06-06-2025, 02:40 PM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2025, 02:41 PM by PJVervoorn.)
Hi,
In my current setup (9.3.5 on a 3A+, with a FIIO dac) KCRW’s stream starts stuttering after some time and finally stops playing.
’some time’ can be anywhere from a few seconds up to an hour.
Can someone test if that happens for them too, and if it is worthy of investigation by Tim.
The reward for trying is great music
The stream: https://streams.kcrw.com/e24_mp3
(update: other streams, like Radio Paradise & FluxFM don’t have issues)
06-06-2025, 03:34 PM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2025, 03:35 PM by TheOldPresbyope.
Edit Reason: ETA
)
(06-06-2025, 02:40 PM)PJVervoorn Wrote: Hi,
In my current setup (9.3.5 on a 3A+, with a FIIO dac) KCRW’s stream starts stuttering after some time and finally stops playing.
’some time’ can be anywhere from a few seconds up to an hour.
Can someone test if that happens for them too, and if it is worthy of investigation by Tim.
The reward for trying is great music
The stream: https://streams.kcrw.com/e24_mp3
(update: other streams, like Radio Paradise & FluxFM don’t have issues)
radio-browser.info says the KCRW MP3 stream is only 56kbps. I haven't tried it.
Instead, I've been listening to their 256kbps AAC stream for 5 minutes now with no issues. I'll keep it up for a hour.
Update: I went away and came back to find the AAC stream is still playing after 3 hours. If there were glitches I wasn't around to hear them.
Appended is a cover image I created from a PNG image I grabbed from the station website, manipulated with ImageMagick to square it up to 600x600 and add a black background, then to convert it to JPG. Not elegant but serviceable.
In my current setup (9.3.5 on a 3A+, with a FIIO dac) KCRW’s stream starts stuttering after some time and finally stops playing.
’some time’ can be anywhere from a few seconds up to an hour.
Can someone test if that happens for them too, and if it is worthy of investigation by Tim.
The reward for trying is great music
The stream: https://streams.kcrw.com/e24_mp3
(update: other streams, like Radio Paradise & FluxFM don’t have issues)
no issues on my end with the aac stream (not a long test env. a bit more than a hour)
In my current setup (9.3.5 on a 3A+, with a FIIO dac) KCRW’s stream starts stuttering after some time and finally stops playing.
’some time’ can be anywhere from a few seconds up to an hour.
Can someone test if that happens for them too, and if it is worthy of investigation by Tim.
The reward for trying is great music
The stream: https://streams.kcrw.com/e24_mp3
(update: other streams, like Radio Paradise & FluxFM don’t have issues)
no issues on my end with the aac stream (not a long test env. a bit more than a hour)
got this Picture from the Site
Woof! I missed that; much better than my plain-jane image.
Thanks for looking.
For me both the MP3 and AAC version exhibit the same stuttering
(AAC reports 16 bit, 256 kbps, MP3 24 bit, 192 kbps.)
I also tried the ‘regular’ program and that also starts stuttering and stops.
I see this in the logs:
2025-06-06T23:05:15 alsa_output: Decoder is too slow; playing silence to avoid xrun
… repeated several times
2025-06-06T23:06:27 alsa_output: Decoder is too slow; playing silence to avoid xrun
2025-06-06T23:06:28 player: played "https://streams.kcrw.com/e24_aac"
Searching for that text leads me back to the monitor option of moode. Trying that now...
(06-06-2025, 09:24 PM)PJVervoorn Wrote: Thanks for looking.
For me both the MP3 and AAC version exhibit the same stuttering
(AAC reports 16 bit, 256 kbps, MP3 24 bit, 192 kbps.)
I also tried the ‘regular’ program and that also starts stuttering and stops.
I see this in the logs:
2025-06-06T23:05:15 alsa_output: Decoder is too slow; playing silence to avoid xrun
… repeated several times
2025-06-06T23:06:27 alsa_output: Decoder is too slow; playing silence to avoid xrun
2025-06-06T23:06:28 player: played "https://streams.kcrw.com/e24_aac"
Searching for that text leads me back to the monitor option of moode. Trying that now...
The decoder message suggests Internet congestion or somesuch between them and you
Quote:why is my traffic routed to South Africa?
1 192.168.178.1 (192.168.178.1) 2.418 ms 2.677 ms 2.639 ms
2 10.10.15.49 (10.10.15.49) 7.365 ms 7.452 ms 7.791 ms
…
13 e11.er100b-dal1-bb.teraswitch.com (64.130.60.49) 115.864 ms 116.069 ms 115.817 ms
14 64.130.60.26 (64.130.60.26) 115.813 ms 115.908 ms 115.955 ms
15 e9.er100b-lax1-bb.teraswitch.com (64.130.60.10) 138.506 ms 138.615 ms 138.502 ms
16 74.118.142.43 (74.118.142.43) 138.568 ms 138.578 ms 138.557 ms
17 zestal.net.afrihost.co.za (169.1.1.2) 138.632 ms 138.717 ms 138.721 ms
18 ip38.66-85-89.static.coloipdns.net (66.85.89.38) 138.700 ms !A 138.750 ms !A 138.761 ms !A
Quote:Your traffic is being routed to South Africa most likely because of how the destination IP address (66.85.89.38) is hosted and advertised via BGP. Let’s break it down: ? What's happening:
You're trying to reach streams.kcrw.com, which resolves to 66.85.89.38.
That IP is currently hosted by coloipdns.net, which appears to be advertising it through Afrihost (a South African ISP).
Hop 17 clearly shows zestal.net.afrihost.co.za (169.1.1.2), which places the route into South Africa.
Despite KCRW being a US-based station, the hosting provider (or CDN) seems to have its final endpoint for that stream served via South Africa.
? Possible reasons:
IP address geo-misallocation: The route to 66.85.89.38 may be mis-advertised or announced via a South African provider (Afrihost), even if the actual server is elsewhere. BGP routing prioritizes route availability and peering, not geographic closeness.
Colocation or hosting via South African reseller: KCRW might be using a CDN, streaming provider, or backup host that has a presence in South Africa, even if their main site is in the US.
Cheap peering or fallback CDN path: If the CDN (e.g., Teraswitch) hosting that stream has limited or expensive European exit points, it may reroute to a cheaper path—oddly via Africa.
DNS resolution misrouting: If your resolver gave you the IP of a faraway node (e.g., South Africa), this might be due to poor geo-based DNS resolution or use of an anycasted or global CDN improperly configured.
?️ What you can do:
Run whois 66.85.89.38 and bgp.he.net/ip/66.85.89.38 to confirm who owns and advertises that IP.
Use dig streams.kcrw.com from a European public DNS (like 8.8.8.8 or 1.1.1.1) to compare if the IP differs.
Use a proxy or VPN exit node in a different country to see if streams.kcrw.com resolves to a different IP.
I already tried a different DNS provider, but that resolved to the same IP.
So, I will try the last bullet: use NordVPN to create a link with the US and add a route to direct traffic to 66.85.89.38 via that link.
Since I wasn't having problems I didn't trace the route. Now I have.
It takes 21 hops from my player, Almost a third of them are within my ISP's domain. On the 9th hop I hit a server in Ashburn Virginia---the center of the Internet-verse---which is only 30 some miles away as the crow flies! It hops around some more until finally hitting the final three IPs that your trace did. So, yeah, even for me, a South African host seems to be the end of the line. The only thing I notice is that your output shows slower return times for them, almost twice as long. That, by itself, isn't any kind of smoking gun.
