Airplay playback stutters

[Panoramiac]

What version of Music Assistant has the issue?

2.4.0rc8

Have you tried everything in the Troubleshooting FAQ and reviewed the Open and Closed Issues and Discussions to resolve this yourself?

• Yes

The problem

Receiver: Denon AVR X1300w
Audio buffer: 1000 ms (testing now with 3000 ms)

I tester Airplay with the Denon. The playback stutters from time to time. As I do not have these issues using DLNA I exclude network issues.

How to reproduce

Configure Airplay with the Denon X1300w and start playing music.

Music Providers

File system (remote share)

Player Providers

Airplay

Full log output

logs-3.txt

Additional information

Increased the buffer to 3000 ms. Whole testing this the receiver was shutting down. Currently not sure what the root cause of this was.

What version of Home Assistant Core are your running

2025.2.5

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

On what type of hardware are you running?

Raspberry Pi

[OzGav]

Lots of packet loss. Go to the player settings ADVANCED and change the output codec to MP3 and see what happens then.

[marcelveldt]

The playback stutters from time to time. As I do not have these issues using DLNA I exclude network issues.

AirPlay is a rather realtime protocol with by default ALAC or PCM lossless codec. So... its by default more demanding on bandwidth that DLNA, especially if you use the MP3 codec with DLNA. So maybe you jumped into conclusions a bit too fast.
Packet loss in the log is a clear indication of congestion, so the receiver can not keep up with the stream. Increasing the buffer is a good remedy although you should maybe also look at optimizing the network.

[marcelveldt]

Lots of packet loss. Go to the player settings ADVANCED and change the output codec to MP3 and see what happens then.

MP3 is not possible for Airplay - if that option is available that would be a UI glitch and that setting would be literally doing nothing at all

[OzGav]

I see the receiver has an ethernet connection on the back so connect via that and see if the problem resolves

[Panoramiac]

Lots of packet loss. Go to the player settings ADVANCED and change the output codec to MP3 and see what happens then.

MP3 is not possible for Airplay - if that option is available that would be a UI glitch and that setting would be literally doing nothing at all

There is an option for compression which I disabled for testing. I plugged in a network cable and and now it works stable (even the Playlist is in sync, so I will switch from DLNA to Airplay. The wlan router is directly beside the receiver. I will close the ticket, thx for the fast reply.