Volumio and the BBC Global News Podcast

Plugins
1

Volumio is wonderful, but it continues to struggle in one particular scenario: playing the daily BBC Global News Podcast. THe problem has persisted for a long time, and every so often I like to write about it in the hope that someone has encountered it and solved it.

The error behavior has changed as Volumio has matured. The desired outcome is to be able to play this podcast using Volumio’s Podcast plug-in, ideally with the FusionDSP plug-in also activated (I love its headphone-based equalization). At present, when I ask Volumio to fetch & play the podcast in the Podcast plug-in’s UI, the podcast plays at a super-accelerated rate that’s impossible to understand. If I use another application and direct its output towards Volumio via UPnP-playto, I get the same accelerated playback. If I do the same thing using AirPlay for stream redirection rather than UPnP, playback is comprehensible but there are periodic audio dropouts, say, every 30 seconds or so.

In testing I’ve also eliminated the internet aspect by pre-downloading the podcast to a local drive served by UPnP. The podcast itself seems to be a garden-variety MP3 file and I’ve played it in several different apps without a problem. Sadly Volumio’s behavior with a local MP3 file mirrors its behavior with a network-sourced podcast - accelerated playback as a local MP3 or when Volumio is a UPnP playback destination, and periodic skipping when using AirPlay. The podcast MP3 file itself plays normally in lots of apps on different OS’s, and for grins I downloaded it to a few portable audio players with equally correct results.

Also worth noting, I listen to several other news podcasts within Volumio correctly - no problems, all good. I’ve considered pre-treating the BBC podcast file using rubberband for deceleration and downshifting the pitch, but that would be a desperation step.

Am I the only Volumio user who listens to the BBC Global News Podcast? Does anybody have better results than mine?

2

I downloaded two of the MP3s from this page:

They both played fine, so it is likely an issue with your setup.

3

Thanks for the try. How did you play the MP3’s?

  1. After ingestion into the Volumio music library.
  2. From another app with Volumio as a UPnP target.
  3. From another app with Volumio as an AirPlay target.

Also was FusionDSP active at the time?

4
  1. By adding them to Music Library.

FusionDSP not installed.

5

It turns out that the cause was the FusionDSP plug-in. When it’s deactivated, the BBC podcast plays normally. Re-activate it, and the various playback anomalies return. It’s interesting that this behavior is relative to just this single podcast. I listen to quite a few under Volumio, and the Global News podcast is the only one affected in this way. Thanks patrickkfkan for looking into it on your system.

1 Like
6

Can you try to resample to 44.1 with FusionDsp enable to see if better?
TY

7

Sorry balbuze, adding the 44.1 resampling did not change playback when FusionDSP is enabled. The playback rate for the Global News podcast remained several times higher than normal.

And a related comment… when one enables the resampling in the control panel and clicks “Apply,” the setting is silently accepted with no visual feedback. Adding a confirmation (like the timed notification panels used elsewhere) would be a plus.

8

thank you for feedback.
Can’t explain your issue… Sorry.

I added a toast message when resampling is enabled/disabled :wink: