speakers stop working, how on earth do you diagnose what's going wrong? Is there any software available in particular that can tell what is happening? It's so opaque.
I have two lovely Teenage Engineering OD-11s in my living room. They sound great and I'm really happy with them. Apart from when they don't work.
It seems that they go through phases. They'll be rock solid for a month then suddenly patchy - cutting out suddenly, or refusing to connect.
More detail...
- They seem to be more solid with a iPhone on Airplay
- Apple Music cuts sometimes or doesn't connect
- Same with the Apple TV. It's also sometime very slow connecting - 30 seconds or so.
- It's not bandwidth. We have a 500Mb connection and it seldom is slow or unavailable (less that once a year)
- We have a mesh network (Eero) and I did notice once the speakers had connected to a different access point not in the same room as them.
- Sometimes swapping from streaming locally stored music (NAS drive) to that from the cloud causes it to cut out
- Normally unplugging the speakers fixes issues for a bit. But this isn't ideal as they don't have an off switch so physically removing the power cable and reconnecting it is the only option. It also doesn't always fix the issue. I have had a case where I did this then the sound cut out ten minutes later
- Finally it's worth saying they never cut out so badly that you can't reconnect. It's more that service is interrupted (frequently at its worst) but they never entirely fail.
As I said I'm interested in any software in particular that can help diagnose issues. When stereos were wired it was just a matter of poking around cables. This is so opaque. Anything out there that can shed a bit of light on what's happening?
I have two lovely Teenage Engineering OD-11s in my living room. They sound great and I'm really happy with them. Apart from when they don't work.
It seems that they go through phases. They'll be rock solid for a month then suddenly patchy - cutting out suddenly, or refusing to connect.
More detail...
- They seem to be more solid with a iPhone on Airplay
- Apple Music cuts sometimes or doesn't connect
- Same with the Apple TV. It's also sometime very slow connecting - 30 seconds or so.
- It's not bandwidth. We have a 500Mb connection and it seldom is slow or unavailable (less that once a year)
- We have a mesh network (Eero) and I did notice once the speakers had connected to a different access point not in the same room as them.
- Sometimes swapping from streaming locally stored music (NAS drive) to that from the cloud causes it to cut out
- Normally unplugging the speakers fixes issues for a bit. But this isn't ideal as they don't have an off switch so physically removing the power cable and reconnecting it is the only option. It also doesn't always fix the issue. I have had a case where I did this then the sound cut out ten minutes later
- Finally it's worth saying they never cut out so badly that you can't reconnect. It's more that service is interrupted (frequently at its worst) but they never entirely fail.
As I said I'm interested in any software in particular that can help diagnose issues. When stereos were wired it was just a matter of poking around cables. This is so opaque. Anything out there that can shed a bit of light on what's happening?
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
If you read the technical manual, they recommend three models of "preferred" access points. Your Eero AP is not one of them. It may be that the OD-11s just don't play nicely with your mesh AP system. Have you contacted Teenage Engineering support to see if there are any known incompatibilities? Sometimes random issues can be caused by WiFi channel jumping, local interference, multiple wifi devices clashing, etc. You can try to analyze which channels the products are connecting to see if there are any patterns, what kind of activity are you seeing on the WiFi spectrum, etc. You might be able to do some manual channel assignment. I can't recommend any specific apps for these purposes, but they're out there.
You might also find some info in this video (regarding the Sony HT-A9) WiFi speakers. He's dealing with wireless connection issues between the transmitter hub and the speakers, but IIRC, he goes into a little detail about the software he uses to analyze what's happening. There might be some useful info for you there even though this is a totally different system.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 4:48 PM on October 1, 2023 [2 favorites]