HifiBerry Digi+: First half second of every song missing

Pi MusicBox
1

Hey everyone,

I just connected a HifiBerry Digi+ to my amp via coax cable. Then I tried playing a spotify playlist via the spotify connect feature (connect to musicbox). Sound works perfectly, but I noticed that the first half second or so of every song is missing. My guess is that musicbox cuts the output stream at the end of each song and then sets it up again at the beginning of a new song, but it takes my amp a couple hundred ms to sync back up (this is confirmed somewhat by the input symbol on my amp turning off at the end of each song and then turning back on when the sound of the next song comes back).
So I guess my question is, can I tell musicbox to keep the connection to the amp “alive”, for lack of a better way to say it… or am I on the completely wrong track?

Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks
Andy

2

Spotify Connect is provided by librespot which closes and re-opens the audio device when switching tracks. So you are on the right track but there’s not currently a way to get librespot to do this but it’s an open issue.

3

Ah dammit, I was afraid that there was no solution for that. Out of curiosity, if I connected an analog sound output (say the analogue Hifiberry), would it still be an issue that the sound starts playing (in software) before the hardware device is ready to produce output? Or would I not notice at all?

4

I think some people reported clicks but that’s a sign of a crappy soundcard driver. Usually it’s not noticeable.

5

Okay, guess I’ll try an analogue Hifiberry then. Thank you very much for your help! :slight_smile:

6

AndyK, I have about 10 Pi’s from the Zero wireless to first gen Pi 3’s running various HiFi Berry analog cards in my multi-room audio set up. I can’t comment on Spotify as I don’t use it, but I’m not experiencing any issues with closing and reopening the stream in my system. One of the comments in the

thread said that the issue was also exposed with simple song playback in the local library, which is one of my primary uses (the other being TuneIn) and I’m not experiencing the issue with my analog HiFi Berries. Just a data point for you. Sorry I can’t be of more help.

7

This issue only surfaces when using Spotify Connect. The only mention of local playback in that linked issue is regarding volumio which is something different and doesn’t effect pimusicbox.

8

KraigoMpls, thanks for your response! I got an analog HifiBerry now and it works flawlessly with that! So I guess the issue only surfaces with the digital output and is probably caused by my receiver taking too long to produce output when a new stream starts.