AirPlay dropouts

[JiiM]

I recently purchased a WiiM Mini for adding AirPlay capability to my existing system. My initial delight quickly evaporated as I started noticing frequent AirPlay glitches, dropouts, stuttering, whatever you want to call it.

I followed the WiiM AirPlay troubleshooting guide but nothing there made any difference. I have a very mainstream WiFi 6 access point with a strong signal and the problem occurs regardless of distance between devices.

Crucially, AirPlay between Apple devices works flawlessly on my network, so the finger points squarely at the WiiM Mini as the cause of the problem.

I am wondering whether folks here are (or are not) having the same problem. I am also wondering whether this is something that used to work fine but has been broken by a recent update. It seems not to be possible to go back to older firmware to check that.

I submitted a ticket to WiiM and received a generic response saying my information has been relayed to the engineering team and that I will be kept updated on any developments. So I am not particularly confident that a fix will be forthcoming.

It seems this problem may not be specific to the Mini as I can see it has also been reported for the WiiM Pro Plus:

https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/airplay-disruptions.6737/

 

[JiiM]

I discovered that this is not an AirPlay problem per se, as it only occurs when EQ is active. Hopefully it can be fixed.

 

[JiiM]

Seems like I'm talking to myself here. But if anyone is interested, I ended up getting a WiiM Amp and I am happy to report that it doesn't suffer from the same problem. It appears that the WiiM Mini's more modest A7 processor is not fast enough to implement EQ and AirPlay at the same time.

 

[Dwilliams]

Thanks so much for solving this problem. I had the exact same problem. Turning off eq in the wiim app fixed it.

 

[Shrike]

This is related to Aiplay dropouts, but not the Wiim Mini EQ (it's turned off).

I listen (on a MacBook Pro M1) to a lot of files (promos, mostly MP3) but also stream (via Qobuz and Bandcamp/browser) and this seems to cause issues; AirPlay gets "stuck" and stops playing.
Only way to get it to work again is close all sound sources, except the one I wish to use that that moment and wait a few minutes.
I get minor dropouts here and there, which is a "warning sign" that I've too many sources live, sometimes I manage to kill these extra ones off and it wont lock up.

This was an issue previously with Spotify Connect as well, if I'd switch in and out of AirPlay during the day, something would lock up and Wiim Mini would become unresposive for a moment.
Similarily at work (there's a Apple TV box to connect to room speakers), AirPlay would have drops and/or lockup if I have music playing and open a Youtube video on a browser at the same time.

I've used all kinds of players for the files, feels like I've had less issues with VLC, which is not optimal solution for music and not sure if I'm just able to be stricter with audio sources when using it.

Currently I'm playing files with MusicBee (runnining on Wine, I'm testing apps, but also this problem), still feels like I need to close any other audio sources all the way to be sure AirPlay wont lock up.

I feel like this is an AirPlay problem, but still would be interested to hear if anyone has ideas on how to fix or mitigate this?

 

[harkpabst]

This is related to Aiplay dropouts, but not the Wiim Mini EQ (it's turned off).

I listen (on a MacBook Pro M1) to a lot of files (promos, mostly MP3) but also stream (via Qobuz and Bandcamp/browser) and this seems to cause issues; AirPlay gets "stuck" and stops playing.
Only way to get it to work again is close all sound sources, except the one I wish to use that that moment and wait a few minutes.
I get minor dropouts here and there, which is a "warning sign" that I've too many sources live, sometimes I manage to kill these extra ones off and it wont lock up.

This was an issue previously with Spotify Connect as well, if I'd switch in and out of AirPlay during the day, something would lock up and Wiim Mini would become unresposive for a moment.
Similarily at work (there's a Apple TV box to connect to room speakers), AirPlay would have drops and/or lockup if I have music playing and open a Youtube video on a browser at the same time.

I've used all kinds of players for the files, feels like I've had less issues with VLC, which is not optimal solution for music and not sure if I'm just able to be stricter with audio sources when using it.

Currently I'm playing files with MusicBee (runnining on Wine, I'm testing apps, but also this problem), still feels like I need to close any other audio sources all the way to be sure AirPlay wont lock up.

I feel like this is an AirPlay problem, but still would be interested to hear if anyone has ideas on how to fix or mitigate this?

This thread is marked as solved.

Your post will get a lot more attention if you start your own thread. If you want me to, I can move it to a separate thread.