Intermittent delay on Sound Lite in surround setup

[DCameronMauch]

I have a Wiim Amp Ultra for my front speakers. It is connected to network via cable. I have two Wiim Sound Lite speakers for rear channels. They are connected to network via wifi. They seem to be in sync most of the time, but every 30 seconds or so, the rear speakers go out of sync with noticeable delay, causing an echo effect. This lasts for 2 to 3 seconds. My home network is all Ubiquiti. There is a wireless access point like 10 feet away from them. I even tried creating a different SSID that is 2.4GHz only. Did not help. Might have made it worse. App shows very strong signal strength. I also live in a neighborhood of houses. So not high wifi density. I don't know how to fix this. I tried different delays, but it still happens, just someone less at 800mS. But then my TV is obviously out of sync. I am feeding audio via HMDI ARC from a Sony Bravia 8 II. I am seriously thinking of just returning the Sound Lite speakers to Amazon.

 

[hgo58]

I have a Wiim Amp Ultra for my front speakers. It is connected to network via cable. I have two Wiim Sound Lite speakers for rear channels. They are connected to network via wifi. They seem to be in sync most of the time, but every 30 seconds or so, the rear speakers go out of sync with noticeable delay, causing an echo effect. This lasts for 2 to 3 seconds. My home network is all Ubiquiti. There is a wireless access point like 10 feet away from them. I even tried creating a different SSID that is 2.4GHz only. Did not help. Might have made it worse. App shows very strong signal strength. I also live in a neighborhood of houses. So not high wifi density. I don't know how to fix this. I tried different delays, but it still happens, just someone less at 800mS. But then my TV is obviously out of sync. I am feeding audio via HMDI ARC from a Sony Bravia 8 II. I am seriously thinking of just returning the Sound Lite speakers to Amazon.

If the sound gets into sync again, then it might be your router that gets periodically congested. Do you have other heavy traffic on it?

Try to restart the router.

 

[DCameronMauch]

I have restarted the entire network (router, switch, and WAPs). Restarted all the Wiim stuff.
Happens where there is no significant network usage. Just Netflix or YouTube. Have 1.2GB download speed.

 

[BMeek]

Your download speed is not relevant. I remain skeptical of all efforts to implement WiFi-based wireless surround sound solutions today. Our WiFi has more than enough bandwidth for AV streams, but the temporal demands of delivering quality audio on multiple channels simultaneously in real time without too much latency from the AV source... I haven't seen it work well. Given the wide variations of home wifi implementation quality and wireless traffic, a product strategy depending on 'perfectly good' home networks like yours is very high risk.

If it were easy, Apple would've been selling millions of HomePods and HomePod minis (as surrounds) with their Apple TV 4K devices for the last few years. All they can [usually] manage is an ATV4K and a single "stereo pair" of HomePods rendering [repackaged] multichannel AV content... This works only because the Apple TV 4K is in on the packaging and buffering and delays video playback until the HomePods are good and ready to play the corresponding audio.

 

[Wiimer]

Just Netflix or YouTube.

Does that mean the delay in the surround speakers only occurs when playing Netflix and YouTube?

 

[BMeek]

I have a Wiim Amp Ultra for my front speakers. It is connected to network via cable. I have two Wiim Sound Lite speakers for rear channels. They are connected to network via wifi. They seem to be in sync most of the time, but every 30 seconds or so, the rear speakers go out of sync with noticeable delay, causing an echo effect. This lasts for 2 to 3 seconds. My home network is all Ubiquiti. There is a wireless access point like 10 feet away from them. I even tried creating a different SSID that is 2.4GHz only. Did not help. Might have made it worse. App shows very strong signal strength. I also live in a neighborhood of houses. So not high wifi density. I don't know how to fix this. I tried different delays, but it still happens, just someone less at 800mS. But then my TV is obviously out of sync. I am feeding audio via HMDI ARC from a Sony Bravia 8 II. I am seriously thinking of just returning the Sound Lite speakers to Amazon.

Is your Sony Bravia the one streaming the AV content from the Internet source? Is it using WiFi? Getting the 'streamer' wired to your router along with your Ultra might get things usable at a 150ms group delay?

 

[hgo58]

Your download speed is not relevant. I remain skeptical of all efforts to implement WiFi-based wireless surround sound solutions today. Our WiFi has more than enough bandwidth for AV streams, but the temporal demands of delivering quality audio on multiple channels simultaneously in real time without too much latency from the AV source... I haven't seen it work well. Given the wide variations of home wifi implementation quality and wireless traffic, a product strategy depending on 'perfectly good' home networks like yours is very high risk.

If it were easy, Apple would've been selling millions of HomePods and HomePod minis (as surrounds) with their Apple TV 4K devices for the last few years. All they can [usually] manage is an ATV4K and a single "stereo pair" of HomePods rendering multichannel AV content... This works only because the Apple TV 4K is in on the buffering and delays video playback until the HomePods are good and ready to play the corresponding audio.

It's usually the router in a home network that is the bottleneck, not the WiFi itself.

Standard routers may not have the performance needed.

 

[hoohoohoo]

It's usually the router in a home network that is the bottleneck, not the WiFi itself.

Standard routers may not have the performance needed.

Shifting packets in any embedded Linux router is a lightweight exercise but there are settings on routers that can increase delays.

@DCameronMauch - With your Ubuquiti gear, do you have any QoS currently enabled? Try turning it off which will reduce queueing delay and processing delay for the QoS. [1] This isn't a magic bullet, but it may help if some of the more delay-inducing features are being used. Streaming multimedia over wifi is getting better (wifi6 and wifi7) but it's no match for a wired solution simply because the radio frequency environment is much less benign than a wire.

[1] https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/computer-networks/delays-in-computer-network/
T(total) = Tt + Tp + Tq + Tpro

Where:

• Tt = Transmission Delay
• Tp = Propagation Delay
• Tq = Queueing Delay
• Tpro = Processing Delay

 

[BMeek]

It's usually the router in a home network that is the bottleneck, not the WiFi itself.

Standard routers may not have the performance needed.

When speculating on the universe of home networking equipment, your guess is as good as mine. I'm just sayin that depending on the contention-based 802.1ax/ac standard to do what Sonos and WiSA adopted dedicated hardware/radio protocols to accomplish is tricky.

Anecdotally, I couldn't get my (2-node) WiiM Speaker Group to play reliably at a 70ms or even 150ms Group Delay unless they were both plugged into my router (a Linksys E8450). This is despite my properly-configured Zyxel WiFi-6 AP in a rather rural RF scene.