Spotify connect feed dropping out

[Zedman]

Plan

Premium

Country

Netherlands

Device

Yamaha MusicCast wxad-10

Operating System

Windows 10, Android

My Question or Issue

For the last 2 months I have experienced random stuttering/buffering/dropouts with Spotify connect. The song playing will cut and resume with the pause between cut and resume shortening each time until the music resumes. It seems to be worse in the evening hours. It's absolutely killing my music enjoyment and not what I expect from a paid service.

- I have tried all of the "fixes" suggested

- My audio streamer is hard wired, so not a wi-fi issue

- This happens both with a mobile phone and desktop app connected controller.

- It does not happen with internet radio

- My ISP (Ziggo) has confirmed that the line is functioning perfectly. No dropouts on other (higher demand) services such as Netflix.

- I can see the download speed choke when the stutter occurs. Drops from 500-600Kbps to 10-40 Kbps and back up after the stutter stops.

- It is not time related. Not the same time interval between stutter occurrences.

- DNS is via Google as recommended

- Prior to this I have had 2 years of problem free Spotify music streaming

Nobody at Spotify seems to picking this up despite numerous posts on this forum.

Please, please, please Spotify take this seriously and get this fixed. You say "Listening is everything" so please live up to your tagline and get this fixed! Mobile streaming via Bluetooth at compressed quality is not what I bought or want.

Hope to hear something from Spotify really soon for all of the customers who are severely disappointed.

[Cortex-tlse]

Fully agree with @Zedman,
Can Spotify team answer seriously to this issue.
We have already 3 posted, lots of people experiencing the issue.
This must be answered now, we paid for the service.

[Alcyon]

Same issue with Spotify on a new Yamaha MusicCast RN803D. I have multiple second cuts in sound (hatched as a buffer issue) every 5-10 minutes. It lasts about 20-30 seconds and it starts again.

It's very annoying, impossible to listen to continuous music on a hi-fi system which cost me dearly.
However, my wifi connection is stable, other functions such as NET Radio and Airplay are working perfectly.

I'm waiting for a response from Spotify.

[Zedman]

Hi @Cortex-tise and @Alcyon, are you also on Ziggo as ISP? They tell me that everything is ok but I really don't trust this. Their forums are full of discussions related to critical packet loss.

That would "explain" the symptoms and that it gets worse in the evenings when there is more load on the network.

[Alcyon]

I'am french and Ziggo does not exist in my country. This problem has nothing to do with the provider and is reported on the french musical community forum on Audiofanzine.com. We can't type a url here so search "Audiofanzine problèmes de coupure de son avec Musiccast et spotify" in Google. People have the same issue and have different providers.

[Zedman]

Thanks Alcyon, I was just trying to establish if "packet loss" was happening on the same ISP. I'm going to try to retrieve my modem history and correlate this with the dropout events as I've been keeping a log of when it happens.

[Alcyon]

You can try with your 4G phone from a bridge. It's the same ! Issue is coming from Spotify DLNA on the MusicCast device. But where is the problem ? Firmware update ? uncompatibility between the DLNA sofware and Spotify connect ? i don't know... That's the question. I contacted Yamaha for this issue, no answer yet.

[Zedman]

Hi Alcyon,
I don't really stream much from my phone on 4G but I'll take your word on it. I really don't know if it's related to a firmware update or not but around the time this started there was an update from Spotify and from Yamaha. Could be coincidence. I'm also not sure if Yamaha uses DLNA software because this is a P2P connection. Spotify is certainly not mentioned in the DLNA certificate on their website for my Yamaha product. Is there any way you can observer/track your download when the stutter occurs?

[Zedman]

No DNLA
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/All-Platforms-DLNA-Support/idi-p/3523

[Alcyon]

I'm not talking about Spotify's DLNA but Yamaha's. There is one, necessarily because MusicCast plays an audio stream from a streaming server.

[simondona]

Same problem here with Yamaha mcr-n470d. Spotify connect is unusuable. Every few minutes the stream drops repeatedly. Connection is ok, firmware is updated, premium account, country Italy.

[Zedman]

damn, thought I had a solution for this but it just started happening again after 4 hours of probkem free listening. I was really enjoying the music only to be bugged again. 

Come on Spotify....help your clients out because we are pulling our hair out. 

Last stutter/glitch at 21:14 CET.

It's  been happening since the beginning of November, many customers are affected and so far no response. At least Yamaha is in contact and trying! 🤬🤬🤬

[Zedman]

fyi, last night I set up a full monitor on the system and ran a packet loss test during the stutter issue and monitored modem errors and wifi situation. No errors. Your server feed is dropping out Spotify!!!! that's my conclusion. If you would like to prove me wrong please do so.

[Zedman]

21:15 CET , again !!!!

[Zedman]

I contacted my ISP this morning and asked them to check if they could see any dropouts on the line at the specific times of 21:15 and 21:25 last night. They (Ziggo) checked for me and found nothing to indicate a problem. Even so, they offered to send me a new modem in case it helped. Very nice service from Ziggo. Yamaha is also being very attentive.

Zero response from Spotify on this.

As a side not, it was 16 November that Spotify and Google had a BIG server outage, it made the news. That's pretty much when this all started. Coincidence?

[Alcyon]

For my part, I saw Yamaha taking care of my problem. I sent them all the logs of my MusicCast connections and networks. They analyze the concern.
Otherwise the last I heard, someone in the post I started on a forum gave me a solution that solved the problem with him. He deactivated Waze from his Spotify account. I tried this solution and .... everything has been working fine for over an hour! Would that be the solution? I'm still testing during the day and I will keep you posted.

[Zedman]

Hi Alcyon, thanks for keeping in touch on this. I don't have Waze and my problem is not account related because my girlfriend streamed via her Spotify account on my hardware and the same thing happened. I have the gut feeling that it's a perfect storm of updates and old/new equipment that is just clashing.
I had hoped that Spotify would be able to verify from their end but they don't seem to care.
Good luck with your solution!

[Alcyon]

Thanks for your feedback. Indeed the problem returned so it is not that. And it wouldn't make sense for this to be a Waze problem because Spotify Connect is just a "remote" interface! We are continuing the investigations.

[Zedman]

can you attach a diagram of your set up to show how you have connected everything? Although not ruling it out, I'm still looking at a possible hardware or IP address conflict. 

[Alcyon]

I think looking for the problem on the home network side is a dead end. My network is stable, fully optimized with Mesh terminals. My MusicCast IP is unique and managed by DHCP via my box. My wifi network is a Mesh system and is a stable configuration. Also a lot of people have the same problem on other forums. It would be unlikely that we would all have a network problem .... especially since Net Radios work fine.