Stuttering Audio Streaming To Apple TV Via AirPlay

[blacknotes]

I'm trying to play music on an Apple TV via AirPlay (audio only, not mirroring).  The audio often stutters.  I'm using Spotify Premium.

The Mac and Apple TV are connected to the same home WiFi network.  The WiFi network is not busy and my broadband is quite fast (>50Mbs download speed).  I don't think it is a network issue because things work fine if I use Spotify on my iPhone.

My computer is a mid-2009 MacBook Pro, 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 8GB RAM.  It is not busy with CPU or swapping.

Please can anyone suggest how I might fix this?

[raket4u]

Disable Bluetooth also worked for me.

Shouldn't  be nessecary though..

Apple should fix it!

[paikan07]

Disabling WMM didn't fix the stutters but connecting the Apple TV to the router with an ethernet cable instead of using wifi did work. The Apple TV was somehow creating interferances when on Wifi. 

[jlayneVA]

I had this problem but have a Google On Hub router, so obviously not many options to control the device. I called tech support and they had me do port forwarding... I'm not very literate on exactly what was done, but we went under DHCP IP reservations in the Google Wifi app and created a reservation for the AppleTV device, then went into Port Forwarding and added that saved reservation as 123 > 123 (TCP/UDP). It worked like a charm! No chop at all and the picture is even clearer. He said it was a problem with the device communicating with the Apple server and this connects directly. Magic. 

[abbey82]

This fixed the issue for me as well.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)

[p2k2]

Aug 2017 - I tried a lot of changes to router without success and other things; what worked was restore to factory and that did it. Apple TV - older one - worked fine for 2-3 years and just started this stuttering only w/video - audio only worked fine. So that is what worked for me. 

[JohnMisky]

I have found the nearer I have the ipad to the Apple TV the quality is enhanced and the stuttering is eliminated. In my opinion the problem exists when the ipad is further away than 4 metres from the Apple TV

[Barnardos]

Followed the guide as mentioned and disbaled Bluetooth, poroblem solved instantly.

I am running a MacBook Pro Late 2013 macOS Sierra 10.12.6

[scottkundla · Accepted solution]

Disabling WMM on my Netgear Router solved the problem!  See below for details:

https://kb.netgear.com/24307/How-do-I-disable-Wi-Fi-Multimedia-Quality-of-Service-on-my-Nighthawk-ro...

[MrSnooty]

I tried about everything, but this worked! Thanks!!! I Songs may waver a bit right at the beginning but no problems for the most part.

[Shicm12]

Had this same problem for MONTHS and was driving me crazy and FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT (hopefully this helps someone out there):

on your Apple TV settings, within network (WiFi) settings, make sure you’re on the 2.5 version of your WiFi and not the 5. I don’t know what it means but for example, I have two WiFi options for my own account: ComcastXXXX-2.4 and ComcastXXXX-5G. Skipping immediately stopped when I switched to the 5G WiFi. Again, don’t know what it means but it worked!!

[MrSnooty]

Mine is already on the 2.4 setting. Glad yours is working though!

[blazarian]

If I disable WMM on Netgear X4S R7800, my WiFi dl bandwidth speed drops from 90 Mbps to 20 Mbps. I checked the Netgear forums and there is information that WMM should be enabled because it enables higher bandwidth speeds (like over 54 Mbps) over WiFi.

Also this suggestion to disable the WMM does not fix the audio stutter issue at all -- the issue seems to be elsewhere. My WiFi is great (about 100 Mbps over this 5 Ghz WiFi) and I'm streaming from iPhone 7. I'm about 2 meters away from the router and Apple TV Gen 4.

[ollipuljula]

Have you tried if changing from 5GHz to 2.4GHz helps? What about if you disable bluetooth?

[dosadih]

+1 here too

MBP 2016 + Netgear R7000 Works like a charm now 🙂 

[mthomas415]

+1 for making sure that the devices are all connected to the 2.5 network and not the 5.

I had two different AirPort devices (old ones) that were working fine until recently. Playing any music through them from phones, computer, whatever would sputter terribly. It was actually worse than sputtering - there owuld be little brief moments of music, but mostly silence.

I had been checking that my laptop and phones were on the 2.5 network but I didn't think to double check the AirPort boxes. I have no idea how they switched to the 5 network on their own, but they did. Perhaps there was a software/firmware update that kicked them over.

To fix: open Apple's AirPort Utility and click the "edit" button next to each AirPort device that shows up on the network diagram. The settings will show which network the box is connected to. Somehow mine had switched over to the 5, so switching them back to the 2.5 instantly cleared up my AirPlay sputtering issues.

[supo007]

On Lynksys: Setup menu - Application and Gaming - QoS - WMM Support