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Songs not starting at the beginning of the track

Songs not starting at the beginning of the track

Every once in a while, I'll get to a song where spotify will skip the first 1 or 2 seconds of a song. I can move the seeker all the way to the front, it says it starting at the beginning, but spotify will still skip the first few seconds of the song.  

 

It's not something dire, but after a while it gets annoying.

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Hey, is it the same songs each time, or is it just happening on any songs at random?

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This happens to me almost every time I click on a new song. It skips the first half second. If I click on the song again, it starts at the beginning.

 

Edit: Now when I click on any song it starts at the beginning. It's completely random. And when it skips the first half sec, the seeker is always at the beginnig, unlike what Shadowalker posted. It's like it "jumps" into the song.

This is called Buffering, its basicaly the spotify players way of saying "hey wait up a sec" because its still downloading data relevent to the first few seconds of the song, and also because as spotify downloads a song it splits the file in to around 30 diffrent files so you cant just open the single file on your harddrive to access the data to play the song. This also adds time to the buffering cycle. But normaly this shouldent be any longer then 10 seconds

JSM

Well, I'd rather like it to wait half a sec than missing some of the song 😛

I agree! I'd rather wait for a split second than miss the first bit of the song. Some of my songs have great first sounds...

I am experiencing this problem too. Sometimes the first half second is missing, but as soon as I move the seeker to the beginning or restart the song it is gone. It seems to occur mostly when the player has been paused for a long time. Not sure.

And I can confirm that it is not a buffering thing. I have loads of space left available for storing local files and have listened to all the songs that I experienced this with many times before. So if buffering it is buffering from the hard-drive then. Maybe that is the problem... The same thing was actually seen some time ago in the VLC-player for some files that I used.

 

On close inspection it occurs consistently when the player has been paused for more than a minute or two. The song starts instantly when command is given, but it starts something like a quarter of a second into the track.

if it is not a buffering problem, then it is either the speed of your internet connection at uplink to spotify's server, or a memory over run in your RAM.

 I doubt that it is the speed of your CPU but the possability exsits none the less, and that is to say the speed of the spu connecting to the north bridge and L2 chache not the CPU itself.

JSM

It's getting old, my computer, but it is by no means incapable.

My ISP gives my a latency of 12ms and and DL-speed of usually around 18Mbps. UL-speed is stable around 2Mbps. My RAM is 6GB of 1600Mhz CL9, along with a Nehalem i7 Quad @ 3.2Ghz (HT enabled). Available processing power is over 90% and between 3 and 4 GB of RAM is free. HDD with spotify cache is WDB 2TB RAID1 and system drive is OCZ V3MI 120GB (all SATA2). This shouldn't be because of lack of power in any way.

I think I even recall this issue on other computers as well, but am ill equipped to confirm that at this point in time.

 

When I start a song after the player having been paused for a while the song starts instantly but a fraction of a second into the track. When I then restart the song, it apparently accesses the file and starts from the very beginning. It actually takes longer for the song to start the second time around. It seems that the player gives no room for buffering from the HDD the first time, but the second time it does. That seems unnecessary.

 

To clarify, it does not matter at all if the first song differs from the second song, it is only after having been paused for some time and resuming playing that the player exhibits this artifact. Every other song started after this starts normally.

The problem being present in a previous version of the VLC-player is still found. And in this case as well, it seems that restarting or reopening the file "solves" it. So in both cases is seems apparent that the track is started before the actual data is loaded into RAM, or something like that.

 

Last point. Turning off the option "Gapless playback" doesn't solve the problem. It seemed it could be related. Obviously gapless playback is rather useless when skipping between songs and even more so when starting the music from the player having been paused.

 

This seems simple enough to counter on the soft side? The only thing I could do is move the Spotify-cache to my SSD but I hardly think that is a practical solution in most cases. I'm not even sure that it'd work.

 

Yours

NK

I have the same problem and have had it for an all too long time. Spotify, please fix this ! It is so annoying when the song won't play from the beginning, especially when the beginning is so crucial to get the feeling of the song, for example Big Boi - Shutterbugg or Dropkick Murphys - I'm shipping Up To Boston. This should not be a big problem to fix. Rather spend time on this issue that has lasted for several months than developing an app system. Please.

I also get the same problem, and also find it annoying on my new Sony Vaio laptop running windows 7. I have a good internet connection. Interestingly, it doesn't happen with my wife's old MacBook Pro...

I experience this problem as well. Since a friend of mine also had the problem I decided to check it up on the forums. Seems it's pretty common. It's most often when I start a song from not having any music on. It's really annoying! Not that the first second is that important, but songs that are just percussion end up in backbeat. Really annoying when you're a dancer and want the song from the start!

Note that this happens to downloaded songs as well as when playing songs online. I really doubt it's got something to do with buffering on my badass computer.

Same problem for me, on high-end computers with 100 Mbit connection. When I start a new song when no other song is playing, Spotify sometimes robs me of the first 0,5-1 seconds, which is really irritating. Some songs begin with a great beat, and some songs start with a long percussion count, and then you get really lost when the song suddenly starts 2 beats earlier (since you did not hear the first two beats).

I have the same issue. It's not related to hardware, or cache, it's simply spotify starting playing before the sound device is ready.

 

I would love to see it fixed, as it's my one and only gripe with spotify.

 

I have spotify installed on a stripe-raided intel x25 SSDs, it does not affect it. It occurs at home, and at work, and on my laptop. I have an external creative labs soundcard at home using optical to an AV receiver. My laptop has the usual built in soundcard, as does my work PC which is a bog standard dell.

 

It does ruin many tracks.

Same issue. Queue works fine... but when I'm breaking up the Queue it's robbing me off 1-2 sec. of the new song. Sometimes happening on my Android device.

Just had this happen to me, so I thought I would drop a message here.

Do you guys have crossfading tracks enabled in the Edit > Preferences menu? I seem to loose the first second of playback as the track "fades" in from nothing playing.

 

Peter

Peter
Spotify Community Mentor and Troubleshooter

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I'm having this issue with and without gapless playback. And crossfading is disabled.

I'm having this same issue. Does anyone have a fix for this?

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